Move your body, grow your brain: the science of hippocampal neurogenesis

My name is Wendy Suzuki. I'm Dean of the College of Arts and Science at New York University

and Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology. Chapter one, exploring the neurological effects of exercise

I have been fascinated with my favorite brain structure called the hippocampus for many

many years. Each of us have two hippocampi, one on the right, one on the left

And it is essential for our ability to form and retain new long-term memories for facts

and events. And I became fascinated in this because of the most famous neurological patient of all time

His initials were H.M. We now know his name was Henry Mollison

And he suffered as a young child from epilepsy and got this experimental surgery where they

knew that if you removed one of his hippocampi, it would improve the epilepsy. It would reduce the

epilepsy, I should say. But because his epilepsy was so severe, they decided to remove both hippocampi

And that's when they realized that while his epileptic symptoms were reduced, he was left with

no ability to form any new memories of his entire life for facts, for events, for the rest of his

life. And that's when we learned that the hippocampus was so important for memory. And I was

fascinated with this and I wanted to study the hippocampus. I started in 1998 as a bright-eyed

bushy-tailed, young assistant professor at New York University, studying the hippocampus and

how new memories could be formed. What exactly does the hippocampus do when it helps you form

these new long-term memories? And I was so excited to be able to do this, but in my excitement

I managed to unbalance myself. I don't know if you've experienced this, but I just decided I was

only going to work because research professors on the tenure track have this thing we have to go

through getting tenure. It takes six years and you have six years to make a big splash in science

and discover something really, really amazing. So I decided that I was just going to work. For six

years, I was only going to work and put my head down and get all the work done I can, trying to

understand how the hippocampus forms new memories. And as you can imagine, I got unbalanced. I didn't

feel good. I didn't have a lot of social relationships. I was eating too much takeout

food and I was just feeling so lethargic. And I knew I needed to do something about that

And that is what brought me to the gym because I didn't know how to get more social relationships

but I wanted to feel better, feel stronger. I started eating better. I went to the gym

and a year and a half later, I felt so good. And I had this amazing realization

Again, a year and a half later, I'd started going to the gym. I'd lost 25 pounds by that point

And I thought, gosh, my memory seems to be working better. In fact, I was writing a research grant, something that I do a lot

And I was sitting there and I remember the day that I thought to myself

gee, that research grant writing, that went really well today. I had never had that thought

go through my mind in my entire career. And when I thought about it, I thought, gosh, my memory

my hippocampal dependent memory that I was studying in my own lab, that seemed to be better. I was

able to pull together details from all the papers that I was reading. And also my ability to focus

You really need deep focus, which is dependent on the prefrontal cortex right behind your forehead

That was also better too, leading to this better writing session. And that was the first day I started to realize that maybe it was this new level of physical

activity that I was experiencing, that I was giving myself, that was causing this really

extraordinary change that my writing was going better. So that was the first moment that I started seriously getting interested in how exercise might be affecting the brain and also helping the hippocampus

Again, my favorite brain structure, important for memory. Because I studied the effects of exercise on the brain, people always want to ask me about the runner's high

What is it? How do you get it? And that's a great jumping off point, although I will be the first one to admit that the runner's high is not available for most of us, including me, because I don't run

I am a terrible runner, and so I can't run, and therefore I can't get a runner's high

However, it's a great place to start because what it really is, is this feeling of euphoria that comes with running

The starting point for that is something that I like to call an insider tip from a neuroscientist

who studied the effects of exercise on the brain. And here's my insider tip number one

And that is every single time you move your body, including when you're running, you are

giving your brain what I like to call a wonderful bubble bath of neurochemicals

Those neurochemicals include dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline, endorphins. And that cocktail of neurochemicals is what is giving the runners their runners high

We know that endorphins do play a really big part of that. But here's the good news

You don't have to be a marathon runner to get this. In fact, we know that even 10 minutes of walking can significantly improve your mood state

decreasing depression and anxiety levels and improving positive mood states as well

So that's where the runner's high gets us to. And it's one of the most powerful things that you can do for your brain today

Let me dive into that neurochemical bubble bath because it's really the key to understanding

exactly how exercise is affecting our brains. So I mentioned several things

several ingredients in that bubble bath that includes dopamine and serotonin and noradrenaline and endorphins

And that's really key to the mood boosting effects of exercise, but it also includes

what's called growth factors. Several different growth factors get released with movement

And that is going towards the long-term effects of exercise that can actually help grow and strengthen two key brain areas. One is the

hippocampus, critical for long-term memory. And the second is the prefrontal cortex, critical for

your ability to shift and focus attention. So how do we understand this? Every single time you move

your body you are releasing at least a part of that bubble bath And that helps us understand how only 10 minutes of walking can improve our mood decrease depression decrease anxiety And as you go up the activity scale to

aerobic running and everything in between, you are getting those mood effects. Why? Because you

have higher levels of dopamine and serotonin. But that's just the short-term effects. What about

long-term effects? What if you give your brain a bubble bath on a regular basis for a week or a

month or several years? That's when those growth factors kick in. And what do the growth factors

do? We know that the growth factors go directly to your hippocampus. The hippocampus is an

extraordinary structure because it is one of the only human brain areas that can grow brand new

brain cells in adulthood. And those growth factors help the hippocampus grow shiny new

hippocampal cells. And what does that mean? Your memory is better. So that is what you get with

long-term memory. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that the other brain area that benefits

in terms of growth and strength is the prefrontal cortex. Now, it's not growing new cells. Some

evidence suggests that the outputs of cells in the prefrontal cortex called the axons of those cells

perform better, work better with more exercise. They say that, for example, Serena Williams has

really, really well-insulated axons in her prefrontal cortex because of all of that

amazing tennis that she's played for a long time. But those are some of the both immediate and long

term changes that you get with exercise that start with that neurochemical bubble bath

People often ask me, what is the brain-body connection? And it is the simple physiological

idea that what you do with your body affects your brain. And what you think with your brain

also has an effect on the physiology of your body. It works both ways. And so we've talked about

moving your body, creating this neurochemical bubble bath that improves your mood and can grow

hippocampal brain cells. That's the body to brain connection. What about the other way

One of my favorite forms of exercise that I take and I teach is a form of exercise called

Intensati that pairs physical movements from dance and kickbox and martial arts with positive

spoken affirmations. It was developed by an amazing fitness instructor named Patricia Moreno

and there you are giving your brain this bubble bath, but at the same time

each movement is paired with a positive thought. For example, when you punch back and forth

we say, I am strong now. And imagine a class where the whole class

is different moves with different positive affirmations. I can tell you the first time I took this class

I walked out of that class feeling strong. I felt like Wonder Woman, Supergirl, all rolled up in one

Because what you think and what you state verbally is what you start to believe

And that is why this particular workout is so powerful. It is taking full advantage of that mind-body connection that we've all heard about

That's a way to take full advantage of it. One interesting question is what is the difference between the brain of somebody that is more sedentary and the brain of somebody that is really active all the time

And again, what it is, is the neurochemical milieu or neurochemical bubble bath that their brain is bathing in

That is affecting their mood, that is affecting their energy levels. and ultimately for the long-term affecting the strength of particular brain areas

particularly the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex. But never fear. You might say, oh, well, I'm in the sedentary camp

There's no hope for me. Here's why there's hope for everybody. And that is the principle of brain plasticity

Brain plasticity is this idea that the brain has an extraordinary capacity to change or modify its wiring based on the environment that you put the brain in, including the physical environment

Are you walking a lot? Are you running? Are you keeping yourself physically active

Are you learning new things that also result in what I call positive brain plasticity

So using the same principles we've been talking about, what is the difference between a sedentary

brain and an active, the brain of a runner? Well, the runner's brain has higher levels of dopamine and serotonin, kind of boosted

every single time that runner goes for a run. It elevates general mood state

Studies that I did in my lab showed that people that went to three months of spin class had

overall higher mood states than people for three months who played video Scrabble

And so your overall mood state is better. Those people in the exercise group also have much more

growth factors going through their brain. I like to think of it like a watering can of growth

factors all up and down your hippocampi. What's happening? They're growing, popping

shiny new hippocampal cells, their memory is working better, and they're getting bigger

fatter axons of their prefrontal cells, making their prefrontal cortex work better. But again

everything is fluid. With brain plasticity, even if you've been sedentary all your life

you can start moving towards that, what I like to call bigger, fatter, fluffier, and happier brain

with just 10 minutes of walking is what kind of can launch that change in your brain

People always tell me, you are so good at motivating people to exercise, but then after

I listen to your talk, I just go back home and sit on the couch and watch Netflix. What should I do

Motivation is a key. And here's what I found in my own life as I transitioned from that unbalanced, unhappy

pre-tenure faculty member that I was to a much more active faculty member, I started small

And I started with things that I already enjoyed, which for me was dance. I remember when I joined

the gym, I decided I wanted to be more active. And like many people, I joined the gym

And I went to a hip hop dance class. Okay. I love dance. I'm a terrible hip hop dancer. And I

remember coming out of that class saying, oh God, that was embarrassing, but still fun. I enjoyed

doing it. So my tip, my motivational tip for everybody is start small and start with things

you already know you like. If you hate running, don't run. You don't have to run or start

practically One of the things I did over the pandemic is I turned my weekly cleaning session into an exercise session Have you ever seen that movie Mrs Doubtfire Have you ever tried to do

that choreography that Robin Williams did with the vacuum cleaner? It is hard. It is a great

aerobic workout. And if you bring that play and that joy to even scrubbing the bathtub

It makes it more fun. It makes it more enjoyable and more aerobic

The other question everybody asks me at the end of my talks is, that sounds great

I want a neurochemical bubble bath, but I really want you to tell me what is the least

amount of movement that I have to do to get that neurochemical bubble bath

And here is the answer based on actual scientific studies. And that is, we know that as little as 10 minutes of walking can improve your mood

That is getting that bubble bath with the dopamine, serotonin, endorphins going

Anybody can do that. You don't even have to change into your spandex

Go for a walk. You don't have to change your shoes. Everybody can do that wherever you live in this world, in this country

And so that is the minimum. But that's, I love this. Start small

everybody can walk and then just add on. Can you walk a little bit more? Can you park a little bit

farther away? Can you do another round of shopping with the big cart in Costco? That's a great way

to get exercise as well. For example, make it fun, practical. Oh, include your friends as well

I went to hip hop. I didn't go to hip hop dance class. I went to dance class and found friends

that I went to dance class with that made it even more enjoyable, even more motivating

I certainly check goals and at the beginning of the year, everybody wants to have their beginning of the year goals

I think those are, they tend to be bound for failure. And I instead, instead of at the beginning of the year, put all this pressure, I like to set smaller goals for myself, doable goals, goals that make me excited to try them

That is the key. And sometimes it takes a little bit of thought

You know, maybe it's not that, you know, those scary classes where you have to lift that tire

up and push it across the room. But maybe it is a walk on the shore, a walk to the gym, a walk around the museum with friends

Be creative about the ways that you can get gardening. That's another thing

People think those things don't count. They all count. moving your body, especially outside, all of that counts. Be more broad in your definition

of bringing more movement into your life. Everybody wonders about what is the best time

to work out. And my first answer to that question is always, anytime you could fit it in, fit it in

Don't let the, oh, I'm doing it at this time and it's not the best time, so I'm not going to do it

that let go of that. Anytime you can fit it in from morning till night, fit it in. But if you

want to get a little bit more technical about it, here's what I've learned from my studies of the

effects of exercise on the brain. And that is that, as I said, every time you move your body

you're giving your brain this bubble bath. What exactly do you get? You get better mood

You get better performance on tasks that require your prefrontal cortex, which basically means

you can shift and focus your attention better. And something I haven't mentioned yet, your reaction time, your response time is better

And so I think about that. I'm reading all the papers, done the research on my own that confirmed all of those immediate things

And so here's what I came up with. And also people ask, well, when do you work out, Wendy

I work out first thing in the morning for several reasons. One is that it's harder to have other things come, get in the way of that

So it's interrupted less. And two, I love the idea that after I work out first thing in the morning, I have this

brain that is happier, that can focus attention better, and that responds quicker

That's the brain that I want to bring into my workplace first thing in the morning

And I did notice, so full disclosure, when I did this experiment, I was totally enjoying

my after-work workout sessions. So I would reward myself, as many people do, go to the gym after work, and I loved it

But as I got into the research and I switched my research from memory to the effects of

exercise in the brain, I thought, hmm, let me give this a try

And I'm not going to lie, it was painful to switch to first thing in the morning exercise

I was sleepy. I couldn't follow the classes because I was half asleep in class

And it was two weeks of pain before I got used to the new schedule

And then once I got used to it, I found that I could focus attention even longer in my day

For my whole life, I've always worked best first thing in the morning

I'm a morning person. And so that morning good work time got longer when I started and got used to that early

morning workout. And you might say, well, I'm not a morning person, Wendy. I totally get it

Try it. I love to advocate for personal experimentation. You know the science now that you're giving your brain a blah, blah, blah

It's going to make your focus work better. It's going to improve your mood. When are you going to apply it in your life for how your life works

That's how I applied it to mine. And I like to work out in the morning. You apply it to yours and let me know how it works out

So many of us use caffeine. I'm not a coffee drinker, but I'm a regular tea drinker

And I think that to switch your exercise regimen goes beyond just the use of coffee or trying

to use it. you know, to get yourself up. It's really shifting your circadian clock, getting your body used to

movement first thing in the morning. That's what was so painful for those first two weeks that I

tried it. So it really is being disciplined. If you want to wake up earlier, you need to go to

sleep earlier. And that is the hard part. You know, there's always one more Netflix episode to watch

and you think, oh, it won't do any harm, but it will. And so it's shifting that circadian clock

and really sticking to it. I think, yeah, you can use caffeine as a crutch

but I think the sleep change and the kind of the timing change in your life

and kind of getting a handle on that. And again, what works well for you

is the most important formula. There's a lot of data on the idea

that late night workouts, I mean, they could benefit your body and you're still getting

that neurochemical bubble bath, but endorphins are not the best thing to help you fall asleep

And so you know you need time to cool down before you go to sleep I experienced this myself I never am able to go to sleep after I give an evening lecture

The later, the worse it is for me. I need several hours to come back down

And even though I usually go to bed at around 9, 9.30, if I'm giving a talk at 6 or 7

it takes me several hours to calm down and get into that restful state

And that is just, you know, energy levels. That is your fight or flight response coming online, increasing that adrenaline in your

body and even that cortisol. And you can't go to sleep with that level of that kind of neurochemical and hormone in

your system. It simply takes more time to go to sleep. This is another situation where that personal experiment on yourself is notable

journal about what works for you. You know, every single time I give a talk at six or seven

I need several hours. I'm not going to get a good sleep. So do not schedule an early morning

you know, big important thing to do because I'm going to need to sleep in the next day

Find that for you. Journaling is great to notice those trends in yourself, but self-experimentation

knowing some of the science behind it can be a very powerful tool to shift your life in the way

that you want it to go. Here are my two motivations, and I'm a nerd, so I have neuroscience

motivations. Motivation number one, I love this idea of giving my brain a bubble bath of great

neurochemicals first thing in the morning. I know it's benefiting my brain. And I love the idea that

part of those neurochemicals are growth factors because my favorite brain structure, the hippocampus

I know is getting bigger and fatter and fluffier every single time that I work out

Why is that important? It's because the hippocampus is one of the most sensitive brain areas to aging, and it

starts to lose its connections. And I am motivated by making my own hippocampus as big and fat and fluffy as I can so that

even if I get dementia, which I have in my family heredity, in my family history, that

it's going to take longer for that dementia to have an effect of my memory

Why? Because I made it big and fat and fluffy with my morning workouts

There are so many different brain benefits for exercise, almost too many to talk about

We've talked about the benefit long-term for the hippocampus. It grows new hippocampal brain cells, making it big and fat and fluffy

We've talked about the beneficial effects of exercise on the prefrontal cortex, another

brain area very susceptible to aging, also increasing probably not brain cells, but the

support cells, the glia cells seem to be benefited by exercise. And certainly the functions of the prefrontal cortex benefit from exercise

Mood is beneficial. Motivation is, I can't point to the specific brain area that is important for motivation

but that positive habit that you create as you do regular exercise is a huge benefit

for aging. Just getting that positive habit into your life. Those are my top, how many did I name

Four. Hippocampal function, memory, prefrontal cortex, focus, mood, and motivation. All things that are benefiting from your regular exercise

One of the most interesting things in my research, I started with looking at the effects of physical activity on the brain

And I found, oh, decreased depression, decreased anxiety levels, increased focus. And then I and people as students in my lab got interested in meditation as well

And so we did a very practical experiment. What would happen to people if they did just 13 minutes of a guided meditation every day

for three months compared to just listening to a podcast for the same amount of time for

three months? We found same kind of benefits, better mood, decreased anxiety, depression levels, and

better focus. So what's happening there? How could the stillness have the same effect as moving your

body and getting those neurochemicals going with movement? And the answer is, we're still not sure

but those are the benefits. You can reap some of the same benefits from physical activity

by bringing more meditation into your life. And today it's easier than it ever was

to bring that into your life with all the award-winning apps out there

You can even go to meditation classes and group meditation classes, online meditation classes

I'll tell you, I've tried it all. I've tried guided meditation. I've tried going to classes

I ended up finding a form of meditation that works beautifully for me

which is a tea meditation, which is meditation over the brewing and drinking of tea that I do

every morning in silence. And the ritual of brewing and drinking tea, it has steps that you

have to do in a certain order. Somehow that keeps me in the flow of the meditation. There's always

something that comes next. That's again, part of my self-experimentation. Sorry, Deepak and Oprah

I tried to follow your guided meditation and you worked for a little while, but what worked best

for me is this wonderful tea meditation. So try it, try that, try the apps, see how you can find

a moment and notice the benefits of silence on your mood and your focus

If I was appointed Surgeon General tomorrow, here would be my message to everybody in the

United States, everybody in the world, actually. And that is physical activity is the most transformative thing that you could do, not

only for your body, but for your brain as well. That is the key message

And you don't have to become a marathon runner or triathlete to get these benefits because

even 10 minutes of walking will start to give you immediate benefits in terms of decreasing

anxiety levels, decreasing depression levels. That's what everybody needs right now. And so my platform would be move, move more is the simple message that I would give for everybody because it'll benefit your body and your brain

Chapter two, the formula behind exercise driven brain optimization. The most common question that people ask is

just tell me exactly what I need to do to get all those great brainwaves

benefits you talk about. And in fact, they put their finger on exactly why I wanted to start

to explore this. I was interested in that exercise prescription. What is the best form of exercise

for me today to maximize my cognitive function? And perhaps even more importantly, what is that

long-term exercise prescription that's going to make my brain and keep my brain as big and fat

and fluffy and healthy as it can be as I age? Well, I'm sorry to say that I don't know the full answer

to that question, but here's the take-homes that I can tell you today

the science-based take-homes that I can tell you today. Take-home number one is something we've already said

which is the easiest way to start to reap the benefits of exercise in the brain is that 10-minute walk

Even 10 minutes of just walking can decrease your anxiety and depression levels

Again, something that everybody needs. That's why when you can't handle it anymore and you decide to go out for a walk, that's

why you feel better. It is that neurochemical bubble bath working. But what about those long-term effects

So we know that if you do correlational studies, and this is one of my favorite studies that

was done in Sweden on a group of Swedish women. It was a 45-year follow-up study. So in the 1960s

they found a group of women in their 40s, and they characterized them as low-fit, mid-fit

or high-fit. And then 44 years later, they came back. They can do whatever they wanted during

those 44 years. 44 years later, the researchers came back and they asked what happened to those

women that were low fit, mid fit, or high fit. And what they found was relative to the low fit

women, the high fit women staved off dementia for nine extra years. Wow. Nine extra years. That's

amazing. Is that the formula? There's not really a formula because they were high fit and they

didn't really measure the exercise, but it suggested that exercise was helping their brain

stave off dementia. And we have a clear idea why that might be, as we've been talking about those

growth factors that happen with regular exercise, make your brain big and flat, fat and fluffy

would be able to stave off, theoretically, dementia. But that's just a correlation

And correlation does not equal causation. So maybe it is the high-fit women had better

heart function. Maybe that was the key to staving off dementia. Maybe something about the circulatory

system. Maybe that helped them sleep better. Maybe it was really the sleep and not the exercise

There's lots of open questions there. But here's what we do know, that you can start to reap

significant brain benefits, not over 44 years, but over three months. And these are studies that

I've done in my lab, we showed that low fit people that exercise for just two to three times a week

45 minutes cardio workout, they happen to be doing spinning, but anything that gets your heart rate

up for 45 minutes would be equivalent. They got significant improvements in their baseline mood

state. Their prefrontal function got significantly better at baseline, not just right after exercise

And their hippocampal function got significantly better. So even if you are sedentary right now, that is doable

Two to three times a week of 45 minutes is what my studies have shown can significantly

improve your brain function. But then what about the next group of people

I'm already working out. What am I doing enough? What is enough

And for that group of people, we looked at the effects of exercise as much as you'd like

for three months, more than you like, more than you're exercising now for the next three months

In a group of mid-fit people, they were already exercising about two times a week, good cardio

workouts for at least 45 minutes. And what we found was every additional drop of sweat counted

That is the more you exercise above that, the more brain benefits you got in terms of

better mood, better prefrontal function, and better hippocampal function. So not quite the exact formula, but we're starting to work our way towards what we need

to do to really reap those brain benefits of exercise. We were really interested in asking, well, what changed in these people's brains that were already working out

And I think that first, this is a great moment to acknowledge that physical activity is doing so much

It's changing. It's improving your cardiovascular function. It's improving the blood vessel kind of level, the physiology of your blood vessels

It is improving your oxygenation in your brain as well as this neurochemical bubble bath

So what I think is happening in that study that I kind of, I summarized for you by saying

every drop of sweat helps for your brain is that I think that those people are benefiting

from even higher levels of baseline dopamine and serotonin. So you are just kind of keeping those dopamine serotonin levels higher for a longer period

of time, better baseline mood. I think you are growing more hippocampal brain cells and strengthening the prefrontal cortex

more than somebody that is sedentary, for example. And you're kind of on a roll

You're leveraging those changes and you're getting even more in. It's all the same formula, but you get more

But every drop of sweat counts. And to ask the question that people might be thinking, can I exercise too much

And of course, everything comes on a U-shaped curve. So is too much chocolate bad for you

Yes. Yes, it is. It's too much exercise bad for your body and your brain

Absolutely. We can understand that in terms of stress on your body. But too much of anything is bad for your brain

Probably not most of us can get to that high enough exercise level

Maybe it's those kind of obsessive athletes or Olympic level athletes that really push

their bodies to the limits that might start to be negative for your brain

But most of us, and this is the good news, most of us have a really big window over which

to improve our brain function through our physical activity. My greatest dream is still around this idea of optimizing exercise prescription But it goes beyond exercise I told you that exercise and meditation have similar effects on the brain

It's really all those brain beneficial activities. And I would love to develop ways

to start to identify those patterns of activities that are most beneficial for different populations

I happen to be dean of the College of Arts and Science. I have 9,000 students

What are the most beneficial things for college students that start off, you know, happy-go-lucky

in September, but then it gets more and more and more stressful as the finals come up

What are those things that they can be doing, you know, to maximize their brain learning

potential in the fall and decrease their stress, anxiety, decrease procrastination as the finals

come up? And what about when you get out in the workforce

What can you do over different parts of your career when you're first starting out

When you're mid-career, when you're post-career, what are those brain beneficial activities

that you should be bringing into your life? And of course, the ultimate question, which is one that fascinated me from the very beginning

What is that lifelong story, that trajectory of what we should be doing for our gender

for our age, for our ethnic group, for our genetic background that will make the aging

process most beautiful for us? That is the question. If I could answer that question, I would be golden

I just gave you, you know, the ultimate, these are all the questions that I'd like to answer

And I've learned in my research, you have to take advantage of the situation that you're in right now

What tools do you have? Do I have lots of old people to test right now? No, I don't

What do I do have are lots of students that would benefit from all of this

So you can imagine that my question number one surrounds university students

And obviously, that is that is my number one goal as dean

I am very much responsible for their academic trajectory, but really I consider myself

responsible for their brain health. And so all of these ideas are kind of funneling in

to that work that I'm doing. Chapter three, are the neurological benefits of exercise overstated

Here's that most skeptical question that I get about all the exercise work

And that is, well, Wendy, there's all these correlations. They're correlations and they're very optimistic

But when you go to the randomized control studies, a lot of those results are more subtle

They're not that breathtaking. And maybe there are other things that are involved, like sleep, like cardiovascular

function, like respiratory, you know, oxygen levels that don't have nearly as much to do

with exercise as you're saying. What do you say to that? And I say, you're absolutely right

The correlations are so optimistic, but they point us in a particular direction

And while I agree that some of the human experiments have more subtle effects, what I lean on in my continued optimism and my hypotheses about the transformative effects of exercise on the brain are the studies in animals that have shown true growth of hippocampal brain cells with exercise

exercise. They are so convincing because they show exactly how much the hippocampus grows

with increased exercise, the longevity that comes with hippocampal function. In fact

my own advisor as an undergraduate looked at the effects of enriched environments on brain function

She created this enriched environment kind of scenario, which is kind of like, think of it like

a Disney World of rat cages for rats. So you let rats live in Disney World with other rats and lots

of toys to play with and different toys. And you compare their brains to rats that live in kind of

a shoebox with maybe one other rat and no toys. Is there a difference? And this was the woman who

defined brain plasticity, who kind of discovered adult brain plasticity. Her name was Professor

Marion Diamond at UC Berkeley. And she showed that rats raised in those enriched environments

the actual outer covering of the brain got significantly thicker. And you know what

experiment showed the biggest anatomical brain change with that enriched environment that we

later know was coming from all the running around the rats were doing in Disney World. It was

pregnant mother rats being raised in these enriched environments. And then they looked

at the babies that were born. Those babies whose mothers ran around the enriched environment

that Disney World of rat cages, their brains were the biggest compared to the offspring of

mother rats that were raised in the shoebox. Those are the experiments that not only keep

me optimistic, but create a real model about what is going on with the brain, with exercise

and how this could be a true tool to help us age beautifully into our golden years

Let me be clear. I welcome all this skepticism. It makes our experiments better

But what I would say is that we can all learn from each other and together kind of devise

that perfect experiment. So we know how much the cardiovascular changes are contributing to the

brain functions that I'm interested in. We know how much sleep patterns are contributing to better

cognitive functions that I'm measuring as well. All of this is fodder for what we're all trying

to do, which is really trying to understand what goes on here. And so, yes, we still have a ways to

go. But all of these factors are important when one is discussing something as complicated

as physical activity. You might ask, is there mutual skepticism around? And the answer is yes

because so many of the phenomenon that we as scientists study are complicated like exercise

And I don't have time to learn all about cardiology. It took me all this time to learn

enough about neuroscience. And we become so specialized that we can pick out, ooh, you should

have been looking at that there. Well, you're a cardiologist, so you don't know about that

but let me raise my hand and tell you about that. That is part of what comes out of skepticism. And

you should have known about all the cardiology studies that I did or my colleagues did But again it all kind of funnels into trying to really make sure that we crossed all the T and dotted all the I in these very complicated phenomenon that we all trying to understand

What initially comes off as skepticism or criticism is absolutely kind of doable if one can come together across fields

That is one of the most difficult things to do, both within an institution or across institutions

But it is kind of the direction that science is taking. multidisciplinary, really trying to see all perspective. Neuroscience as a field is one of

the most multidisciplinary there is. It goes from molecular biology to behavior, and we all try and

understand aspects of it. But cardiology doesn't come in there. Bone science doesn't come in there

But all of them may have insight to doing that. I mean, it comes down to we get it's too easy to get caught up in the neuroscience and just looking at it from that perspective, even if it has multifaceted elements to the neuroscience perspective

But that is the future of science, is completely integrated for the whole body and for science in general

And it's a hard question to ask, but that's one that many institutions, including my own NYU, is trying to address

It's great to start with a simple definition of anxiety. So anxiety is the feeling of fear or worry, typically associated with situations of uncertainty

So it makes perfect sense why our global levels of anxiety have gone up over the last two and

a half, three years with a global pandemic. Nobody knew how to deal with this, a brand new, very, very scary, uncertain situation

but kind of reel it back into everyday life. Obviously, it pops up with lots of uncertain situations that many of us deal with every

single day. But it's important to realize that this human emotion anxiety, this normal human emotion

anxiety exists on a really, really, really wide spectrum. It goes from everyday anxiety that can be from mildly annoying to kind of really, really

annoying and really a drain on you. But then it goes all the way up to clinical levels of anxiety

That becomes a different beast. That becomes something that you must go see a medical

professional to deal with. All of the techniques and the neuroscience that I talk about in my

book, Good Anxiety, were really written for everyday anxiety. Now, that doesn't mean that

somebody with clinical anxiety can't use those techniques. It's just not the only thing that one

should use. If you have clinical anxiety, you should absolutely go see a medical professional

But I just wanted to make that clarification because there is a difference and all of the

approaches that I'm talking about are really for those of us, just everybody that has everyday

anxiety. One thing that trips essentially all of us up is something called the negativity bias

which says that we are more prone to see the negative sides of things than the positive side

Why? It's a safety mechanism. You want to be extra careful if you are going to be

in a dangerous situation rather than say, oh, I'm going to be just fine

And so it is a protective evolutionary safety mechanism. But what happens is if you're tired, if you're stressed, if lots of problems are coming up

you will tend to see the world. Oh, my God, they hate me

This person hates me. I'm never going to get the job. I'm never going to lose the weight that I want to lose

All these things come up as part of that negativity bias. And that becomes part of what I like to call the big kind of stone of anxiety that you wear around your neck every day, kind of dragging along with you

Part of that is the negativity bias. There are many, many different brain areas that get activated with anxiety, but simplistically

there's one that we know that is particularly activated in the similar emotions of fear and

anxiety, and that is a brain structure called the amygdala. The amygdala is one that is kind of

automatically activated when there is a possibility. You hear that bump in the

night that launches your anxiety. And the brain area that could help that calming that might happen

in that situation is the prefrontal cortex, the area that's involved in executive function. It

helps you kind of order your day. But unfortunately, in situations of high stress, high anxiety

What happens is not only is your amygdala activated, but your prefrontal cortex gets

shut down too. So that makes the situation even worse. And so that's part of what can happen when one can kind of devolve into a really serious

situation or case of anxiety. Brain plasticity is the brain's extraordinary ability to change and rewire itself

in response to the external environment. And probably the most common form of brain plasticity

that you've done today, I've done today already, is new learning. Every time you learn something new

there's a change in my favorite brain structure, the hippocampus, that allows for the laying down of that new memory

This is something we're doing all the time, every day. But I've, in my work, tried to use and explore the boundaries of brain plasticity to address some very challenging issues that have come into the society, particularly our high anxiety levels

I use brain plasticity as the core of my entire research program

Memory, I started out studying memory as a form of brain plasticity. the effects of exercise on the brain

Exercise is one of the best examples of positive brain plasticity. But when I started getting into anxiety

I realized how critical brain plasticity was to address anxiety. Because one of the first things that I wanted to do

was flip the script on our whole mindset around anxiety You hear the word anxiety you think oh God that the thing I want to kick out the door It a disease I have it I don know how to

get rid of it. But here's the flip that is dependent on our ability to have brain plasticity

our ability to learn basically. And that is that anxiety is a normal human emotion. We all have it

So you're never going to get rid of it. And we all have it because it is protective

It evolved to protect us. And so my whole book, Good Anxiety, is teaching us to look at anxiety in a different way

to really flip the script on anxiety and use neuroscience and tools from psychology as well

to learn how to take advantage of anxiety and learn about the gifts or superpowers that come from it

When I started writing this book, Good Anxiety, it was because I noticed in my students and my friends

my colleagues, myself, higher levels of anxiety. And this was well before the pandemic started

And so I started to write about what I knew about neuroscience and psychology

that could really help us understand and address anxiety. But in the middle of writing the book

there was something that happened that completely changed the book for me

and changed my attitude towards anxiety. And it wasn't, it included anxiety

but it was really a really situation of grief and something that all of us unfortunately have to go through

In the period of three months, I lost my father and my younger brother, both of heart attacks

And I can tell you, it was one of the most difficult times I've ever gone through in my whole life

And so it was impossible to write my book about anxiety. I put it on the side

I just had to deal with all these feelings of grief, of sadness, of anxiety

Am I going to feel better? and it was rough. And it took a while to come back

I used all the tools that I knew. I exercised, got myself into exercise

I reached out to my friends. I did my regular meditation. And I remember one day I was doing a video exercise

which is what I do every day. And I hadn't seen this video before

But the trainer that day said something that helped me so much

And that was in the context of physical activity. She said, with great pain comes great wisdom

And I thought, oh my God, that is what's coming from the great pain of the grief

including anxiety mixed in that I'd gone through. What is the great wisdom

The great wisdom was that underlined that, that it was so painful and so acute because

there was so much love behind that emotion. And I thought that is the thought and the intention that I need to help me get out

I finished my emergence from this grief that what's behind that was so much love and that

you know, it's the flip side of love, which is this great grief if your loved ones pass away

And that was so helpful for me at this moment. And then I realized it was transforming the way

that I was thinking about this anxiety book. Because if that terrible emotion

negative, horrible emotion of grief had this silver lining of wisdom, what about anxiety

Could anxiety be helpful? And was my book just going to be about techniques

to reduce the big, bad anxiety? Or was I going to approach it

as something that could be beneficial? That's when the book changed for me

It became a quest that I needed something to put my mind on, and I dove into trying to find

gifts or superpowers or beneficial elements from all the different kinds of anxiety that I read

about, that I experienced, that I was writing about already. And that's how I came up with the

six gifts or superpowers of anxiety. They would not have come to light if I didn't go through this

experience in the middle of writing this book. But it shifted the way that I thought about anxiety

It shifted the way that I was able to recover from this. And it shifted my thoughts about

human emotion in general. In Good Anxiety, I talk about six superpowers, but let me mention

my top three. The first one is a superpower of productivity. Did you realize that your own

form of anxiety could be a superpower of productivity? And it works like this. It focuses

on one of the most common forms of anxiety that we all suffer from. I certainly suffer from it

myself, which is that what if list. What if you didn't do that? Or what if you did that and you

didn't do it right. And for me, it hits me right before I'm going to go to sleep and it disrupts

my sleep. So what do you do? That is your anxiety welling up. And so here is the trick that anxiety

is focused on things that are important to you in life. That is the key. You don't get up in the

middle of the night worrying, oh my God, I didn't finish that last episode of the next Netflix

series I'm watching, right? It's about the project you're working on, about a really important

relationship. So these are things that are important to you. And so the way to transform

it is to turn that what if list into a to-do list, take each one of them and do an action

you know, put an action on each one of them, whether it's asking a friend for help

doing something, Googling something, and go tick through them one by one. How does that help

It helps because evolutionarily, anxiety evolved to have us put an action on it

Typically, 2.5 million years ago, it was either you fight the danger that was causing anxiety

or you run away from it. That is the fight or flight response

And so you can help alleviate that form of anxiety by putting an action on it

Even if it is, I'm going to ask a friend. I'm going to spend 30 minutes of detailed work on this thing that I'm worried about

That is how you get productivity from your anxiety. And that is superpower number one

Superpower number two is the superpower of flow. And this one I'm very proud of because all the data out there says that anxiety can eliminate flow

So flow. is the psychological state. I like to think about it as it's those moments that you're doing

something that you're really good at and it's really exceptional. Time stands still. You know

it's like you're moving in slow motion and everything is just going beautifully. And I

always think I'm a student of the cello. I always think of Yo-Yo Ma, who's playing the Bach solo

cello suites, you know, not every single time, but that one time at Carnegie Hall

The sound was just so beautiful. He was in flow. And so I knew I wanted to talk about flow, but I couldn't just say, well, sorry, if you

have anxiety, no flow for you. And so I was experiencing writer's block

I didn't know how I was going to bring this concept in without being very just depressing

about it. And so to alleviate my writer's block, I went to yoga class, a yoga class

So I go to yoga class. I'm doing my up dog, my down dog

I flipped the dog. I was doing really well. And then I get to the end of class and I go into my favorite pose, which is, of course

Shavasana. Laying down in Shavasana. And it hits me that I am flowing in Shavasana, that I am laying on the ground still better

than anybody has laid down on the ground still. At least I feel like I'm flowing in Shavasana

Okay, maybe it's not classic flow. Maybe it's micro flow. And so I came up with this concept of micro flow

And then I realized that my micro flowing shavasana was even sweeter

Why? Because I had writer's block. I had that anxiety about what was going to happen

I didn't know that uncertainty was coming in. And so that I realized that your own anxiety can make your own moments of microflow, which

we all have during the day, even if you don't realize you do, make them even sweeter

And so it's kind of a realization that your own anxieties helping those moments of microflow

be even, as I like to say, flowier. That's superpower number two

Superpower number three that comes from your own anxiety is my favorite of all the superpowers

And it comes from my own evaluation of my own anxiety, my own history of anxiety

And I was a very, very shy young girl growing up. So, you know, hiding behind my mom's legs

I was always interested in class, but always had this fear of asking questions in class

Why? For the same reason, everybody's afraid. You're afraid you're going to say something stupid

and you're going to look like an idiot in front of the whole class. So I had that fear all through

my very, very long educational process. But I was interested in teaching and in academia. So one day

I find myself at the front of the classroom. And here's what I realized. I didn't realize it then

but I realized it later, that that lifelong anxiety of shyness and being afraid to ask in

class gave me a superpower of teaching in that classroom because I knew instinctually that there

were maybe 10 times as many people that had questions that didn't have the bravery to lift

their hand up, but they were just having silent questions in their brain. So I always came early

stayed late, made sure that I had a moment of private time to answer questions for everybody

And so that became my superpower, but here's how it works for everybody

Think about that anxiety that is most familiar to you, your most common form of anxiety. You know

what it feels like. You know what it looks like. All you have to do is turn that anxiety to the

outside and notice when others might be suffering from that same form of anxiety And here your superpower All you have to do is give a kind word a simple helping hand in that situation

That becomes your own superpower of anxiety that's based on your own form of anxiety

And I love this superpower because I can't think of anything that we need more in the world today

than higher levels of empathy. Cognitive flexibility is the idea that we are able to

look at and approach situations in lots of different ways. We are also habit-forming animals

and sometimes without even knowing it, you are approaching the same situation, the one situation

the same way that you approached it when you were, you know, six years old. Cognitive flexibility

says that if there is a realization, there are other ways to approach it. You have the ability

to do just that. An important concept that people often want to build up more in themselves

is this idea of resilience. Can I withstand difficult situations and come out stronger or

just as good as before that situation happened? It is such an important skill to build up

And one of my favorite experiments to address this was an experiment done in animal model systems

And they compared two maybe very familiar sounding situations. They raised young animals, these were young rats, in situations where they never had a care in the world

One set of rats, no stress, all the food, all the care, no problems at all, all the water

great place to live for all of their life. Another group of rats, young rats, were exposed to mild difficulty all through their growing up

Some, you know, not terrible, you know, stresses, but mild stresses regularly

And then at some point in time when they became just young adults

these rats were exposed to a very difficult situation. They had to swim and water

and they had to swim for a long time to really get through it. What happened

Well, those rats that grew up with no stress at all, they had a very, very difficult time

Their adrenaline levels, their stress hormones really spiked up. They had a long time to recover

But those other rats that had intermediate, intermittent, mild stress, they came out of

it like, oh, that's fine. Give me a little stress. I'm just fine

And so you think about this, think about this in your own life. Part of the learning, part of that silver lining that comes from even the most difficult

situations is the psychological knowledge that you could come out of it, that you got

through it, that your body got through it and maybe it'll come up again. Well, you know that

you can come through it. That is the core of how one can kind of build up more resilience in one's

own life. It's absolutely clear that there's a wide range of kind of personality types, some that are

less prone to anxiety, some that might be more prone to anxiety. Again, understanding that we

all have certain level of anxiety. It is a normal human emotion. And so I come back to this idea of

brain plasticity, that we are all capable of learning. Now, if I take opera lessons

will I become Maria Callis? No, I will not. But will I improve my vocal range better than I am

today Yes I will And I apply that to resilience and dealing with anxiety at the same time There are systematic ways that you can approach it learn how you approach it best get help from the outside and systematic intentional attempts to build up your

positive coping mechanisms will benefit you in the long run. There's always going to be a tug of war

a push and pull between your resilience, your negativity bias, your anxiety levels

your happiness levels. And it's all at play because all of that is part of our kind of

normal kaleidoscope of human emotions. And again, something that is comforting to me

hopefully it'll be comforting to you, is that all of these more difficult or uncomfortable emotions

anxiety, sadness, worry, all of them are normal. And they're there, again, they are there to protect us

They're there to warn us about different things. And if I was happy all the time

then it wouldn't be happy anymore. It would be just normal. Those difficult emotions lift up the

what we call happy right now, but they are also there for warning

If I didn't get scared for certain situations, I would just walk in with, you know, eyes wide open to a really, really dangerous situation

They're there to protect us. And that really gives me comfort. And now that doesn't necessarily help somebody that has really, you know, high levels of responsiveness to sadness or worry or fear

And that's where little by little you can build up and you can learn to respond to it

build up your positive coping mechanisms to help and counteract those situations of sadness or

anxiety. I talk about in my book over 40 different tools to decrease anxiety that everybody can use

today. They're simple. They're not going to cost you thousands of dollars. There are things that

you can try in your everyday life. And they're very powerful. It's absolutely normal that your

level of resilience might go up and then slide back and go up again and slide back. It all depends

on the level of stress that you're dealing with. And sometimes you really can kick it in the butt

And other times you're not, you know, you need time to recover. That is absolutely normal

But again, all of that is building up your overall resilience. You know, if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger

I love that saying because I think it's absolutely true, absolutely true for your resilience

It's not about whether you have it or not. It's just about, you know, recovering from it

You're going to get stronger and stronger. Your resilience is getting stronger and stronger as you deal with all of the stresses in life

That's how I think about it. One of the things that everybody does, including myself, when dealing with anxiety is everybody has coping mechanisms

You have positive ones and negative ones. And how do I define positive versus negative

Well, kind of beneficial is positive and less beneficial, maybe in the moment, but less overall beneficial are those negative coping mechanisms

What are they? Alcohol, drugs, those kinds of smoking, those kinds of things that could give you immediate relief perhaps from your anxiety, but not good for the long term

Positive coping mechanisms I talk about in the book include things like, we've already talked about, the positive effects of exercise on anxiety, on meditation

But one that is so powerful is this idea of having an activist mindset What is that An activist mindset is one that is flexible that can look at a situation and see lots of different possibilities Everything

from that negativity bias that says, oh my God, this is going to be terrible, all the way to, oh

actually, maybe this is going to teach me something really interesting, really new

Now, this is a really important part of my book, this idea of an activist mindset

And I think it was emphasized because of this situation that really shaped the book, Good Anxiety, which is the difficult passing of two of my family members

And really coming out of that with a beautiful example of an activist mindset

Everybody's going to experience loss of a loved one during their lifetime

Most everybody will. And my activist mindset was knowing that all of that pain and that loss and that sadness

was undergirded by love for these people. And that was my activist mindset

And I brought that beautiful, helpful, kind of almost life-saving example of activist mindset to my addressing anxiety

And what is it about my anxiety, my particular form of anxiety that is difficult

Can I bring a superpower or a gift from that? And that is, again, the core of the book and what I try and do in my own life

And what I describe throughout the book is really bringing a new perspective, new ways

to look at new science-based ways to look at anxiety as an opportunity to learn, to

grow, and to learn more about yourself. to have an activist mindset, to be able to look at a situation and see multiple different ways

that you could approach it requires something called cognitive flexibility. It requires that

you're not going to do the same kind of response, have the same response patterns as you've had

for perhaps many years, perhaps your lifetime, but you're going to try something new. Sometimes

it's hard. Sometimes it's challenging. But if you practice it in different ways and every single day

it can be something that becomes a very powerful tool. And the way that you could kind of approach

it that I do, I find it motivating, is before you actually try it on yourself, that's the hard part

Think about the people that you admire that approach things in a particular way. Leaders

in your work, the leaders of your family and the way that they handle family disputes

bosses that handle conflict situations in a beautiful way. Maybe that's not the way that you are handling situations, but you can use an activist mindset

to first identify a role model and then use your own cognitive flexibility to bring that

same behavior into the situation where you're the one trying to kind of diffuse a situation

or convince somebody to do something in a particular way. That is a wonderful way in

It allows you to appreciate kind of the friends, work friends, relationships that are already

in your life and gives you a wonderful kind of a roadmap to head towards as you practice

your activist mindset