#1 Neuroscientist: After Watching This, Your Brain Will Not Be the Same

Mel Robbins 0:00 Today, on The Mel Robbins Podcast, the remarkable power of your brain to grow and change with world-leading neuroscientist, Dr. Lara Boyd.

Dr. Lara Boyd 0:11 After this conversation, your brain will not be the same. The single largest driver of change in our brain is our experience. There's no drug. There's no magic bullet. It's the experience you engage in, and that's where actually we can map and show this is where you're changing brain.

Mel Robbins 0:26 How long does it take to rewire your brain?

Dr. Lara Boyd 0:29 Well, we just did it.

Mel Robbins 0:30 What do you mean?

Dr. Lara Boyd 0:31 As long as you're challenging yourself, you're struggling, and it's hard, you're changing your brain.

Mel Robbins 0:37 You can build the brain you want. [upbeat music] Dr. Lara Boyd.

Dr. Lara Boyd 0:46 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 0:47 Wow.

Dr. Lara Boyd 0:47 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 0:47 Welcome.

Dr. Lara Boyd 0:48 Thank you.

Mel Robbins 0:49 I'm so excited you're here.

Dr. Lara Boyd 0:50 I am really... I've been looking forward to this so much.

Mel Robbins 0:53 I love your research.

Dr. Lara Boyd 0:55 Thank you.

Mel Robbins 0:55 I love this topic.

Dr. Lara Boyd 0:56 Thanks.

Mel Robbins 0:57 And here's where I wanna start. So there's a person who is listening right now-

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:03 Right

Mel Robbins 1:03 ... who has no time, but they've made time because, Dr. Boyd, they really want to learn from you.

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:09 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:10 If they take everything to heart that you're about to teach us about the brain, neuroplasticity, the fact that we can change over time, what could improve about their life?

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:24 I wanna start by saying I listen to the show, and I've heard you say many times that people can change their brains. They have this fundamental capacity for change. I absolutely couldn't agree with you more. I wanna take that idea, and I wanna stretch it. And with that knowledge, it should be very empowering for you to go out and continue to make that change. To understand why sometimes it's hard, why sometimes you struggle, why sometimes you fail, and I hope you walk away knowing that all of those things, failure, struggle, difficulty, are actually very good for the brain, very healthy for the brain. I wanna give you an example of the power of that. So did you know that if you take school children and you teach them their brain changes when they learn, their grades go up? That's remarkable. Like, you can improve your child's grades just by helping them understand.

Mel Robbins 2:11 That's all I needed to do?

Dr. Lara Boyd 2:12 S- I know, right?

Mel Robbins 2:13 Where were you when-

Dr. Lara Boyd 2:14 It would've been so much easier

Mel Robbins 2:14 ... they were in high school, Dr. Boyd?

Dr. Lara Boyd 2:15 Right.

Mel Robbins 2:16 Really, you just tell children?

Dr. Lara Boyd 2:17 This power of knowing they have the capacity for change shifts their mindset and enables better academic performance. So here's the important key ingredient, if you will. The single largest driver of change in our brain is our experience. There's no drug. There's no magic bullet. It's the experience you engage in. So if you know that, then you can choose experiences that are really positive, that are things you want to learn, places you want to be, people that are healthy and positive for you. And by doing that, you're shaping your brain. And so by engaging with Mel and I today and having this conversation with us, your brain will not be the same. After this conversation, as it is when we began, right now, from here forward, it changes, and I just think that's amazing, and I hope you do, too, and I hope you do, too. Because it's just the most exciting thing.

Mel Robbins 3:18 Dr. Boyd, I'm not sure I've had anyone sit in that chair that's caused me to have goosebumps that quickly-

Dr. Lara Boyd 3:26 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 3:27 ... into the episode. Often in life, it's easy to feel as if life is coming at you, and all you can do is respond. But when you said the word experiences you engage in, it made me feel empowered, and it made me think that maybe I have more control over the way my life feels than I currently do. Could you just kind of broaden what you meant by experiences you choose to engage in?

Dr. Lara Boyd 4:02 So we know experience is what's changing our brain, but we also understand that engagement and motivation are large influencers on those experiences, so we see a larger effect of things that we're paying attention to, we're motivated to learn, we're engaged in-

Mel Robbins 4:23 Yeah

Dr. Lara Boyd 4:23 ... we're working hard at. Those are gonna change your brain to a larger capacity, to a greater degree than things that we may be more passively observing, letting come by us in different ways. We can actually see this when we do imaging studies of the brain of people who are engaged versus kind of passive experiencers. We see different networks of the brain light up, and we see different long-term effects of those experiences, if you will, of that engagement.

Mel Robbins 4:54 That's super cool to think that based on some of the choices that you're gonna talk to us about, we have the ability to actively change our brains and that that can improve

Mel Robbins 5:08 our lives. Uh, for the person who does not know the term neuroplasticity, could you just, Dr. Boyd, explain what is neuroplasticity?

Dr. Lara Boyd 5:18 Neuroplasticity just means brain change. Your brain is now we understand to be incredibly plastic, so malleable, so it's changing and shifting, and it's, it's doing that all the time. It's been doing that from the moment you took your first breath, and it's gonna do it until you take your last breath. So this is a lifetime of change in our brain.

Mel Robbins 5:39 Wow. So, Dr. Boyd, why did you wanna become a neuroscientist?

Dr. Lara Boyd 5:43 I'm very interested in learning. I always have been, and my first career was actually as a physical therapist, and my job was to help people with brain injuries and stroke get better. Now, this was in the early 1990s, so a long time ago, and I had a patient That broke me, to be quite honest. Young man, he'd had a bad head injury. He was a wonderful young man, beautiful family, lots of support, and he needed to be able to walk to go home so his family could take care of him, and we worked so hard. I worked with him for three months. We did everything. I asked for help from experts. He worked so hard. I worked so hard, and I couldn't help him.

Mel Robbins 6:29 Yeah.

Dr. Lara Boyd 6:29 And it forced me to come to a decision point, so I realized I was a car mechanic who didn't know how the engine worked, and you brought me your car, and it was your precious car, and I couldn't fix it. In a moment that could probably be described as a professional tantrum, because this all happened within two weeks, I quit my job, and I applied for a doctorate, and I went back to school. And I have been trying to understand how the brain works when we learn, and in particular then, what happens after it's damaged, and we're still learning and relearning ever since.

Mel Robbins 7:05 You know, Dr. Boyd, this will probably be the only time I actually correct you in the conversation we ha- are having today. I would not call that a professional tantrum. Oprah Winfrey would call that an aha moment.

Dr. Lara Boyd 7:20 Okay. We can reframe it then.

Mel Robbins 7:22 Yes.

Dr. Lara Boyd 7:22 I like that. At the time, it felt a little self-indulgent.

Mel Robbins 7:25 Uh-huh.

Dr. Lara Boyd 7:25 I think my parents were alarmed. [laughs]

Mel Robbins 7:27 Yeah.

Dr. Lara Boyd 7:28 But I just felt I had to make a change. I couldn't continue this way. We had... There had to be more. I had to understand more in order for me to be able to help people.

Mel Robbins 7:37 Yeah.

Dr. Lara Boyd 7:38 Um, and here we are.

Mel Robbins 7:39 I love that. And you know what else I love about that, is that it's easy to think that you are stuck doing what you're currently doing.

Dr. Lara Boyd 7:48 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 7:48 And your story, both in, in being a physical therapist and wanting so much to make a difference, and saying, "I have to learn more. I have to figure this out," changed the trajectory of your life. And now, here we are 30 years later, and you're about to teach us everything that you've learned in your research that will help us use our brains to change our lives. I mean, talk about full circle.

Dr. Lara Boyd 8:14 It's pretty exciting.

Mel Robbins 8:15 Yes. I'll take that kind of professional tantrum.

Dr. Lara Boyd 8:17 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 8:19 [laughs] So, what have you discovered, Dr. Boyd, is really happening inside the brain when we learn something new?

Dr. Lara Boyd 8:25 So when we learn, we're changing our brain in, in three fundamental ways. So we change the brain's chemistry, we change its structure, and then we change its function. And so the first thing that happens when we start to change our brain is this change in brain chemistry, and this is because our brains communicate through the sending of small chemical packets, if you will. They're called neurotransmitters. Just little chemical signals that go from brain cell to brain cell. Now, what's exciting about these chemical transmissions is the chemistry of our brain can change quickly, really fast. This is the basis of short-term memory. So we're-- we've all done that right away, even in this conversation. We're changing the chemistry in our brain. We're creating these short-term memories that are gonna allow us to maybe make a long-term memory and remember this tomorrow. Maybe not. That depends on a lot of different things.

Mel Robbins 9:20 So give me an example of a short-term memory that just got created.

Dr. Lara Boyd 9:23 So we were talking a little bit ago about my patient, for example-

Mel Robbins 9:27 Yes

Dr. Lara Boyd 9:27 ... that struggled to recover, and that was a, that was now is in your short-term memory.

Mel Robbins 9:34 Yes.

Dr. Lara Boyd 9:34 So you, you may have recalled a certain detail about that, or not.

Mel Robbins 9:37 He couldn't walk, and he needed to be able to walk in order to go home.

Dr. Lara Boyd 9:40 To go home. So tomorrow maybe you remember just that he needed to do something to be able to go home.

Mel Robbins 9:45 Gotcha.

Dr. Lara Boyd 9:46 But you can't... You don't get the walk part.

Mel Robbins 9:47 Okay.

Dr. Lara Boyd 9:48 Um, and so that would be a short-term memory. Now, if you do recall all of that tomorrow, you've created structural change in your brain.

Mel Robbins 9:54 Ooh.

Dr. Lara Boyd 9:55 So changing brain structure takes time, and critically, it also takes sleep.

Mel Robbins 10:00 The third thing you said was function?

Dr. Lara Boyd 10:02 Function, yes. So our brain operates as this integrated network of regions that are turning on and off together, and these regions are gonna shift the way they're functioning together with practice and with learning.

Mel Robbins 10:16 So for the person who's listening right now, 'cause a lot of people listen and take us on a walk-

Dr. Lara Boyd 10:21 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 10:21 ... or maybe right now you're listening and you're driving a car, can you explain kind of how you're using even more functions in your brain?

Dr. Lara Boyd 10:29 Absolutely. Driving was the example I was heading for, actually. You read my mind. Driving is such a complicated task, right? We have things we're doing with our feet, with our hands. We've got vision. We've got this complicated visual environment, and we're probably, like, listening to music, maybe eating our lunch, doing many, many things all at once. It's a wonderful example. So when you first learn to drive, you're very focused, right? You maybe don't have the radio on. You probably shouldn't have the radio on, and you're just focused on the operation of driving. As we become better and it becomes more automatic, we can pay less attention to the actual physical parts of driving. We're s- now continually to pay attention to the road, if you will, and that is allowing those other parts to be available to do different things, to listen to music, to maybe have a conversation on the phone, uh, maybe to be able to eat or have a conversation in the car, right? And so because you've freed up those brain regions, they can do multiple things at once, and that's a

Dr. Lara Boyd 11:29 part of learning.

Mel Robbins 11:30 I'm curious, what has, uh, patients who have experienced a stroke or traumatic brain injury taught you about our brain's ability to change and grow?

Dr. Lara Boyd 11:41 So firstly, working with people with stroke and head injuries, we now understand that the brain is capable of massive reorganization, um, after that damage occurs. That reorganization has some critical time windows, though. So we know that very early after injury, the brain's neuroplastic capacity is very heightened, and it has this larger ability for reorganization. That capacity doesn't- ... end. We continue to have it, but it does diminish with time.

Mel Robbins 12:15 Mm.

Dr. Lara Boyd 12:16 So we know it's really important to intervene early to help people recover. The other thing we've really learned is that we, uh, now understand that there are areas of the brain that can take over lost functions. So things that can no longer be controlled by the area of the brain that's damaged can be taken up elsewhere. However, those functions are never quite as good. They're never quite as able as they were before. So people are gonna recover some ability, but it may look different. The other thing that we've learned is that it, it matters a great deal how healthy the brain is before it's injured. So the, the story of a younger individual who maybe has an incident to their brain when they're 20 versus someone who has that same incident to the brain when they're 70, they're going to look very different in the outcome.

Mel Robbins 13:04 Okay.

Dr. Lara Boyd 13:04 One thing that we understand is that immediately after the injury, the brain is less inhibited, which means it's more excitable.

Mel Robbins 13:13 Hmm.

Dr. Lara Boyd 13:13 And that excitability seems to lend itself to more neuroplastic change. Now, this window of excitability after stroke, for example, seems to last 30 to 60 days perhaps.

Mel Robbins 13:26 Let me just make sure I'm tracking-

Dr. Lara Boyd 13:27 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 13:27 ... 'cause I think this is super important. So are you saying that the research shows that after somebody has had a stroke, there's a 30 to 60-day window where the brain is ripe for the interventions that help somebody recover from the stroke?

Dr. Lara Boyd 13:42 Exactly.

Mel Robbins 13:43 That's cool.

Dr. Lara Boyd 13:44 It's very cool. And, and it lines up with the timing of our interventions medically. However, at the end of that 60 days, let's say, most people are not fully recovered. This is where we run into trouble because what happens? They get discharged from the hospital, and they go home, and they're struggling now in their daily life, and they may not have access to much continued therapy. Therapy's very expensive. However, if you can continue to intervene in that timeframe, you can draw out this period of recovery. We talk about it of keeping the window of neuroplasticity open. We can reopen and hold that window open, keep it going longer, but it takes a real important dedicated effort.

Mel Robbins 14:27 You said failure, struggle, difficulty are very good for the brain. Why?

Dr. Lara Boyd 14:33 We've done studies using magnetic resonance imaging, so an MRI, like you might have on your knee. We, we can look at the brain, and we can see the brain changing in response to interventions and experiences. And what we found, what we think about is that there's a sweet zone of difficulty. So I have something to show-

Mel Robbins 14:52 Okay

Dr. Lara Boyd 14:53 ... if that's all right.

Mel Robbins 14:54 Yes.

Dr. Lara Boyd 14:55 So I have this nice, uh, prop, if you will, to help explain this. So, so let's talk about difficulty and struggle.

Mel Robbins 15:02 Yes.

Dr. Lara Boyd 15:02 We've done work scanning people's brains while they're learning, and what we've discovered is that if something's too easy, if we're over here, well, you don't need to change your brain 'cause you can already do it, right?

Mel Robbins 15:15 Ah.

Dr. Lara Boyd 15:16 So there's no need. It's, feels good, but you're not changing your brain. You're just repeating something you can already do. If something's too hard, right, if we're over in this zone-

Mel Robbins 15:26 I'm quitting

Dr. Lara Boyd 15:27 ... you give up, right?

Mel Robbins 15:28 [laughs]

Dr. Lara Boyd 15:29 You, you just can't accomplish it, and so there's no practice that can take place.

Mel Robbins 15:32 Oh.

Dr. Lara Boyd 15:33 You wanna live here. You wanna live where something is hard, where you're sometimes failing, but often you're succeeding, and you're struggling with that activity, and that's where actually we can map and show this is where you're changing brain. This is where neuroplasticity is actually taking place.

Mel Robbins 15:54 Give me an example.

Dr. Lara Boyd 15:55 So we have created a game. Uh, it's a computerized game for people with stroke, for example. And in this game, it's a very important game. You're gonna use your stroke-affected hand, and you have to catch an asteroid before it hits the Earth and blows us all up, and we all die.

Mel Robbins 16:11 That is an important game.

Dr. Lara Boyd 16:12 It's an important game. And you get a score of how many lives you've saved. So your hand is a little spaceship, and you reach out, and you catch this asteroid, and then you have to throw it into an extractor, and we actually, we do good. We extract minerals from it, and you get these little scores. So it's a motivating game. It's an engaging game. You're having an experience. And what we can do is, based upon the person's ability, make that game easier or harder-

Mel Robbins 16:36 Hmm

Dr. Lara Boyd 16:37 ... and then map their brain. And so we see that when we make that game hard, when they're struggling, when their success rate is right around 50, 60%, so it's hard, this is when we're seeing the most neuroplastic change, and specifically we're seeing them change their brain structure most at that particular time as they're practicing the task. And importantly for people with stroke, they're also changing their ability to move their stroke-affected arm. Because as they're chasing this asteroid, we are actually slowly moving them farther than they thought they could move. We're pulling them out farther away. And so this is kind of the sweet zone of, of difficulty that we've found. The important thing about this idea is that your optimal challenge is gonna be different for you, Mel, than it is for me, and it might be different for me from day to day. We have days where we're really good and days where things are just harder than they should be, and that's okay. That's reflecting where your brain is in that day. And as long as you're challenging yourself, you're changing your brain.

Mel Robbins 17:42 How would you apply this to something like the gym?

Dr. Lara Boyd 17:45 Right.

Mel Robbins 17:45 You know what I'm saying? Like, getting yourself in that sweet spot where you don't really wanna be doing it. It's very hard. I mean, I think it's kinda cool to think about the fact that the things that you push yourself to do that feel hard are really good, not just in the case of the gym, for your muscles-

Dr. Lara Boyd 18:05 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 18:06 ... but that the things that you push yourself to do that are really hard are really good for your brain development.

Dr. Lara Boyd 18:11 Right. And, and any example you take- It's true. So at the gym, you know, you're always pushing. You don't wanna quite fail, you don't wanna hurt yourself, but you're right on that edge. You lifted this amount, you know, two days ago, and now you're gonna bump it up, and you're gonna bump it up. It's the same principle in your brain-

Mel Robbins 18:27 Mm

Dr. Lara Boyd 18:27 ... as you would with strength training. You're gonna make it a bit harder and make it a bit harder. And this is true really for no matter, for whatever we're learning. It doesn't, it doesn't really matter. Uh, struggle is going to be good, and you wanna always be working towards this little bit harder level of difficulty.

Mel Robbins 18:43 You are studying somebody who survived a stroke.

Dr. Lara Boyd 18:47 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 18:48 And you are forcing them to learn maybe new movements, whether it's moving an arm that-

Dr. Lara Boyd 18:55 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 18:55 ... had been impaired due to the stroke, and while they're doing it, you're mapping their brain and measuring chemistry, structure, and function?

Dr. Lara Boyd 19:04 We can measure all three of those in the MRI machine now. It's really exciting. So we can measure neurochemistry in certain areas of the brain and look at the neural signal, the chemical neural signal. We can image the structure of the brain in a couple different ways, actually. We can look at how some brain regions will get larger with practice or smaller with less practice.

Mel Robbins 19:27 Hmm.

Dr. Lara Boyd 19:28 And we can also then look at how the connections of the brain are changing, so how well-connected is one brain region to another, and that's also a structural change. And then lastly, we do what's called functional MRI, where we can see what areas of the brain are lighting up as people are doing different tasks and learning.

Mel Robbins 19:48 What I love about this is you're not just showing up here going, "Yes, your brain can change, neuroplasticity." You're like, "No, I, I have imagery. We study this. We can see the chemistry, the structure, the function. We see the changes happening in real time," and if this can happen in somebody's brain who has had a stroke-

Dr. Lara Boyd 20:09 Right

Mel Robbins 20:09 ... then I take it it can happen in mine and the person listening.

Dr. Lara Boyd 20:12 Absolutely.

Mel Robbins 20:13 So for somebody that has a learning style, like I do, of dyslexia, um, or you've got other neurodivergent issues going on in your mind, what excites you, Dr. Boyd, about neuroplasticity and the brain's ability to change?

Dr. Lara Boyd 20:31 Whatever your learning style is, if there's a label on it, dyslexia or no, you still are very capable of neuroplasticity. Everyone is. And instead, I think we need to think about people as just learning differently.

Mel Robbins 20:44 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lara Boyd 20:44 Maybe at a different scale, maybe at a different timeframe, but they're still learning. They're still making change in their brain. They're still showing neuroplasticity. So we did a study a few years ago where we took individuals who showed below average mathematic scores, and we had a, a large cohort. We had kids across the third grade and some with better mathematic scores. We actually were able to show that there was an area of the brain that was less well-developed in the children with the lower math scores. And so it was really a biological, um, explanation for why they were struggling in math for that time in their life, and it suggests, to me at least, that it may be that these children have capacity to learn. Maybe their brain just isn't matured enough yet for that level of math. So this is a newer field called educational neuroscience, where we're starting to understand how school at least affects the brain, and at what points in different children's lives are they ready to learn certain things.

Mel Robbins 21:52 That's so cool.

Dr. Lara Boyd 21:54 So I really look forward to a time where we understand the brain well enough where we can precisely prescribe what educational intervention are you ready for now, and what therapy is gonna be appropriate for this person with a damaged brain, and really start to have precision around our interventions and our learning outcomes. So it could be that we look like we're learning the same, and our brains are doing totally different things. We've done experiments where we find this. So we had a task we ask a bunch of people, both healthy people and people with stroke, to learn, and then we looked at... They all learned it, by the way. They all showed they learned. It was great. And then we looked at their brain activity, and they were all doing something totally different, but they all learned. And that was kind of my first hint that, like, oh, we have a problem here. We were thinking everyone did everything the same way before that. This is one of these things we've learned in our, in our research. So from that forward, the question then becomes is one of those strategies more effective, or are they different ways to the same point? Different pathways-

Mel Robbins 22:57 Hmm

Dr. Lara Boyd 22:57 ... to the same endpoint. Maybe it doesn't matter. So as long as you're learning, you, you're doing it. Like, that's great.

Mel Robbins 23:06 Well, what I'm learning from you, Dr. Boyd, is that everybody's brain is unique and different-

Dr. Lara Boyd 23:10 Yes

Mel Robbins 23:10 ... but everybody's brain has this ability to grow, stretch, and change based on what you force yourself to engage in-

Dr. Lara Boyd 23:21 Exactly

Mel Robbins 23:21 ... which is super cool.

Dr. Lara Boyd 23:23 Right.

Mel Robbins 23:23 Can you really change your brain at any age?

Dr. Lara Boyd 23:27 Absolutely, and I feel like I should just, like, throw the mic on the floor and walk out the door, but I won't. [laughs]

Mel Robbins 23:31 You can.

Dr. Lara Boyd 23:33 No, we can, and that's what's just so astonishing and exciting. So that's really the big learning in the last 30 years, 25 years.

Mel Robbins 23:40 My dad, who's 82-

Dr. Lara Boyd 23:42 Your dad, who's 82-

Mel Robbins 23:43 My mother-in-law, who is 89, can change?

Dr. Lara Boyd 23:46 She can absolutely change. I can change, you can change, and our kids are changing, and we will continue to change. The trick here is that you have to pick what you're changing because remember, we can change for better, but we can also change for worse, and it's going to depend upon our experience and the experiences we're engaged in. If we're continuing to be engaged in things, and we're continuing to experience in them deeply and struggle to learn them, our brain is going to change to do that. But if we do nothing, or we do very little-

Mel Robbins 24:19 Hmm

Dr. Lara Boyd 24:19 ... then our brain will also change, and it, it won't be for the better. You will actually lose capacity. So it's just like a muscle. It's a use it or a lose it situation.

Mel Robbins 24:28 I'm gonna ask this question because I almost felt- The person listening, thinking about somebody in their life, maybe a widower, maybe somebody who has gone through a divorce or lost a job, and you go through these seasons where you withdraw and you're grieving. But if you are not engaging in life, and you're not challenging yourself, and you're not pushing yourself to do the hard thing, even if that just means leaving your house today or forcing yourself to apply for that new job, is there a period of time where you lose it?

Dr. Lara Boyd 25:07 You do.

Mel Robbins 25:08 What?

Dr. Lara Boyd 25:08 Your brain is that neuroplastic. So if we're not engaged, what we see is we will see these losses in function. You even see kind of a wholesale reduction in capacity for neuroplasticity. You'll see increased inhibition in the brain, making it harder to actually get out. And so there's actually a neurobiological reason why it's hard. It doesn't just feel hard. It becomes hard to turn parts of your brain on. And there's some interesting examples of this. So people with depression, for example, have a much easier time remembering bad memories-

Mel Robbins 25:46 Huh

Dr. Lara Boyd 25:46 ... than good ones. So neurochemically, they become more inhibited. We see that after stroke as well, longer term after stroke. You'll see that part of why it's hard to move that stroke arm is because the corresponding brain region has now become over-inhibited and suppressed. And so it's hard to move it, you know, kind of biomechanically, just the motion and the activity of the muscles, but it's also hard to even activate the brain to get it to move. And that's also neuroplasticity. So it's, it's kind of a promise of you can change if you want, but there's also peril in not changing and not engaging. We have phases in our life where that happens, though, right? W- we become depressed. Bad things happen, unfortunately, in the world. I think the important part to take away is that even if you are in one of those low places-

Mel Robbins 26:37 Huh

Dr. Lara Boyd 26:37 ... you can push through it. You can start to take those small steps to reengage, to have different experiences, and maybe take on some different activities that will promote you back towards a more excitable brain, a more neuroplastic brain in a positive direction.

Mel Robbins 26:56 Well, I also think it's helpful to know that if you're in a period in your life where you've been withdrawn-

Dr. Lara Boyd 27:03 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 27:04 ... or you're going through a challenge and everything feels hard, that your brain can still stretch itself. And the hard thing today is relative to the fact that you've been in this kind of withdraw grieving mode, and if you can push through and start to do the things that feel hard, that things will start to become easier.

Dr. Lara Boyd 27:29 Yes. They will eventually.

Mel Robbins 27:31 Yes.

Dr. Lara Boyd 27:31 I don't want to discount that it's hard-

Mel Robbins 27:32 Yes

Dr. Lara Boyd 27:33 ... though, because it's hard, and yeah, and we've all been there, right?

Mel Robbins 27:36 Yes.

Dr. Lara Boyd 27:36 At different phases in our life.

Mel Robbins 27:38 Yes.

Dr. Lara Boyd 27:38 Right? But I do wanna make sure that people understand that you can push through. And as you're pushing, it might feel like, might feel like you're pushing and nothing's moving, right? But slowly by slowly, you can change back the other direction.

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Mel Robbins 29:02 Dr. Boyd, what are three things you can do to rewire your brain?

Dr. Lara Boyd 29:08 The easiest three things would be sleep, exercise, and engage in activities that reduce your stress, and in doing so, reduce your stress hormone cortisol.

Mel Robbins 29:19 I wanna dig into each one, so let's start with sleep and what happens in your brain and what happens with neuroplasticity and learning when you prioritize getting a good night's sleep.

Dr. Lara Boyd 29:31 So when we're sleeping, we're taking those memories that were made in the short term by the changes in chemistry, and we're allowing the brain to consolidate them into a long-term memory. So this is actually the process of learning, is you have to have sleep in the middle of practice and then practice again and practice again, if you will, because that is where that chemical change is being transformed into a structural change in the brain. So I, I tell my students, I'm a professor at a big university, and I say, "You can't cram for the exam." I mean, you can. You could come in here, you could stay up all night and form all these short-term memories and then, you know, write my exam as fast as possible, but you won't have learned it. So I hope you won't need that information later on. And since I teach in the med school, we're hoping they'll remember. [laughs]

Mel Robbins 30:25 What is happening in the brain when you sleep?

Dr. Lara Boyd 30:27 So this is when we see structure actually changing in the brain. It's hard to map in a human brain because it's happening on such a small scale. But there's an idea that what we've done the day before is actually being replayed in our brains. As we're sleeping. And so there's experiments done by people who need less sleep than I do because they stay up all night studying sleep. It's very ironic. But we're actually having people sleep all night long in an MRI scanner, and they can see that if they have someone practicing a task during the day, and then they scan them all night, they'll actually see those same brain regions reactivated, almost as if we're practicing offline. Maybe we're replaying the memory as we're sleeping. That's one idea. There's some other ideas around different phases of sleep and how they may affect learning. So you know, we have these times in the night where we're deeply asleep, times in the night where our eyes are actually moving under our eyelids, called rapid eye movement. They may be supporting different types of memories. I think that the, the jury is still out scientifically as to exactly what is happening in sleep-

Mel Robbins 31:36 Huh

Dr. Lara Boyd 31:36 ... that is so essential, but certainly, uh, we are very clear that if you don't sleep, you don't learn.

Mel Robbins 31:44 Dr. Boyd, what are the brain-changing benefits of exercise?

Dr. Lara Boyd 31:48 Exercise is rocket fuel in the brain, and it can be many different forms of exercise. So any exercise helps. You don't have to sign up for the Boston Marathon. We're not gonna get too crazy. You can if you want to. It's wonderful. Very fun. You can walk, you can garden, you can dance. That's exercise. If you're tighter on time, the exercise that we study in my lab is called high-intensity interval training, so HIIT, which is-

Mel Robbins 32:14 That sounds horrible.

Dr. Lara Boyd 32:15 [laughs] Well, the good news is it only takes nine minutes.

Mel Robbins 32:19 Okay.

Dr. Lara Boyd 32:19 So for the busy person, this might be for you. What, what we do in the lab is we pair these short bouts of very intense exercise. So people do three minutes at 85% of their maximal capacity, hard as they can. And I have stroke patients doing this. I have 85-year-olds doing this in my lab. They do that three times, and then they practice a task they're trying to learn, and we see significant increases in the amount that they learn in that task by pairing it with that exercise. And then we can map and see all the changes that exercise is inducing in the brain. So we did this amazing experiment in my lab. It's, it's one of the best and most exciting ones we've ever done. My graduate student had people exercise and then practice a task, and we looked to see was there an effect of exercise versus no exercise on their learning, and we saw nothing. The not exercise and the exercise group look exactly the same. So they slept, and the exercise group had significantly improved from where they were the night before. They got better overnight with exercise paired with the practice the day before. The rest group that didn't exercise, they just practiced the task, they look exactly the same. So it suggests to us, and we think that this is one of the things exercise is really doing, is that it's helping that consolidation process.

Mel Robbins 33:43 Hmm.

Dr. Lara Boyd 33:44 So it's helping that overnight learning, if you will.

Mel Robbins 33:47 So what exercises? 'Cause now, now that you've told me that stroke patients are doing this, now I feel like I can't be complaining about it.

Dr. Lara Boyd 33:54 So in my lab, we use a cycle-

Mel Robbins 33:56 Okay

Dr. Lara Boyd 33:56 ... um, a bicycle that people can ride because it's in a tight lab environment. But any kind of high-intensity exercise or these interval trainings seem to be very powerful on the brain and actually also powerful on our metabolic system. So work from my colleague at the University of British Columbia, her name is Teresa Luambroza, she's looked at strength training, these bouts of this very intense strength training, and shown that it is particularly powerful for women, and that what we find is that they are not falling as much. Their bone density and bone muscle mass goes up. That's all great. But what she found that she didn't train at all is their cognition, their thinking improved.

Mel Robbins 34:38 Hmm.

Dr. Lara Boyd 34:38 And this seems to be a very particular advantage of this strength training in older women in particular. So that's another way. The other kind of benefit of all these exercise interventions, do you know what they do? They help you sleep. And so you see this kind of cycle go together, right?

Mel Robbins 34:53 Yes.

Dr. Lara Boyd 34:53 So you exercise, you sleep better, you're less depressed. Then you might exercise, and you start to spin up what we call a positive feedback loop. So one positive behavior leverages the next, then the next.

Mel Robbins 35:05 So I wanna talk about how I can do this at home, because it sounds like if I push myself for three minutes on a bike or I lift some heavy stuff and do some strength training, I'm gonna get some, some, like, brain juice-

Dr. Lara Boyd 35:17 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 35:18 ... that makes me remember things or learn faster or just think clearer. Is that's what's going on? Like, how do we apply this?

Dr. Lara Boyd 35:25 How do you apply it?

Mel Robbins 35:25 Yeah.

Dr. Lara Boyd 35:26 So if you engage in any exercise, what you're actually doing is releasing a neurochemical that makes your brain more neuroplastic. It's called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and what it does is it allows our neurons to reorganize more easily. And so it's a byproduct of exercise specifically in both our muscles and our brain. What type of exercise you engage in, it depends on what you enjoy. Remember we came back to engagement and enjoyment. So what is it that you like to do? I like to cycle and run, and I love to ski. Those are my three favorites. Maybe you really enjoy walking or rock climbing. Um, it really could be anything.

Mel Robbins 36:10 And do I have to do it for a certain period of time, or is just literally getting your rear end out the door for a lousy walk around the block and moving your body will start to activate, not a technical term, my term, brain juice-

Dr. Lara Boyd 36:24 Yeah

Mel Robbins 36:24 ... to help you think more clearly?

Dr. Lara Boyd 36:26 It will.

Mel Robbins 36:27 That's pretty cool.

Dr. Lara Boyd 36:28 I think it's amazing.

Mel Robbins 36:29 And the third thing that you said that is really good for brain health and neuroplasticity is anything that you do that lowers your stress.

Dr. Lara Boyd 36:39 So when we're stressed, we release a stress hormone, cortisol. And cortisol has this negative effect of blocking the growth factors that allow the brain to be more neuroplastic, so they compete. So I sometimes describe this as, imagine you've got just a few parking spots in your brain, and if cortisol's parked in them, we can't get our trophic factors that allow brain change into that same spot. It's full. So if the parking lot's full, flooded with cortisol, we're not nearly as capable of learning as if we can reverse those cortisol cars out and allow our trophic factors to come in and now allow the brain to be more capable of neuroplasticity. We actually did a study in my lab some years ago, and we were looking at people who practice yoga versus runners. My student brought me the study, and I will tell you I'm a runner, and I was like, "Oh, the runners are gonna be better than the yoga people." I live in Vancouver, so everyone does yoga, so I have great disdain 'cause I don't do yoga 'cause I'm very inflexible. So-

Mel Robbins 37:45 Well, you know you can change, Dr. Boyd.

Dr. Lara Boyd 37:48 I, I know I can. [laughs]

Mel Robbins 37:48 And if you do hard things and get on that mat, your brain and your flexibility will change.

Dr. Lara Boyd 37:53 It would be so much better.

Mel Robbins 37:54 [laughs]

Dr. Lara Boyd 37:54 And I really should. And when I tell you the findings of this study, am I gonna feel silly because what we looked at was how people responded to a stressful environment, a stressful situation. We had people in the MRI machine. We were imaging their brains as we're putting them into happy, fearful, and stressful situations, and we're looking at how the amygdala reacts. And in those runners, that amygdala lit up like a fireball. And I felt kind of silly because in our participants who practice yoga, and these were not people who did a million hours a week, did three recreational classes a week maybe, maybe two, um, what we saw was the amygdala turned on, but then other memory structures turned on. And so our inference and from our interviews with these folks, we took away, they were able to see that environment, that stressful environment, and observe it and, uh, judge it, but they weren't taken over by it. And so there may be is something to these practices of meditation, mindfulness, maybe that's a part of yoga, that may give people an ability to more easily deal with a stressful situation when they see it. We right now are running a study of, um, a meditation or a mindfulness intervention called loving-kindness meditation.

Mel Robbins 39:14 Mm.

Dr. Lara Boyd 39:14 And so what we've done is we've taken teachers, we've looked at their burnout rates, their rates of depression and anxiety. They've engaged in this loving-kindness intervention, meditation intervention, and they practice it on their own for 30 days. They have one class. They practice it. They come back, and we see significant change in their levels of burnout and in their brain.

Mel Robbins 39:35 So your hypothesis, so to speak, 'cause you're in the middle of this study-

Dr. Lara Boyd 39:40 Uh-huh

Mel Robbins 39:41 ... is that this particular form of meditation, and can you explain for the person just briefly who does not know what the-

Dr. Lara Boyd 39:47 What that is, yeah

Mel Robbins 39:47 ... 'cause I only recently figured out what this was.

Dr. Lara Boyd 39:51 Sure. It's a form of practicing self-compassion.

Mel Robbins 39:54 Mm.

Dr. Lara Boyd 39:54 So just giving yourself a break, and I, and I don't know if there's anything special about this form of meditation. I think the practice that you can find or the environment you can put yourself in to reduce your cortisol, to be more mindful-

Mel Robbins 40:10 Yeah

Dr. Lara Boyd 40:10 ... to be compassionate with yourself, all of those things are incredibly helpful, and we can see their impact on the brain.

Mel Robbins 40:16 That's so cool.

Dr. Lara Boyd 40:18 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 40:18 Dr. Boyd, how long does it take to rewire your brain?

Dr. Lara Boyd 40:23 Well, we just did it. [laughs]

Mel Robbins 40:24 What do you mean?

Dr. Lara Boyd 40:25 So we've done it today. We've done it in the time we've been speaking. So this is such an interesting question. I think it was Malcolm Gladwell who popularized this idea that we need 10,000 hours of practice to learn something well, to become a master. So I can tell you that you're, you changed your brain in the first hour of practice, in that 10,000, and if you did 10,001, you're still changing your brain, right? So it-- I don't think there's a magic number. It's happening. It takes a lot of time, and it takes a lot of practice, but you're incrementally changing it with every trial of practice, every hour of practice, every day of practice. That may also be different from person to person. So in my research, we call this the dose problem. So what's the right dose of practice to change the brain? And we really don't know, and one of the reasons we struggle with this is because it's different for every person. So as a scientist, we try to run a big study and then have some statistics and come to one single answer, but I don't know that there's a single answer. I think that-

Mel Robbins 41:26 Mm

Dr. Lara Boyd 41:26 ... maybe is very simplistic, and it depends on the learner, what you're trying to learn, and how well you're trying to learn it. But I think what we can take away from all of that is that every time you're practicing, you are changing your brain a little bit more, a little bit more, and the accumulation of practice across time is what's gonna really lead to a lasting change.

Mel Robbins 41:52 Your point is when you actively engage in certain types of activities-

Dr. Lara Boyd 41:58 Uh-huh

Mel Robbins 41:58 ... particularly ones that are kinda hard for you to do-

Dr. Lara Boyd 42:02 Right

Mel Robbins 42:02 ... that's an example of your brain rewiring itself.

Dr. Lara Boyd 42:04 Rewiring itself in real time. The other part of that dose issue is you can't just practice at the same difficulty over and over again, right? It needs to get harder as you go.

Mel Robbins 42:14 Oh. Oh, wait.

Dr. Lara Boyd 42:14 So-

Mel Robbins 42:14 So hold on. Wait a minute. It has to get harder as you do it for it to force a structural change in your brain?

Dr. Lara Boyd 42:21 To keep changing it, right.

Mel Robbins 42:22 Can you give me an example?

Dr. Lara Boyd 42:23 Sure. Well, let's say you wanna learn to play piano.

Mel Robbins 42:25 Okay.

Dr. Lara Boyd 42:25 So the only thing I can play on the piano is "Chopsticks," right?

Mel Robbins 42:28 Yeah.

Dr. Lara Boyd 42:29 And so if I just keep playing "Chopsticks" forever, I'm not changing my brain. I can already do it.

Mel Robbins 42:34 Mm.

Dr. Lara Boyd 42:34 So continuing to practice that is, is not helpful. So if I really wanted to be able to play the piano, I really wanted to change my brain to allow that, I would have to move on to a more, a somewhat more difficult piece, [laughs] and then a somewhat more difficult and somewhat more difficult. Well, what I love is-

Mel Robbins 42:51 You can reframe the fact that it's hard-

Dr. Lara Boyd 42:54 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 42:54 ... as evidence that you're changing your brain-

Dr. Lara Boyd 42:58 Absolutely

Mel Robbins 42:58 ... and that you're growing.

Dr. Lara Boyd 42:59 Yes.

Mel Robbins 43:00 I would love to talk about visualization.

Dr. Lara Boyd 43:02 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 43:03 Dr. Boyd, what's happening in your brain when you are intentionally visualizing something, whether it's a race that you're going to run, or it's a date that you're gonna go on, or it is you, uh, working hard on something that you care about? What's happening when you imagine something?

Dr. Lara Boyd 43:24 So when you're imagining something, you're mentally rehearsing it.

Mel Robbins 43:28 Okay.

Dr. Lara Boyd 43:28 And do you remember I said that our brain is functioning with these networks of activities?

Mel Robbins 43:34 Yes.

Dr. Lara Boyd 43:34 So different brain regions are lighting up together. When we mentally rehearse, those same brain regions are lighting up. If you're mentally rehearsing a movement, for example, every brain region lights up except for the motor area. So it's as if we get all ready for the movement, and we just don't issue the go command, if you will.

Mel Robbins 43:52 Yep.

Dr. Lara Boyd 43:53 And so this is why most elite athletes engage in mental rehearsal. This is how the race is going to go, exactly. It's a great way to get more practice without it being physically exhaustive. So you think about maybe the stroke patients that I work with.

Mel Robbins 44:09 Hmm.

Dr. Lara Boyd 44:09 This is a way for them to go home and practice moving. It's safe. They're not going to fall. They're not gonna need help, and they can continue to get a high dose of practice. Now, the type of visualization actually matters, it turns out. You could imagine being on the ceiling and looking down at your body, or you could imagine you're in your body, and you're engaged in it. And it turns out that if you're in your body, you're more first-person engagement, that mental rehearsal is going to have a better effect on learning and on brain change than if you're a kind of observer from the outside.

Mel Robbins 44:44 So if I have, like, a big sales meeting-

Dr. Lara Boyd 44:46 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 44:47 ... you're saying, Dr. Boyd, don't imagine a scene where you're seeing [laughs] yourself-

Dr. Lara Boyd 44:54 Right

Mel Robbins 44:54 ... doing the presentation. Imagine a scene where you're looking out at the audience or the people around the conference room table because what, what happens when you imagine it from inside your own body?

Dr. Lara Boyd 45:09 So when you're imagining from inside your own body, you're generating predictions of what it's gonna feel like. So you're almost pre-predicting the sensory experience that you're going to have, and so it makes it a more realistic form of-

Mel Robbins 45:23 Hmm

Dr. Lara Boyd 45:23 ... practice. There's a part of your brain called the cerebellum that's very good at these predictions, predicting

Dr. Lara Boyd 45:30 errors and correcting for errors, and so you're letting it engage in that preparation with you, and that's why it's probably a more effective approach.

Mel Robbins 45:37 That's super cool.

Dr. Lara Boyd 45:38 Isn't it neat?

Mel Robbins 45:39 Yeah, really neat.

Dr. Lara Boyd 45:40 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 45:40 Um, Dr. Boyd, as a neuroscientist, what is your opinion on manifesting?

Dr. Lara Boyd 45:46 Manifesting is really interesting. It's a way of visualizing as well, but kind of projecting that visualization or that mental rehearsal. There is some evidence that as we're doing mental rehearsal, we're visualizing or manifesting how we think something's going to go, that we actually are, um, generating activity in one of the, what we call reward circuits of the brain. So another one of these chemicals in our brain, this one dopamine, which is a very positive, it's our reward chemical. We did something good. It's like our little brain gold star, like you, you did it. That when you're thinking about manifesting something, visualizing, you may be getting these dopamine releases that are highly reinforcing towards that goal that you have, towards what you're working towards. And so that is one of the kind of theories, if you will, for why this may be an effective tool. The other thing that's really interesting about manifesting is we think that it's a way of preparing the brain for what's to come.

Mel Robbins 46:48 Huh.

Dr. Lara Boyd 46:49 Um, the word we use would be priming the brain for change, so getting the brain to a state where it's ready to take on that new information, that new task. And so it's almost like a practice or a preparatory phase so that then when you do have the physical engagement, your brain is actually ready to take the most up out of it. Manifesting's a tricky one, but there certainly is evidence to suggest that it has these strong effects within the brain, and we, we think that's why it can be a positive, um, I guess, a habit, if you will, to engage in.

Mel Robbins 47:24 Can you explain, Dr. Boyd, why starting the day with a statement, "Today is going to be a good day," how that works in your brain?

Dr. Lara Boyd 47:34 I love that, and I want to agree.

Mel Robbins 47:36 [laughs]

Dr. Lara Boyd 47:36 I think this is a wonderful way to start your day. When you start your day off with some kind of a, a positive affirmation, you again are, are priming your brain for what's to come.

Mel Robbins 47:47 Hmm.

Dr. Lara Boyd 47:47 You're preparing your brain. You're setting the brain table. This is going to be a good day. So in that process, you've pushed down your stress hormone. Cortisol's going down. You're releasing dopamine because you're predicting something positive, right? So you're getting your happy, if you will, neurotransmitter out. And if you take that forward, there's really good evidence that people who are optimistic, who demonstrate this optimism across their life, they actually have better brain health, and they have better outcomes after their brain is hurt. And so the overri- all idea around kind of this optimistic projection is you're changing the neurochemistry of your brain, and you're setting your intention, if you will, and then you're much more likely to follow through on that as you move through the course of your day.

Mel Robbins 48:39 Are there other things you could say to yourself or sentences that could have that kind of positive upward spiral effect on your brain?

Dr. Lara Boyd 48:49 I think it doesn't probably matter the content of the sentence. Whatever it is you can pull out that's going to ... push you towards that optimistic state. That's what's going to work-

Mel Robbins 49:00 Mm

Dr. Lara Boyd 49:00 ... best for your brain. So, today's gonna be a great day, or this is amazing, I feel so lucky to be here in Boston with you. Really just expressing, and we know that the expression of gratitude can be a very, very healthy thing on the brain. For all these reasons that we've talked about, it's probably falls into these cortisol, this bin of what I call cortisol reducers. So, I'm grateful. I'm grateful that I have this opportunity, that I had a family that allowed me to go back to school and get a PhD in my mid-20s. How lucky am I? Many people would've loved to do that and maybe couldn't, and I don't take that for granted. I take that forward with me. In my day, I remind myself of that often, um, and that then how lucky I am to be able to be here, and basically get to learn things for a living.

Mel Robbins 49:48 An active practice of gratitude is forcing yourself to notice what's going well-

Dr. Lara Boyd 49:53 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 49:53 ... instead of stressing about the things that aren't.

Dr. Lara Boyd 49:58 Right.

Mel Robbins 49:58 And based on everything that you're teaching us, I can only imagine that when you force yourself to notice what's going well, there must be a positive wave happening through all three of the things that you talked about, the chemical, structural, and functional part-

Dr. Lara Boyd 50:17 Yes

Mel Robbins 50:17 ... of the brain.

Dr. Lara Boyd 50:18 That is indeed the case. So, we see that, um, it's again, bringing that engagement and that priming to the act of learning. People who practice gratitude, again, have better neurochemistry in their brain, less rates of depression, and again, you're spinning down these negative things, spinning down your cortisol, reducing your depression, probably sleeping better, and so on.

Mel Robbins 50:44 I'd- I'd love to have you explain an example that I think has happened to all of us, and it's that phenomenon that happens when you either decide you're gonna buy a new car, or you see a car and you're just like, "Oh, I love that car," and then suddenly you see the green Rivian pickup everywhere, and the day before you didn't see it. What's actually happening in your mind when you suddenly see the cars, or you hear the song that you just said?

Dr. Lara Boyd 51:20 It- it's really a- an awareness building that's come to you. Like, uh, of course, there aren't more of those cars. They were already all there. That is a marvelous car, by the way. They were already all there, and now you've just brought your attention to it.

Mel Robbins 51:33 Mm.

Dr. Lara Boyd 51:33 So at- attention is another really interesting thing within our brain. We know that attention plays very importantly into our ability to learn, and it also plays very importantly into neuroplasticity. So, the things we pay attention to, we're better able to change our brain around. So whether that be a task you're trying to learn, whether or not you're looking for a particular car, or you've noticed a song.

Mel Robbins 51:59 Right. Yeah. I love this idea of dropping down the cortisol through some of these very simple interventions that feel more important now that we understand-

Dr. Lara Boyd 52:12 Yeah

Mel Robbins 52:12 ... how they impact the brain.

Dr. Lara Boyd 52:15 Right.

Mel Robbins 52:15 We were talking about, uh, learning styles and how basically everybody's brain learns a little bit differently. How do you figure out how your brain learns?

Dr. Lara Boyd 52:25 It takes a bit of self-experimentation to find it. In terms of what's your style, what's going to help you be the best learner, I think that that comes to just practice. Be okay if it fails. That's okay. Failure's great. I've had lots of failures. I've had many experiments not work, many grants not funded. I mean, the life of an academic is m- mostly failure, to be quite honest, but they're all instructional. Like, this didn't work? Okay. Well, let's do that. Like, that's really important and interesting next. And so that's what you have to do as you're learning for yourself.

Mel Robbins 53:02 Yeah.

Dr. Lara Boyd 53:02 What is your style? What's your environment that's going to work the best? You can help yourself by doing these other things we've talked about. Reduce your cortisol, exercise, sleep, be engaged. Try to learn something you really love. Like, I will tell you, if we were talking about calculus, I would be decidedly less passionate. So, one of the, one of the treats I get to have is I learn what I'm- I'm- I'm learning about what I'm obsessed in-

Mel Robbins 53:27 Mm

Dr. Lara Boyd 53:27 ... already. So it's- it's not hard, right? 'Cause I- I think about it. I wake up in the night thinking about it. I think about it on my runs. Kind of what- what I do and what I'm really, really interested in. And then the last thought there is, that's gonna change throughout your lifespan.

Mel Robbins 53:41 Yeah.

Dr. Lara Boyd 53:41 What you're interested in, how you're learning, and in what environment you're learning best. It shifts with time.

Mel Robbins 53:49 I love the, uh, counsel to really just think about the environment or the ways in which you best learn. Like, my husband loves working in a coffee shop-

Dr. Lara Boyd 54:02 Oh

Mel Robbins 54:03 ... because, I don't know what it is about the noise and the activity, he just is able to focus.

Dr. Lara Boyd 54:09 So interesting.

Mel Robbins 54:09 I can barely pay attention to the cup of coffee I'm drinking, because there's so much distraction going on.

Dr. Lara Boyd 54:15 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 54:15 So that would be an example for me of going, can't work in a crowded environment like that. The other thing that I've learned about myself, in terms of the way my brain works, is if you hand me a piece of paper and expect me to read something and retain it, I can read that thing probably faster than anybody, but I don't remember it.

Dr. Lara Boyd 54:37 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 54:37 But if you tell it to me, and I've also learned that I am better if I am responding to something-

Dr. Lara Boyd 54:48 Mm

Mel Robbins 54:49 ... versus having to start it. And another thing that I've learned is I'm obviously a talker.

Dr. Lara Boyd 54:55 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 54:55 And so it may be helpful as you're listening to this podcast to know that the books that I write, I typically talk out. And then, uh, it's really easy with all the tech today. You just record yourself, and then you can transcribe it. And once you see what your words look like on paper, it's so easy to respond and edit to it.

Dr. Lara Boyd 55:15 For me, my first degree's in English literature. I was going to be an English professor. Life intervened, and I went another way, but I love to think of things as stories.

Mel Robbins 55:25 Hmm.

Dr. Lara Boyd 55:26 So I actually think of my science just as a story. That's why I love talking about it. I'm just telling you the story of my science. And so for me, that's how I learn, that's how I engage, is, "Okay, what's, what, what story are these data telling us?" This is what I say to my graduate students all the time. We might not like the story they're telling us, maybe it's not the story we expected, but it's just a story.

Mel Robbins 55:49 Dr. Boyd, I'm gonna put myself on the spot.

Dr. Lara Boyd 55:50 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 55:51 And I'm gonna ask you to coach me.

Dr. Lara Boyd 55:53 Okay.

Mel Robbins 55:54 I have always wanted to learn conversational Spanish.

Dr. Lara Boyd 55:59 Ah.

Mel Robbins 56:00 And I have a gigantic story that I am incapable of learning languages. I took seven years of French and cannot remember a damn word of it. I am dyslexic. Do, do you hear the stories coming? I've, I've always struggled with this.

Dr. Lara Boyd 56:17 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 56:18 And I've always wanted to do it, but I have a story that I can't. Can even I learn Spanish?

Dr. Lara Boyd 56:27 You can. It's hard, though. And language is... It's interesting you chose language, because language is a, is kind of a special, more special category.

Mel Robbins 56:36 Okay.

Dr. Lara Boyd 56:36 So I'm gonna get to use this, and I've been so looking forward to it, but I have a brain model.

Mel Robbins 56:41 Fabulous.

Dr. Lara Boyd 56:41 So this is a, a human brain, and we're just looking at two sides. So this would be the front. Your eyes would be up here, and you'd have your ears on the side-

Mel Robbins 56:48 Yep

Dr. Lara Boyd 56:48 ... here. And so this is the back. And so humans very uniquely have this front part, this pink area. This is called-

Mel Robbins 56:56 So your forehead, yes

Dr. Lara Boyd 56:57 ... your forehead, yeah. It's called the prefrontal cortex. We have this big piece of brain that we developed that pushes out forward that no other animal really has. This area of the brain is really important for paying attention, what we call executive functions, and then judgment. So is that a good idea? What could happen [laughs] if I... and then fill in the blank. And so what we find is that our brain is kind of maturing according to what we need. So we get our, our motor and sensory area first, vision, and then it slowly kind of works forward in its development. And so coming back to kind of our, our language coaching, these areas on the side, this would be your, your areas where language is, especially s- specialized on our left-

Mel Robbins 57:46 Oh, it's like right over by my temple

Dr. Lara Boyd 57:47 ... Yeah

Mel Robbins 57:48 ... language.

Dr. Lara Boyd 57:48 You know, if you stuck your fingers in your ears, you'd hit it more or less.

Mel Robbins 57:51 Got it.

Dr. Lara Boyd 57:51 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 57:51 Okay.

Dr. Lara Boyd 57:52 I don't, but it's there. And so, and it's on the left side, in particular, language, in most humans. Occasionally, it gets flipped, but most of us, it's on the left. This is wired up relatively early, and it becomes difficult to change, which is why it's hard for you and I. I only heard English as a child. I'm assuming you did, too.

Mel Robbins 58:10 Yes.

Dr. Lara Boyd 58:11 And so it becomes harder for us as adults.

Mel Robbins 58:13 This will be another thing I blame my parents for.

Dr. Lara Boyd 58:15 You can-

Mel Robbins 58:15 I'm just kidding.

Dr. Lara Boyd 58:16 Yes.

Mel Robbins 58:16 That was a joke.

Dr. Lara Boyd 58:16 Right. We can, we can blame them as well. But you told me earlier that you're a very auditory learner.

Mel Robbins 58:22 Very much so.

Dr. Lara Boyd 58:23 My suspicion would be, my, my prescription, the experiment we could do on you, which would be fun, is you need a, a Spanish immersion. So you need to just go. In fact, this is your excuse. You need to just go to Spain. Um, pick a great city.

Mel Robbins 58:40 My husband and I are talking about doing the Camino-

Dr. Lara Boyd 58:42 There you go

Mel Robbins 58:42 ... Trail next year.

Dr. Lara Boyd 58:43 You're an auditory learner, so you need to go, and as you do the Camino, no English. None.

Mel Robbins 58:51 Then I'm gonna be practicing before I go, 'cause I wanna talk to Chris-

Dr. Lara Boyd 58:54 Only-

Mel Robbins 58:54 ... while we're on it

Dr. Lara Boyd 58:54 ... only Spanish. You have to immerse, and you're gonna have to force your brain to rewire-

Mel Robbins 59:02 You know what this sounds like, Dr. Boyd?

Dr. Lara Boyd 59:03 To allow.

Mel Robbins 59:04 It sounds very hard.

Dr. Lara Boyd 59:05 It's truly hard.

Mel Robbins 59:05 That's what you told us, right?

Dr. Lara Boyd 59:06 It's exhausting.

Mel Robbins 59:06 It's what we need to do.

Dr. Lara Boyd 59:08 It's exhausting. It really is exhausting. So when my daughter enter, entered into this late French immersion in elementary school, the teacher said, "I will speak English to them the first week of school, and then never again." And she said, "By Christmas, they'll be responding," and I thought, "Oh, my gosh." And my daughter came home multiple nights in tears. She was so frustrated. They did math. They did science. They did everything. By Christmas, they were speaking in French. It was truly remarkable. In fact, I kicked myself. I'm like, "We- I should've been scanning her brain the whole time." Like, what was I-

Mel Robbins 59:38 [laughs]

Dr. Lara Boyd 59:39 I missed it. I had a twin in French immersion and a twin not. We could've done the perfect twin study.

Mel Robbins 59:43 What? You could've done a twin study?

Dr. Lara Boyd 59:45 Right? I'm a terrible scientist, but-

Mel Robbins 59:46 But you're a amazing mother

Dr. Lara Boyd 59:48 ... I was trying to just dry tears and, yes.

Mel Robbins 59:51 Yes.

Dr. Lara Boyd 59:51 But I do suspect that for you to just immerse in auditory language-

Mel Robbins 59:58 I also-

Dr. Lara Boyd 59:59 ... would be the key

Mel Robbins 1:00:00 ... realize the auditory and the speaking of it is what I need to do.

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:00:04 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:00:04 Yeah.

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:00:05 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:00:05 I don't-

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:00:06 Good stuff

Mel Robbins 1:00:06 ... care about reading it. I just wanna be able to speak it.

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:00:09 I think that once you were there, and you were fully immersed, the reading would come very naturally. But-

Mel Robbins 1:00:15 I'm-

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:00:15 ... that's a prediction

Mel Robbins 1:00:15 ... you know what I'm gonna do?

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:00:16 That's a hypothesis.

Mel Robbins 1:00:17 I, I am going to... This is gonna be the thing that I'm gonna learn, and I'm gonna start practicing.

Mel Robbins 1:00:21 What are the best things that I can do to help what I'm learning stick?

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:00:30 So repetition is a big one-

Mel Robbins 1:00:33 Okay

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:00:33 ... of just again, again, looking at it in different ways. So not just rote repetition, but let's turn it on its side. Let's look at it upside down. Let's repeat it back. So that would be one, because again, our brain does require this dose of practice-

Mel Robbins 1:00:49 Mm

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:00:49 ... in order to show that it's learned. And then remembering that you have to sleep to have that memory be consolidated. So you're going to have to practice it, and then come back later and see, did you actually learn it? That's a test. It really is. The next day, how much did we learn? And then practice it again, and then come back the next day.

Mel Robbins 1:01:12 Dr. Boyd, could you take us through kind of from waking up through the end of the day, what are the habits and routines that really support neuroplasticity and better brain health?

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:01:29 Well, first you're gonna have slept. I think starting the day with something positive is really important. Could be gratitude, could be, "This is gonna be a great day, and here's why." Give yourself some ideas. Exercise is certainly gonna be in there. By the way, and I haven't said this, doesn't matter when you exercise. It could be right before you practice something. It could be right after. Could be a little bit later. Seems to h- not really matter a great deal when that occurs. Thinking about how you can keep your stress low or your cortisol down. Even at, and, and, and you could be in a stressful environment and still think about being mindful, letting it go, being compassionate. If you can't keep it all up, you're not perfect, and that's okay. Pushing yourself to learn something hard. Being socially engaged seems to be very important for brain health and brain plasticity, and always trying to learn something new. So what is it you're trying to learn? And let's practice that today.

Mel Robbins 1:02:35 You know what I love about that? Is that you just proved the statement that you said at the very beginning of our conversation, which is that simply by listening, you're gonna grow and stretch your brain. And one of the reasons why I love this podcast so much is because I learn something from every single person that comes on this show, and I almost feel like my brain is getting bigger in my head because of your brilliance. And now I'm like, "Oh, this is so cool. She's in a lab, and she's researching the brain and studying all this stuff and doing all these cool things, and now she's teaching me." And now I feel like I have a big brain. It's like the elastic pants, only it's the elasticity in my mind to learn new things.

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:03:21 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:03:22 Talk to me about being social.

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:03:24 Yeah. So being social seems to be one of these things that helps to reduce depression-

Mel Robbins 1:03:29 Hmm

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:03:30 ... to increase engagement, to cause you to have to practice our interactions. Like, the complexity of the thought and the cues, the social, the verbal, the non-verbal cues, all of those things together seem to be really important for brain health. Think we're just built to be a social species. We wanna be in a group, and we wanna be in a group that values us and loves us and cares for us, and those things together seem to be quite important for healthy aging.

Mel Robbins 1:04:02 I can, I can see that. And I gotta ask you, Dr. Boyd, is there something in particular as a neuroscientist that you do as your evening routine [laughs] that is supporting brain health and neuroplasticity?

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:04:15 [lips smack] When you get paid, you're told from a small age, like, pay yourself first. Take the money you're putting in your savings and, and do that before you do anything else with your money, right? So I always think about, for me, my days are so busy, and I travel so much. I always pay myself first. I actually do it in the morning. I'm gonna flip your question. Before anything gets in my way, every day I exercise. I'm, I always say I'm paying myself first.

Mel Robbins 1:04:41 Hmm.

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:04:42 In the evening, where I really try to position myself is trying to be able to get to sleep. So I'm a woman, I'm getting a bit older, and my sleep is not as nice as it used to be. Actually, I can go to sleep, I just can't stay asleep. This is my challenge of the last few years, and so I've been really working hard on actually my sleep hygiene. So a good dinner, less alcohol, sadly, and then moving towards, right? [laughs] Then moving towards what do I need to do to be able to sleep? And so in, in the world right now, one thing I've learned that I need to do to be able to sleep is not to watch the evening news. It just spins me up. So again, just thinking about what is going to raise my cortisol in the evening, and I know that-

Mel Robbins 1:05:29 And don't do it

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:05:30 ... and don't do it, [laughs] right? Whatever that may be. And, and usually that's involving looking at what's happening in the world.

Mel Robbins 1:05:36 Hmm.

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:05:37 And the last thing I do is I treat myself to just a little bit of reading, and that's a habit I lost for many years when my kids were home, and I just didn't have time. And my children are both at university right now, and to just settle with a good book in the evening is, it's, gosh, I'm boring and old, but it really is helpful to me. And in those periods in the night when I wake up, and I don't know if this is helping my brain health or not, but laying and thinking I need to go back to sleep doesn't help. I've done that experiment. So my new experiment is I just give myself a break, and I get up, and I read for a little while.

Mel Robbins 1:06:09 Hmm.

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:06:10 And then I try to go back to sleep, and we see how it goes.

Mel Robbins 1:06:13 I love how normal you are-

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:06:14 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 1:06:15 ... as a neuroscientist running a huge research lab and teaching at a medical school, and it makes it very, very relatable and accessible.

Mel Robbins 1:06:25 Dr. Boyd, if the person listening takes one thing away from this conversation, what do you think the most important thing to do is?

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:06:35 I think the most important thing is to engage in something that's hard.

Mel Robbins 1:06:39 Hmm.

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:06:39 Learn something new. Acknowledge that it's hard. Acknowledge that struggle is going to be good for your brain. But we should always be pushing ourselves to learn something new, to do something that's hard, and to do something that's challenging.

Mel Robbins 1:06:57 And it doesn't matter. It could be the guitar or needlepoint or bocce or how to make sourdough.

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:07:02 It, yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:07:03 Any of it works?

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:07:04 Any of it works. So you, it's just that engagement and that push-

Mel Robbins 1:07:08 Hmm

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:07:08 ... of what it is that you're trying to do that you can't do now. So- What are we stretching ourselves to learn? Whatever it might be. Now I'm gonna have to go do yoga, darn you. But it-- we, you know, whatever it may be that we are not able to do now that we'd like to be able to do, so always pushing and expanding those horizons. That's really setting us up. And I, I think that if you can just take away one thing in all that, because it will be hard, is that just remember that that is changing your brain, that you're engaging in these processes of neuroplasticity, changing your chemistry, your brain structure, and your brain function kind of continually throughout that process.

Mel Robbins 1:07:49 Dr. Boyd, what are your parting words?

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:07:52 There's a saying, and forgive me if this is a bit geeky, that I love in Latin. It's tum est, and it means, "It is yours." So it is up to you. And I think about it often for a couple reasons. One, coincidentally, it's the motto of the university I work at, UBC. But two, I love this idea that it is up to us, and it feeds so nicely into this idea of neuroplasticity. We've had a wonderful conversation and gone a lot of places, but I really want people to take away from it this, that your brain is shaped by the experiences around you.

Mel Robbins 1:08:33 Mm.

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:08:34 And it's up to you to choose wisely what those experiences are. What is it you want to engage in? What is it you wanna learn? What is it you want to avoid because you know they're not healthy on your brain? Maybe that's social media. Maybe it's the influence of someone who's not positive in your life. So you have the opportunity to shape your brain by the experience that you provide to it. It's going to be hard. You're gonna struggle. You're gonna fail. And remember that all of those are incredibly good things as you're learning and you're changing your brain. So I think if you put all of that together, my idea for you would be you can build the brain you wanna have.

Mel Robbins 1:09:17 Mm.

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:09:18 Build the brain you want.

Mel Robbins 1:09:20 Dr. Boyd, I loved talking to you. I loved learning. I loved hearing all about your research and how we can use experiences to shape our brain. I cannot wait to see how this ripples through the world and really empowers people as they share it with the people that they love. So on behalf of the person who's listening and everyone in their life that they're gonna share this remarkable episode with, I just wanna say thank you.

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:09:53 Well, I wanna thank you so much for having me. I'm clearly a bit obsessed.

Mel Robbins 1:09:57 [laughs]

Dr. Lara Boyd 1:09:58 I'm so excited to get to share this information. And thank you.

Mel Robbins 1:10:01 Well, I'm thrilled to have you here, and, um, you absolutely killed it. I'm so excited about this. Um, and what I loved that Dr. Boyd just says is this sentence, "It is yours," that you can take everything that she shared with you and taught you today and use it to shape your brain, and the way that you shape your brain shapes your entire experience of life. How cool is it that your brain can change and grow and learn new things all the way until the day you die? And now you know exactly what to do so that your brain will never be the same again. It can be better, and that'll make your life better. And in case nobody else tells you this, I wanted to be sure to tell you as your friend that I love you, and I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And Dr. Boyd sure convinced me, and I know she convinced you, that the more you take care of your brain, the more you do hard things, the more you are committed to being a lifelong learner, the better you and your life get. So go do it. All righty, I'll see you in the very next episode. I welcome you in the moment you hit play. All righty, and thank you for watching all the way to the end here on YouTube. I love being here with you. Thank you for being a subscriber. It's the single best way you can say thank you to me and the team and all these extraordinary experts. And I know you wanna watch another episode of The Mel Robbins Podcast. You're gonna love this one, and I will welcome you in the moment you hit play. [outro music]