(helicopter blades whirring)
Hold that speed.
Our brains have to do all kinds
of important and complicated jobs.
They make our hearts beat, they remind us to breathe
and they help us to deal with stressful situations.
(alarm beeps) (helicopter blades whirring)
But one of the most important jobs our brains do
is to help us decide what to do to stay alive.
Double engine failure.
At 4,000 meters, my Seasprite helicopter
has just had a double engine failure.
This is not good.
All right, down a bit, 900, 800.
I use my sensors to figure out what's happening
and then I apply that information
to my stored information, my memory.
What do I know about flying a helicopter?
As I search through my brain, I don't find much.
(lively music) (dog barks)
300,
200.
If I was a trained pilot,
I'd be finding lots of useful memories
that would give me choices and that would keep me alive.
(explosion booms)
(men laugh)
So that's us dipping? Oh, yes.
Our brain is always making decisions.
Can we help it to make better ones?
Is it possible to change the brain we're born with,
to upgrade it?
Can we become smarter?
In this episode we look at one of the most amazing things
our brains do, the ability to learn and to remember.
We'll look at how we can improve our memory
and how our attitude to learning
actually affects how much we can learn.
We're also gonna look at what happens to your brain
when it gets damaged and how you can keep your brain healthy
for the rest of your life.
(dramatic music)
(mysterious music)
Our brain gets all of its information from our senses
and on the whole, our senses do a great job.
When they screw up can our brains step in to help?
I'm going to turn the whole world upside down
and see how long it takes my brain to adjust
and the easiest way to do that is with these glasses.
(suspenseful music)
Oh, that's very strange, okay.
(laughs)
My eyes are feeding false information into my brain
which is instantly deeply confusing.
(water splashing)
It makes even simple tasks like pouring a glass of water
suddenly very difficult.
(laughs)
This is very hard.
(water splashing)
(hand raps)
But here's the magic of the brain,
slowly I'm beginning to adjust to this upside-down world.
(door creaks)
Here's your pizza. -: Okay, thank you.
Over the course of the day, my brain begins to adapt.
Hang on. (machine beeps)
And after three days, my brain will be completely at ease
with an upside-down world and that's because of something
that neuroscientists call brain plasticity,
the ability that our brains have to adapt
and learn over time.
Now sometimes that can take a long time
like when you flip the world upside down
and other times it can happen almost instantaneously.
(water splashing)
Having brains that can actually change,
that are plastic, is really important
because that's how we learn new things
like how to escape from stuff.
I'm going to duct tape these two people.
(ominous music)
Now this is an unlikely event
but it shows how I can permanently change the brain
of our participants and even your brain will be changed
by just watching the experiment.
All right and now let's see if you can escape.
(ominous music)
Our participants have to use their brain and senses
to figure out how to escape.
Perhaps their memory is thinking about handcuffs
and how you could slide out of this tape,
or perhaps their sensors are perceiving
what looks like weak tape?
Maybe brute strength will help them escape,
but nothing seems to be working.
Now of course they can't escape
because this isn't a skill
that most of us have ever had to learn
and by the time that we do it's usually a bit too late.
So I'm gonna show you how to escape from duct tape.
So it's like this.
Just like and rip it off.
Oh, yep. (laughs)
Super painless.
Of course they couldn't escape initially,
but now that I've helped their brains
to make some new connections between duct tape,
being kidnapped and escaping, they can.
And the wonderful thing about your plastic brain
is that your neurons have made the same connections
so you can, too.
So how exactly do we learn?
Baby X can help.
She's the closest thing we have to a simulation
of a human brain.
Created by Dr. Mark Sagar and his team,
she isn't just an animation,
she sees, hears and responds in the moment.
Which means she can show us,
in a way we've never been able to see before,
the complex miracle of how our brains learn.
What does a plastic brain look like?
How does our plastic brain learn new things?
Well one of the key ways is using something
that scientists call associative learning.
Firstly, I'm going to say the word, duck, to her.
Duck.
If she knew what the word meant,
we should see a duck appear in the top left square,
but there's nothing.
Now Baby X doesn't know what a duck is
so when I say the word, duck, to her
it doesn't mean anything.
But if I teach her
that this is a duck using associative learning,
then something amazing happens that we do as well,
we just take it completely for granted.
Duck.
We can see on the right-hand side
that Baby X is looking at the duck and on the left square
we can see that Baby X is perceiving my face.
In the square next to it is what she's thinking about.
At the moment it's static,
but we can see she's beginning to associate the word, duck,
with the yellow beaky thing I'm holding.
Duck.
Now watch what happens in Baby X's brain
when I say the word this time.
Her brain, just like ours, is plastic,
it changes in response to new information
and builds a link between the word, duck,
and an actual duck.
Duck.
As we look inside her brain,
we can see parts of the brain light up.
This shows localized regions lighting up
that are involved in sensory input and object association.
This process is enormously complex
yet you do it every time you learn something new,
like the technique you just saw
which you'll now associate with duct tape and escaping.
But how long will you remember this information?
Will you remember it in five years
or will it be gone by tomorrow?
How can you make your memory better?
(dramatic music)
Ever wondered why time seems to pass quicker
as you get older?
Well it turns out that has a lot to do
with how our brains remember things.
Basically they look for two things,
consistencies, which they ignore,
or irregularities, which stand out.
(lively music)
Brushing your teeth is pretty routine.
We don't have a different memory for each time we've done it
mainly because there's nothing important to remember,
just the same old, same old.
We could do it on autopilot
and if we try to recall teeth brushing,
we have this sort of generic impression of teeth brushing,
maybe picturing our current bathroom.
But if something irregular happens,
then my brain certainly notices.
It's something I'll remember for the day,
maybe for a month or maybe I'll never forget it.
Novel experiences we remember
and the everyday stuff we forget.
And of course as we get older,
we have fewer and fewer novel experiences.
(mysterious music)
When you're young, you get to try triple-scoop ice cream
with whipped cream for the first time.
That means that time feels like it's passing slowly
because so many things are new.
You're creating brand-new neural pathways all the time.
These new things, like getting a first tattoo,
burn themselves into our memories.
Scientists have found that the teenage years
are particularly impactful.
That's why we still love that Foo Fighters album,
have fond memories of our first love
and relive that moment when we won the game for our team.
Whereas when we get older, we've been there, done that
and so we don't remember large parts of a year.
But does it have to be that way?
Most of us don't think that our memories are very good,
but I'm going to prove
that you can remember 30 pictures in 15 seconds.
(dramatic music)
All right, now, have you remembered all of those?
Most of you probably think you can't remember very many,
but I'm gonna prove that you can remember all 30,
that's how good your memory is.
So
teddy bear or clown?
It's the teddy bear.
Bridge or jetty?
It's the bridge.
Elephant or lamb?
It's the lamb.
Ice cream or salad?
It's the ice cream.
Butterfly or flower?
It's the butterfly.
Tea or water?
It's the tea.
You have all the images memorized
because your brain is always capturing everything
all the time.
All that detail is in your short term memory
for a minute or so
and unimportant information is quickly discarded,
like brushing your teeth this morning.
One study showed that we can remember 2,500 objects
shown to us over a five hour period.
So if our memories are that good,
why is it so hard to remember where we put the car keys
and how can we get better at that stuff?
3.14159265358979--
Ralph is a memory champion.
He knows Pi to 3,560 decimals places
and he learned that after he turned 70.
He's got a way to help us remember things for longer.
Do you have a special memory?
Do you have special memory powers?
No, I don't actually, I just have a normal memory.
I've just developed a few techniques
to help me remember things.
And these tricks can be used in everyday life.
So the first item on our shopping list, Nigel, is corn.
So we imagine a whole lot of corn plants growing.
Corn's hitting the roof,
there's corncobs all over the place.
That's the first item
and the second item on our shopping list is baked beans.
So if you imagine someone pouring it over all the DVDs.
The secret is to create bizarre images
in a space you know well, like your home.
And the last item on our shopping list is bananas.
For it you just imagine bunches
of bananas hanging from a plant.
If you only want to do it short term for shopping,
no problem, you should be able to remember all.
Do you think anyone can improve their memory?
Yes, yes, there's no doubt about it.
All the people that compete in world championships,
I think would say they have no special abilities.
They've developed a technique and they've practiced it.
If you're gonna be the best you gotta practice,
so it's as simple as that.
It's almost unbelievable,
but it's just use of the mind, that's all.
But there are some things
you don't have to work at memorizing,
they stick with you for life.
Okay, Sarah.
Here we are, runs are open.
Look at that, that's what's cool.
A beautiful sunrise.
25 years ago, Sarah Wilson
literally found herself falling off the side of a mountain.
(snow whooshes)
So my head is flying around in the helmet,
but inside my brain,
it's a bit like time just slowed right down.
It was like I was watching a movie of my life.
How did they affect you,
the memories that were coming to your mind?
There was a lot of emotion associated with images
and they were people I love.
And so there was a sense
that those things are important to me
and I don't want to lose them,
but also it was a very calming effect.
So I could enjoy the fact that I had those great people
around me in my life.
It was emotional, but also quite positive.
It was almost preparing me for an end.
Looking back now, you kind of have these two components,
the memories of the fall and the memories of the memories.
Are they both equally as strong?
This is where it gets interesting
is that the memory of the fall is particularly strong
and what I notice even talking about it now, some years on,
is that it still has a very strong emotion quality.
So I can feel myself shaking a bit and as I tell the story
I can separate myself a little from it,
but it still is a huge emotional impact for me.
(snow whooshes)
Memories of traumatic events are very intense
and can make the person feel
like they're actually re-experiencing the incident.
This is what happens with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
It's supposed to be helpful
because it creates a strong memory around things to avoid,
but instead, it can end up hurting us
because we relive the traumatic event over
and over and over again.
(dramatic music)
But why are there some events we don't even seem
to be aware of as they're happening?
The most common example, driving home
and not really remember large parts of the journey.
Well it turns out we have two memory systems,
there are explicit memories,
like what we have to buy at the shops,
baked beans, wasn't it?
We have to work at recalling that information
and it's where we store things like your mom's birthday
and the capital of France.
But our other memory system is called the implicit system,
that something of it is our subconscious and its awesome.
It's like an autopilot for a lot of our functions.
It knows how to walk, how to type and even how to drive.
This allows us to devote more brain power to other tasks,
like thinking about social things happening around us
or processing our emotions.
And our implicit memory is so powerful
it can do things we find hard to do
if we actually consciously try to do them.
(keys clicking)
Denise is a proficient touch typist.
Without looking at the keys,
she can bang out 120 words a minute.
Which you think would mean
that she knows exactly where each key is.
Well, that's kind of true, but it's also kind of not true.
Here is a diagram of a keyboard
and I would just like you to just fill in the letters.
Sure.
Watch what happens when I ask her
to draw a map of the keyboard using her explicit memory.
But just off the top of your head
without using your fingers. Okay. (laughs)
No finger, no, just remembering what's there.
(soft music)
Oh, it's a little bit harder.
She can't do it.
You can't use your fingers, just have to use your brain.
And stop.
What was that like? It was quite hard.
The first thing I did was put my fingers on.
As soon as I put my fingers on I could tell you
exactly where it was.
Because that was your first response,
was to do the logical thing which is,
"I'm gonna use the system which works,"
and you started to use your fingers.
But when I said you couldn't,
what happens to the memories then?
Oh, it went blank. (laughs)
It was tally blank, I couldn't remember
without having my fingers in place.
This means we don't get bogged down in thinking,
"Left foot, right foot, breathe in, breathe out."
We can focus on bigger things like planning for the future.
But your future might be determined by your attitude.
How can you change that?
(mysterious music)
(water splashing) (joyful music)
When we're born, everything is unexpected and strange.
So one of the most important things to learn
is the way to predict what's going to happen next.
Let's see if Baby X's brain can predict the future.
Can she predict what'll happen next
after she pushes a button?
When Baby X presses the green button, a duck appears
and when she presses the red button, a snake appears.
But at first, she's just pushing the buttons randomly.
As Baby X continues to press the buttons,
her brain begins to form new connections.
In the left box we can see what she's predicting
and in the right box, we can see her goal.
She wants to see a duck
so she's working out pressing the green button gets her
what she wants.
This ability to learn sequences
and to predict what might be about to happen next
is crucial to everything we do,
from understanding the rules of social etiquette
to driving a car.
And our skill at constructing abstract
and complex sequences to predict what might happen next
is an important component of what we call intelligence.
Alfred Binet created the first intelligence, or IQ test,
in the early 1900s
and today most people still think it's a measure
of how smart you are.
But even Binet said you can't quantify something
as complex as intelligence with a single number
and he also said it could change over time.
So is being smart, or talented, something you're born with
or is something you develop?
Amazingly, how you answer that question
can have a huge impact on your life.
It's all about mindset.
There are two main categories,
and this experiment will show the difference
between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset
and the affect that each could have on your life.
Hey. Hi.
Hello. -: Hi.
I've to a math problem that I would like you to do.
We take two groups of kids and give them a problem to solve.
It's not too hard.
Okay, how did you go with that, what answer did you get?
70. -: 70.
70?
70, 70, awesome.
Everybody gets it right,
but the way I talk to the two groups afterwards
is the important bit.
It seems to me like the reason you got the right answer
is because you guys work really hard.
Like it seems like you're hard workers
when it comes to math problems.
I told this first group that they worked hard
which forms a growth mindset,
but I'm gonna tell the second group
that they solved a problem because they're smart,
which creates a fixed mindset.
So you guys must be really smart.
You know how some people are just naturally good at maths?
Yeah.
So that's you guys, very smart.
Well done.
Next, I give them a really difficult problem
they won't be able to solve.
What answer did you get?
188.
24.
Now I give both groups a choice
between a hard problem and an easy one.
The growth mindset group,
the one I said had worked hard to solve the problem,
all chose the same option.
What are you gonna choose?
A hard one.
Hard.
The hard one.
This shows the growth mindset perfectly.
They believe if they work hard
they'll be able to get better.
Now what happens when I give the same choice
to the fixed mindset group,
the ones I told were smart at maths.
What do you choose?
Easy.
Hard.
Easy. -: Easy.
Okay, all right.
These kids currently have a fixed mindset.
Because of what I said,
they now believe practice won't help
because you're either smart at maths or you're not.
But changing this mindset is simple, reward effort.
Tell people they're good at something
not because they're smart, but because they worked hard.
80-year-old John Layland is what a growth mindset looks like
in real life.
He knows that rewards in life come
from putting in the effort.
John, if you were given the option of an easy crossword
that you could do or a harder one
that you may not be able to do, what one would you choose?
The harder one.
Wouldn't that just be frustrating and annoying?
Wouldn't it be boring to do the other one? (laughs)
Because of his growth mindset,
he's led an interesting life.
Well I've been a preacher, a department store manager,
a buyer for Kmart, had my own business
and dispensed bull semen, that's quite interesting,
try new trial in theories,
an agricultural contractor, all sorts of things.
This is a combination of growing cactus in pottery.
My wife likes blue flowers,
so I converted all the flowers that we could find
when we were on holiday into blue.
One of the many things
you've tried is also script writing.
(laughs) Yes that grew out of cactus growing, as well.
I saw in America how they put eyes on cactus
and one day I got the idea
that maybe cactus have got a secret life.
And a story developed
and I thought, "This would make a movie."
So I got hold of Temuera Morrison and showed him
and he said, "You know I could see myself in that."
And so I contacted the government and I made a case
that I don't think anybody's sold a screenplay
to Hollywood before, give me some money,
I'll fly over there and sell mine.
(laughs) Government paid the airfare
and I went over there and I found an agent
and it got shown around.
It didn't sell but I got a wonderful rejection letter
from MGM, it's worth framing.
Clearly having a growth mindset leads you
to put in the effort required to achieve things
and it's fun, too.
Your brain likes challenges.
It's what allows humans to overcome massive hurdles.
John is getting a dopamine hit
every time he tries a new adventure.
It's the brain's way of giving two thumbs up.
John, do you like trying new things?
I love trying new things, it's exciting.
You're learning things that you didn't know before,
you've got the opportunity of finding out stuff.
It's just unboring.
A lot of people watching this might think,
"Well John's just one of those people
"who's naturally talented at almost everything in life."
Is that true, like do you just find stuff easy, or?
(laughs) No, not at all.
A lot of the things are just things that I've learned.
I learned very early on that you can have strategies
which lead to success.
You've gotta apply yourself,
you've got to have a clear idea of where you want to go,
you've got to be prepared to fail.
We should be teaching our children
that it's okay to give things a go
and it's okay to expect to fail
and it's okay to succeed.
That those things are all part of the human experience.
Just get on with it and give it a go.
And in fact, we start out in life
with this growth mindset.
I've just given Baby X a xylophone
and clearly she's enjoying learning to play it
and that's one of the things about us as a species.
Learning stuff has been fundamental to our survival,
but it's more than just functional
because learning something new, mastering a new skill,
actually feels good.
But why is that?
Well that's because learning is important
to the survival of our species.
So our brain gives us a little dose
of that happiness hormone, dopamine,
when we learn something new.
It's just like the teacher saying, "Good job."
Go on, there we go.
That's it.
But it's about more than just loving learning,
that's simply the first step.
That thrill of learning can actually take us
to a higher place.
(drums beating)
There are lots of things that humans do
that are incredibly hard
and playing the drums is definitely one of them.
So is drumming just about talent,
are some of us born drummers and the rest of us not?
I can practice and probably get a little bit better,
but could I ever do anything like this?
(cymbals clang) (drums beat)
Tom can do this
because his brain has wired in all the skills
to play the drums faster than the conscious mind can think.
He's moved drumming from his explicit memory,
where once he had to think about every hit of the sticks,
into his implicit memory.
His drumming has become automatic, like breathing,
and this opens up another wonder of the human brain.
If we do something we love
and we can start doing it without thinking about it
then we shift into something called the flow state.
When I'm in the flow state
my drumming is often my better work
because you're not evaluating it
or criticizing it as it happens,
which is what often sort of pulls you out of a moment
that's potentially gonna be a good musical one.
I think you always achieve better musical results
in what would resemble a flow state.
I will do a lot of conscious practicing,
but then the actual performance of that will need to be
in quite an unthinking place.
If I have to be thinking about the parts
and the rudimentary kind of things
that are involved in doing it,
it's definitely never my best performance, yeah.
In the flow state, everything else fades away.
There's just now and a sense of feeling totally in control
and being lost in the rhythm of the moment.
Artists and athletes alike will tell you
that the flow state is where the magic happens.
The flow state exists so we can think more deeply,
create greater ideas.
But what happens when things go wrong with the brain?
I probably lost a whole decade of memory.
(mysterious music)
Inside each and every one of us
is the most powerful computer in the known universe,
but just like an actual computer, things can go wrong.
The brain is a jelly-like substance
that sits in fluid within the hard protective skull
that surrounds it.
And what happens when there's an external impact
to the head, the brain actually moves within the skull
and so it can be forced forwards
and backwards against the skull.
It can also rotate within the skull
and that can cause some bruising,
it can cause a shearing of the outside brain tissue
and also the brain can swell and blood vessels can bleed.
That can leave people feeling dazed or confused,
they might lose consciousness
or they might not remember what has just happened to them.
Your memory is associated with the temporal lobe,
the part of your brain just above the ears on both sides,
which is why memory is often affected by a concussion.
Though obviously all contact sports
carry the risk concussion,
most of the brain injuries that happen to people
are the result of accidents.
(gulls squawking)
It happened in 2008.
I was sailing off the coast of New Zealand.
It was a very stormy night
and we found ourselves in a little bit of bother
and the boat jibed and I got hit on the side of the head.
(dramatic music)
I didn't actually know what happened,
but according to the crew I was only knocked out
for a few seconds, but of course it felt like a long time
and then I knew that I was in serious trouble.
I didn't realize at the time but a few days
after the initial blow to the side of the head,
the memory loss had become quite noticeable
and as the days and weeks followed,
I just got worse and worse.
And it got to the stage within two to three months,
I probably lost a whole decade of memory.
It really depends where the injury is to the brain
and which neural circuits have been disrupted
as to the type of difficulties people experience
and that's why it can be very different
for different people.
The brain is involved in so many activities that we do
and learning and memories are really complex tasks
for the brain.
And so many different areas are actually involved
in learning and memory
and so when there is an injury to the brain,
those connections are quite vulnerable to be damaged.
How bad did things get?
Things got quite bad.
Prior to the accident, I was a professional yachtsman.
I had sailed over 60,000 blue water miles
and with the brain injury, the head injury,
I lost my balance, I lost my memory,
I lost a little bit of eyesight
and the biggest thing of all, I lost my self confidence.
And if you lose your self confidence,
well, it's a hard row back.
It really is.
The effects of a brain injury can vary considerably
so even if several people have had an injury
to the same area of the brain,
the effects can be quite different.
The way our brain's wired is very much based
on how we learn and what we're exposed to
throughout our lifetime
and so everyone's networks are quite unique.
So the difficulties people experience
and how that plays out can be very different
between different people.
So some people can have an injury,
recover well within a few days,
other people can go on to have much longer-term problems.
Unable to sail boats, Neil started up a coffee bar
and the strangest thing happened five years
after losing his memories, one night they returned.
I woke up at two o'clock in the morning one night
and it just all flooded back.
It was like someone had plugged in a memory stick.
(machine beeping)
(thunder crashes)
It was just like a lightening strike.
It was like watching a movie.
I sat up in bed and before my eyes,
10 years of memory came flooding back,
people I knew, people I sailed with,
work colleagues, everything.
It was just incredible and yet I can't explain it.
The brain is incredible in its ability
to restore and repair itself.
And the more we're learning about the brain,
the more we're learning about this ability
to regenerate itself.
It's just incredible how you can be involved
in an accident and you can have a major concussion,
but yet in time
it does heal
and in time you do get back all the things that you've lost.
You gotta protect what's in here
because a head knock can change your life completely.
It changed my big time.
(dramatic music)
Another thing that has an affect on memory is aging
and one of the most common signs of it is that feeling,
it's on the tip of your tongue.
The other day I was trying to buy spirulina
and I couldn't remember the name of it.
(dramatic music)
Spatula, nope.
Semolina, I don't even know what semolina is.
So I just don't yet have a clear understanding
of why it's harder to connect the meaning of a word
with the actual word as you get older,
but just like the rest of your body,
your brain begins to deteriorate.
It's actually shrinking
and the connections between those trillions of neurons
are beginning to wear out, maybe as much as 25%.
Now words like
spirulina,
words like Alzheimer's and dementia are actually quite scary
but is there anything you can actually do about it?
(rackets pound)
There was one event that made Graeme think
that age was doing something to his brain.
I took my dirty laundry out
supposedly to put into the washing machine but I hadn't
and a couple of days later my wife said,
"What happened to the laundry?"
Somehow or other,
I'd put it into one
of the yellow rubbish bags neatly folded.
I still don't even remember doing that to this day
and so I thought at that stage,
"There's something a bit strange."
(curious music)
He was diagnosed with MCI,
mild cognitive impairment,
and he's taking part in a research trial
which is looking at ways
of preventing further deterioration.
I make sure that everything is noted down,
I have lots of lists.
Everything has to be written onto the calendar
as to what I'm supposed to be doing.
You need to be active physically, socially, eat healthily
and do things that are good for the heart.
If they're good for the heart
then they're good for the brain.
I am keen to being one of those people who recover
from this condition so I do everything
that is supposed to be good for improving the condition.
Without your memory
your quality of life can deteriorate very badly,
but we still don't know a lot
about how to prevent the decline of memory
for people with dementia,
with conditions like Alzheimer's and MCI.
The science isn't there yet
on whether the strategies Graeme is using
will help combat dementia,
but keeping healthy and social are proven
to be good for your brain.
Graeme has just had his annual test with the researchers
and they've found that his mental ability hasn't dropped
from last year.
Keeping the body greased
and oil changed is a very good idea,
just like it is to stop cars rusting out
and become derelict on the scrap heap.
All those things which help your heart health
will help your brain health
by keeping your brain stimulated.
The more you keep your brain stimulated,
the more you use it,
the greater the value you are going to get out of your years
as they come up.
So how exactly do you keep your brain healthy?
(mysterious music)
Can we make our brain healthier
and what would that look like?
Just like every other part of our body,
our brain needs us to exercise.
In fact it needs a really healthy heart.
Things that lead to heart disease and stroke,
things like inactivity and obesity,
can also contribute to dementia.
An unhealthy lifestyle can lead
to a narrowing of the blood vessels
and that reduces blood to the brain
and when your brain doesn't get the blood flow it needs
it can malfunction.
You might have problems which could range
from remembering where you parked the car,
all the way through to massive cognitive deterioration,
but there's good news.
I like everything about Tai chi.
I was 73 when I joined,
so starting to get towards old age if you like,
if I wasn't already there.
It's stopped me from going into old age as it were
and now I still feel as if I'm 73 and I'm 86.
I cannot understand why everybody is not doing Tai chi,
I really can't.
Exercise is one part
of keeping your brain healthy,
but another important thing for a healthy brain is novelty.
(upbeat music)
Iana, how long have you been gaming for?
I can't really remember not gaming.
What is it that kind of draws you into that gaming world?
Definitely the narrative.
It's my favorite medium for storytelling.
What about your emotional state,
so are there emotions that you kind of have
when you're playing games?
Is that similar to the real world,
does it feel like a copy of the real world?
I think it depends on the kind of person that you are.
I've seen some people get so
unbelievably angry
at games
and and you think, "Well you don't really lose anything
"by losing a game."
But I do feel quite emotionally moved
by some of the stories that are told.
Video games have some very complex features to them.
First of all, they're full of novel stimuli.
They're full of bells and whistles and lights
and things that you don't expect in your normal environment
so you can't predict that.
One of the things really interesting
about novelty stimuli is that you can't predict
when they're going to occur
and when you can't predict it,
they drive these systems to release dopamine
into the areas of the brain involving reinforcing.
Computer games reward Iana constantly
with these dopamine hits,
but why does our brain want to reward us
for doing and seeing new things?
Imagine if everything around us
we'd seen all the time and nothing changed.
All the stimuli would no longer be important to us,
so we need novel stimuli to really motivate us,
to drive our motivational system,
to get around and explore the world
and to learn about what we have to do
to achieve the good outcomes that we want in life.
That dopamine is there to reinforce behavior.
It's saying, "Keep doing the things that you're doing."
When a new game is announced
or you start playing a new game and you see the graphics
and they've made this really beautiful game.
And no matter how the game turns out to be,
when you see that,
you see your character there for the first time,
you see this fantastic kind of landscape,
I think it can be the same kind of thing
as if you saw a really beautiful piece of artwork.
From an evolutionary perspective,
humans needed to explore new worlds to survive
and our brains still rewards us for that with dopamine.
But more importantly doing new things,
including exploring worlds in a computer game,
is a multi-sensory experience using our hands, eyes and ears
and this helps to keep our brains healthy.
Doing poetry's really important.
Knitting is very important.
Your multi-sensory input
and doing it according to a pattern,
you're thinking of it and all the rest of it.
So reading, writing,
it all goes to stimulating your brain.
Talking with people
because people are not only giving you information,
they're giving you loaded emotional information
in a way which makes you feel better.
Sleep is also vital.
It's one of the great mysteries, I suppose, of the brain.
It's not fully understood what all it's doing,
but one of the things,
it seems to be involved in helping process the information
that you've learned and stored away during the day.
You can actually learn a task,
have a certain level of performance, do no more training,
have some sleep and come back the next day
and you'll be better
than when you finished starting the task in the first place.
So there's some additional binding
and building of those networks during sleep
that is actually making that performance better.
(somber music)
And what happens to our brain
if we don't get enough sleep?
Bernice, how did the insomnia start?
It started when I had my daughter
and she was a very bad sleeper
and that meant that my nights were interrupted every night
and that went on for years.
And so even once she started sleeping well,
my nights were
very bad still.
I had broken sleeps every night.
So how little sleep were you getting at that time?
It would be four to five hours a night
and it would be broken
and that went on for six to seven years.
I was no longer who I used to be.
I had no energy, I had no enthusiasm,
I was living my life as a zombie.
It was really survival mode that I was in,
just getting through the fundamentals of each day
but it was no life.
Sleeps important for an organism to survive.
Without sleep our brains will overheat.
Studies have shown
that if you sleep deprive animals continuously,
it can result in even death.
Sleep is important in terms of memory,
that we know now for sure.
What about things like memory and concentration?
(laughs) They were bad, they were really bad.
Yeah, I was constantly having to make lists.
I would find myself walking into a room
and having no idea why I was there.
Sleep is important in memory formation.
That's been shown in a lot of studies
that we had sleep deprivation
and depending on the phase of sleep,
different types of memory is affected.
And when individuals actually have good sleep,
then the ability to form memory is actually improved.
What were the strategies that made a difference?
Well the first one would have been prioritizing sleep
and I mean really prioritizing sleep,
going, "I have to change this,"
and actively taking steps towards it.
I gave myself permission to wind down in the evenings,
whereas previously I worked right up to the finish line
and then threw myself into bed.
And I also did sleep restriction,
which sounds completely counter-productive
but was a very powerful tool and staying up later meant
that the quality of my sleep was much, much better.
What's been the impact on your life
of finally getting a decent sleep?
My sleep is so good.
It is life changing, completely life changing
to go from four to five hours a night broken sleep
to seven hours of consistent, easy sleep.
I love going to bed now, I love my bed.
I just get in there and I fall asleep
and I stay asleep 'til the morning.
Your brain's most important job is to keep you alive
and it does that through learning and adapting.
The best current science says there are five simple things
that you can do to help keep your brain
in top notch condition.
Number one, the single most important thing
you can do to your brain is exercise.
It just is.
Two, challenge yourself.
Your brain loves to try new things.
(dramatic music)
Three, your brain needs to hang out with other brains.
So make sure you look after those important relationships.
Number four, your brain runs on fuel,
so make sure you put in the good stuff.
And five, you need to get a good sleep.
We used the memory trick of creating unusual images
so these rules should hopefully now be burned
into your brain.
And if you do these five things,
it'll help keep your brain in its best possible condition
and you'll find that you make the best possible decisions
and be the smartest you.
(uplifting music)