The Developing Brain - Dr Timothy Jennings | Springwood SDA Church

Summary

Dr. Timothy Jennings discusses the fascinating intricacies of brain development, focusing on the profound impact that both genetic and environmental factors have. The brain's structure, with its billions of neurons and trillions of supportive cells, is highly interconnected. Throughout the talk, Jennings highlights how prenatal conditions, parental involvement, and even spirituality can influence brain circuitry. The importance of fostering a nurturing, stress-free environment for expecting mothers and children is underscored as a means of optimizing cognitive and emotional development. Additionally, Jennings touches upon the role of epigenetics and transgenerational effects, and how lifestyle choices including diet, exercise, and media consumption can affect brain health for generations. From prenatal influences to adolescent development, the discussion sheds light on the critical role parents and society play in shaping a healthy brain and well-rounded individual.

Highlights

• The brain consists of approximately 100 billion neurons, each capable of forming thousands of connections 🌌.
• Albert Einstein's brain had a higher density of neuron connections despite having fewer neurons, underscoring the importance of connectivity 🔬.
• Head injuries are linked to long-term cognitive issues; safety is vital to preserving brain function 🪖.
• Epigenetics shows we can pass on traits not by changing DNA sequence but by altering gene expression 📜.
• Media consumption before age two can hinder language development—zero screen time is recommended under age two 📵.
• Activities promoting empathy and compassion activate brain areas that improve mental health and reduce fear 🤗.

Key Takeaways

• Our brains are designed for growth and adaptation, which is influenced by our environment and lifestyle choices 🧠.
• Prenatal and early childhood conditions significantly impact brain development; nurturing environments lead to healthier outcomes for children 🌱.
• Epigenetic changes highlight how our behavior can affect our genetic expression, impacting future generations 🌐.
• Healthy diet, physical activity, and minimal stress during pregnancy contribute to optimal brain development 🍎.
• Media consumption and parenting styles have profound effects on children's cognitive and emotional development 📺.
• Spiritual and altruistic activities can enhance mental well-being and brain function by altering neural pathways positively ✨.

Overview

Dr. Timothy Jennings explores the developmental trajectory of the brain, providing insight into the complex interplay between the brain's billions of neurons and their connections. By examining both genetic and environmental influences, Jennings lays bare the formative processes shaping our cognitive capabilities. He emphasizes that while the brain is an inherently complex organ, external influences such as a mother's stress level or alcohol intake during pregnancy can have long-lasting effects on a child's psychological and physiological health.

Driven by the principle of neuroplasticity, Jennings highlights the concept of epigenetics, where an organism's environment can alter gene expression without changing the DNA sequence itself. These changes can have cascading effects across generations. From the impact of media and education to the benefits of maintaining a healthy diet and nurturing relationships, the talk underscores the critical role these factors play in a child's overall brain health and development.

The lecture concludes with a call to action, urging parents and caregivers to cultivate nurturing, safe, and stimulating environments that not only enhance brain function but also build resilience against mental illnesses. Jennings encourages the inclusion of spiritual and altruistic pursuits, which have been shown to activate neural pathways that improve compassion and empathy, thus promoting mental well-being. Through actionable guidance, the presentation empowers listeners to positively influence their children's cognitive and emotional development.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Introduction to Brain Development The chapter 'Introduction to Brain Development' provides an overview of the different factors influencing brain development, including parental, environmental, media, and spiritual influences. It highlights the complexity of the brain, which consists of approximately 100 billion neurons and over one trillion supporting cells, with each neuron capable of forming up to 10,000 connections with other cells.
• 03:00 - 06:00: Brain Structure and Functionality In this chapter, the complexity and importance of brain interconnections are discussed, highlighting that the brain's 40 quadrillion interconnections play a crucial role in establishing a smart network circuitry. An example is given of Albert Einstein's brain, which, when biopsied, revealed fewer neurons per cubic centimeter compared to the average person. However, it had significantly more neuron-to-neuron connections, emphasizing the significance of connections over the sheer number of neurons in determining cognitive capability and intelligence.
• 06:00 - 09:00: Parental and Environmental Influences The chapter discusses the importance of neural connections and brain circuitry in processing complex information. It highlights the brain's vulnerability, being soft like a banana within the hard case of the skull, making it susceptible to bruising during rapid acceleration or deceleration, leading to concussions. Repeated concussions increase the risk of dementia later in life. The text underscores that the primary cause of head injuries in America is bicycle accidents.
• 09:00 - 12:00: Epigenetics and Brain Development The chapter discusses the impact of sports-related head injuries, particularly in soccer and American football, on the risk of dementia as individuals age. It highlights a recent study linking frequent headers in soccer to increased dementia risk and draws a parallel to the well-known connection between head injuries in American football and cognitive decline. The chapter also touches on the significance of the brain's energy consumption, emphasizing that despite its relatively small weight of about 3 pounds (approximately 1.5 kilograms), which constitutes 1-2% of body weight, it consumes 20% of the body's energy, underlining its importance and complexity.
• 12:00 - 15:00: Impact of Diet and Nutrition The chapter titled 'Impact of Diet and Nutrition' discusses the complexity and significance of the human brain in relation to genetics and development. It highlights that more than 50% of human DNA codes for the brain, despite the brain comprising only 2 to 3 percent of body size, underlining its complexity. During fetal development, more than twice as many nerve cells (neurons) are produced than are eventually utilized, with a remarkable rate of up to fifty thousand neurons being generated per unit time during certain developmental phases. This information underscores the intricate processes involved in brain formation and the critical influence diet and nutrition can have on these processes.
• 15:00 - 18:00: Childhood Development and Neurogenesis The chapter discusses the process of brain development and neurogenesis in early childhood, highlighting that from birth to eight years the brain undergoes a reduction in neurons. It compares this natural process of neural reduction to Michelangelo sculpting a block of marble, suggesting that the reduction is purposeful and necessary for proper brain development.
• 18:00 - 21:00: Media and Technological Influences The chapter 'Media and Technological Influences' discusses how exposure to various activities and experiences can shape the developing neural circuitry in children's brains. The brain is likened to a masterpiece that is sculpted over time, with circuits that are frequently activated expanding and growing more intricate, while those not in use are pared down and eliminated. This process of brain development is normal and well-understood. The text emphasizes the importance of introducing deliberate activities and experiences into children's environments to positively influence their cognitive development.
• 21:00 - 24:00: Spiritual and Psychological Factors The chapter discusses the concept of neurogenesis, which peaks in girls at age eleven and boys at age twelve, followed by neural pruning. This process involves the growth of neurons before puberty to aid in developing secondary sexual characteristics. The chapter also highlights the vulnerability of children during these developmental years to exploitation and exposure to sexual deviance, which can alter their arousal circuits.
• 24:00 - 27:00: Therapy and Neural Rewiring The chapter "Therapy and Neural Rewiring" discusses the maturation of white matter in the brain during developmental years, particularly focusing on the prefrontal cortex. This part of the brain, crucial for reasoning, planning, and self-restraint, is the last to fully develop, completing around the age of 25. This maturation process is important in understanding behaviors linked to paraphilias, such as voyeurism and pornography addiction.
• 27:00 - 30:00: Prenatal and Postnatal Factors The chapter explores how the reactions of younger and older teens differ when exposed to emotional stimuli, with a focus on the brain's development. Younger teens are more likely to activate their amygdala or emotion circuits, while older teens engage their prefrontal cortex to process their response before answering. It highlights the role of parents in influencing the developing brain through both genetic inheritance and the environment they provide. Additionally, the concept of epigenetics, which was introduced by Konrad Waddington in 1957, is briefly introduced, emphasizing its relevance to understanding the developmental processes.
• 30:00 - 33:00: Conclusion and Summary This chapter discusses the concept that although different cells in the body, such as skin, bone, heart, brain, and retinal cells, seem quite different, they all share the same DNA and chromosomes. The chapter elaborates on a hypothesis that proposes the existence of a set of instructions either inside or on the DNA which direct which genes are turned on or off in different parts of the body. This concept is encapsulated by the term 'epigenetics,' coined to describe this regulatory system above or beyond the basic genetic code.

The Developing Brain - Dr Timothy Jennings | Springwood SDA Church Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 so overview of our talk on the developing brain we're gonna first look at the brain and then we're like a parental and environmental influences on the brain media influences on the brain and spiritual influences on the brain the brain has a hundred billion neurons approximately a hundred billion neurons or nerve cells over one-trillion supporting cells and each brain cell can have up to 10,000 connections to other
• 00:30 - 01:00 brain cells makes it highly interconnected up to 40 quadrillion interconnections and these interconnections are really critical to have a smart network circuitry in your brain albert einstein domin donated his brain to science and they biopsied his brain and he had less neurons per cubic centimeter than the average person but he had significantly more neuron to neuron connections than the average person per cubic centimeter and if those
• 01:00 - 01:30 neuron to neuron connections that make a complex circuitry or system more information can be processed to multiple different angles and that is really critical and we get that by exercising the various neural circuits the brain is soft kind of like a banana in side of hard case your skull so a rapid acceleration deceleration will cause the brain to bounce it on your skull causing it to bruise because that a concussion and concussions the more concussions you have the more risk of dementia you have later number one reason for head injuries in America or bicycle accidents
• 01:30 - 02:00 and the recent study showed that more headers in soccer are associated with dementia when you age so we all know about regular American football and the head injuries that associated with dementia there the way the brain weighs around three pounds which is and I'm sorry I didn't convert that to kilograms but I think it's like one and a half kilograms and it's one to two percent of your body weight but it uses 20% of your body's energy the human brain is so
• 02:00 - 02:30 complex that more than 50% of the genome or the information in your genes code for your brain even though it's only 2 to 3 percent of your body size 50% of your DNA codes for the brain that's how complex it is during brain development more than twice as many nerve are produced in fetal development then are eventually used and during fetal development there are times when fifty thousand neurons are being produced per
• 02:30 - 03:00 second from birth to the first eight years of life the brain is busy killing off neurons by the millions a child at age eight will have millions of neurons less than that child had when that child was born first this doesn't sound too good no somebody everything I needed that extra several million neurons but the way you conceptualized this is Michelangelo's block of marble when Michelangelo gets it and Michelangelo's block of marble when he's done with it
• 03:00 - 03:30 when he's done he has less marble doesn't he but he has a masterpiece the brain comes into the world prepared to be acted upon by education environment circumstances neural circuits which are being fired and and exercised will expand and grow more complex neural circuits which are not being used will be pruned back and deleted this is normal brain development we understand this process it's critical then you can introduce activities and experiences into children's brains that will influence the actual developing circuitry of that brain a second wave of
• 03:30 - 04:00 neurogenesis hits and Peaks and girls at age eleven and boys at age twelve followed by several more years of neural pruning and this is of course the neurons that are coming in just before puberty to help the development of secondary sexual characteristics and this these years of childhood development are vulnerable years for exploitation if kids are exploited or exposed to various sexual deviance 'as they can actually have altered or arousal circuits where things that normally wouldn't arouse them would
• 04:00 - 04:30 contribute to arousal z' particularly the paraphilias which are things like voyeurism fraud or ism pornography addiction and things like this during these developmental years white matter maturation progresses from the back of the brain to the front of the brain the last part of the brain to fully develop is the prefrontal cortex where you reason think organize plan strategize self restrain its it's the really the the highest portion of our reasoning capacities and that finishes around age twenty-five around age twenty-five when shown faces and asked to describe what
• 04:30 - 05:00 they see the emotions younger teens will activate their amygdala or emotion circuits older teens will begin activating prefrontal cortex to think about it before the answer so parents influence the developing brain both by the heredity that genes they pass along and the environment in which they raise the child in now there's a term called epigenetics epi it was it was designed it came up by Konrad wanting to in 1957 he noticed that every cell of your body
• 05:00 - 05:30 has the same DNA the same chromosomes yet your skin cells are quite different than your bone cells which are different than your heart cells which are different than your brain cells which are different than your retinal cells but all the different sounds so different have the same complement of DNA so he hypothesized there must be some set of instructions sitting inside the DNA or on the DNA telling the DNA in the different parts of your bodies which genes to turn on and which genes to turn off and so he coined this term epi meaning above and genetics the genome
• 05:30 - 06:00 epigenetic instructions and in fact science is now proven this is exactly true there are epigenetics there's instructions that sit above the DNA telling the library of information which books to open and gather the recipes out of to produce those proteins and which ones to keep closed and these epigenetic modifications will be we're gonna explore how those get passed along down through generations things that happen in intrauterine environment that alter those expressions and then early childhood environment so as we go into
• 06:00 - 06:30 the epigenetic data I want you to consider these two mice and consider how closely related order this is a mother and a child from one of its litters a mother and a grandchild or a great grandchild from one of its litters are these mice that are brothers and sisters or cousins or or how closely related are they we will come back to it so this is simply a diagram of chromosomes and you remember your DNA is a double helix in order for the information that's stored in your DNA to be expressed this helix
• 06:30 - 07:00 this double helix has to unzip and the way it's so the way DNA is stored it's two sides stored together zipped together wrapped around histones packed into chromatin and packed into chromosomes so in order to get the information out it has to unpack unzip and unwind and along that way there's places things can do to shut that system down so methyl little tiny methyl groups come up a group if it attaches actually the DNA helix itself the zipper itself it's like just metaphorically think about getting
• 07:00 - 07:30 a shirttail caught on your zipper you get a shirttail caught in your zipper your zipper will not unzip these methyl groups do that to DNA regions wherever they attach they lock them down then this area will not unzip anymore so that the information there is no longer being expressed you can also modify by putting various chemical groups along the histones where the where the where the DNA is wrapping around and that can either stimulate more expression causes unwind and express or to lock it up where it won't Express and there are other modifiers as well including
• 07:30 - 08:00 non-coding RNA this has been ignored by biologists for years they had no idea what it was they never taught you about it in biology 101 it just wasn't even talked about but now we know that the non-coding RNA and he's not making protein so it's not coding in the sequence of protein production will actually splice genetic material together modifies gene expression so it actually affects how the epigenetic expression which genes are turned on which genes are turned off it suppresses an entire chromosome many of you know that women have two X chromosomes each
• 08:00 - 08:30 cell only needs one of those X chromosomes to express itself so every cell in a woman's body will randomly individually decide to shut one of those off and woman gets a X chromosome for mom and an x chromosome from dad and every cell in her body randomly decides to turn one of those off so some of her cells are expressing the X chromosome from dad and some of the cells are expressing the X chromosome from mom and this can contribute to a reason why women may have a thoughtless slight
• 08:30 - 09:00 increase autoimmune type disease because there's subtle differences in how those chromosomes may express themselves for instance many of you know that color blindness is carried our color vision is carried on the X chromosome so if a man gets the bad gene for color vision he only has one copy he's colorblind women get two copies so it's very rare for a woman to actually be colorblind because she'd have to have two bad genes in order to be colorblind but with our new technology with laser precision testing of the retina if a woman has a
• 09:00 - 09:30 colorblind father she be colorblind she looks at stuff she'll be able to tell but if they actually go in and look sell to sell some of the cells in our retina will be color blind because some of the cells in her retina will randomly turn on dad's X chromosome and that cell can't see color but the ones from mom that randomly turn on she can still see color but maybe not as precise and it's clear so in dim light she might have a harder time seeing color than she would have if she had two good genes so it also suppresses so it's so the non-coding RNA suppresses that entire chromosome it along gates
• 09:30 - 10:00 telomeres and telomeres of these like the caps on the end of your chromosomes think of it as the plastic caps on the end of your shoe strings it keeps your chromosomes organized and you have to have certain length telomeres in order for the cells to reproduce and copy themselves and this as a factor in aging when the telomeres short the cells can't copy themselves anymore the cells thin it's harder to heal after an injuries by older people have takes much longer to heal after an injury because their telomeres are very short and they can't produce cells as quickly and then defense against invading or DNA
• 10:00 - 10:30 sequences that are not natural to your DNA and so these are called transposons where some piece of DNA gets inserted into your DNA where it shouldn't be and the non-coding RNA will come in and lock that down so it can't express itself in damaging ways so with that in mind they looking at the epigenetics and how it can affect things they took fruit they took fruit flies and they exposed them to an antibiotic called eldena myosin and the generation that was exposed to kill denna myosin had these very weird out gross on their eyes then they let
• 10:30 - 11:00 this generation that had these weird outgrowth from the exposure to the gill dennah myosin begin to reproduce and for the next 13 generations every generation subsequent had these bulging out gross on their eyes even though those there was no DNA sequencing changed in other words there was no mutation in the actual DNA sequence and generations 2 through 13 were not exposed to the drug so this exposure the
• 11:00 - 11:30 drug altered the eyes and was passed down thirteen generations because the epigenetic information was changed and that altered how the gene was being expressed roundworms were fed a particular type of bacteria that caused them to exhibit a kind of dumpy experience and loss of a fluorescence and that passed down 40 generations even though the subsequent generations were not given this bacteria and there was no DNA sequencing change no there's no mutation in the DNA transgenerational effects on food supply grandfathers who had short food supply
• 11:30 - 12:00 during their adolescent period conferred greater risk of mortality under their grandsons and grandmothers had greater risk of mortality conferred to their granddaughters if they had a very short food supply like during World War two for instance to their granddaughters this was XY epigenetic modification based on the food supply during their adolescent period their genes altered and they passed that down to their Ranchettes men who smoked before the age of eleven increased the obesity in their sons but not their daughters because it alters a
• 12:00 - 12:30 gene expression on the y chromosome that has passed down to their sons smell of fear there's an interesting study it took these mice and that zero generation mice and they were conditioned to fear a particular smell called a seat of fee known and that's because these mice have an actual single receptor that smells for this particular smell and nothing else and so that in this particular gene codes for that receptor in their olfactory bulb and when they would expose them to a seat of fee known at the same time they would make a loud bang and so every time they
• 12:30 - 13:00 expose these mice to see Tofino and they would make this loud bang and startle them and scare them so they conditioned them to fear this smell and that activated this risk this gene which caused that particular receptor in their olfactory bulb to be increasingly expressed because they came became more and more sensitive to that smell as they became afraid of it that make sense to everyone now that's not surprising what's interesting though is the generations f1 and f2 which mean their children and grandchildren had decreased
• 13:00 - 13:30 methyl groups on the gene that codes for this particular receptor in their olfactory bulb so they had an increased expression of this particular olfactory smell meaning that they were born afraid of this smell having never been exposed to it genetic memory perhaps but they're already conditioned to fear it and they and they were never exposed to it because of what happened to their parents gestational factors smoking while pregnant smaller babies
• 13:30 - 14:00 increase risk of SIDS more learning behavior problems increased psychotic disorders later in life how about alcohol when pregnant well we all know increased psychosis alcohol did you know that if your mother drank alcohol when she was pregnant with you it would effigy Netta Kaleo your alter your taste buds so that if you drink alcohol it would actually taste better to you than had she not drank when she was pregnant with you increases risk of mental retardation multiple organ defects fetal alcohol syndrome but what about this what about one drink of wine say or beer per week or less just one
• 14:00 - 14:30 glass of wine a week or less while pregnant that's that's not gonna be significant is it actually that much alcohol while pregnant shorter babies with smaller heads more behavior problems later in life more delinquency later in life and more emotional problems later in life than a mother had no alcohol during pregnancy alters brain development what about mothers thinking while pregnant does what mother thinks while pregnant effect the developing brain
• 14:30 - 15:00 interesting study over 4,000 mothers and their children followed for 18 years and they found that mothers with negative pessimistic depressogenic type thinking patterns increase the risk of depression in their child 18 years later the Association remained after accounting for other maternal offspring factors of depression and they they concluded in the study that negative depressogenic thinking while pregnant will increase the risk of your child being pregnant by 21 percent just by negative thinking
• 15:00 - 15:30 what about if the mothers highly stressed during pregnancy and it may not be her fault that she may she may in america you know we've been sending troops over to the Middle East for a long time now so a young woman gets married and she gets pregnant and her husband gets called up in his National Guard unit and sent over to Afghanistan do you think she's gonna be stressed yeah she's she's done nothing wrong but she's gonna be stressed or how about a woman who's pregnant gets called there her that her mother's had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer or breast cancer she's gonna be stressed lots of things cause stress it doesn't mean you're a bad person okay but people get stressed
• 15:30 - 16:00 if a mother is stressed during pregnancy the stress hormones the gugak corticoids crossed the the placental barrier across the developing blood-brain barrier of the the fetus and alter the braking mechanism on the alarm circuitry the amygdala such that the children are born more prone to irritability anxiety mood disorder problems than had mother not been highly stressed during pregnancy and this happens through epigenetic modification of the system that helps
• 16:00 - 16:30 calm so the babies are a little more durable they're less capable of calming and they're over-reactive more anxious to environmental stimuli based on mom stress during pregnancy diet of the mother during pregnancy so how closely related are these mice yes some of you already said it these are clones or twins these are identical mice dem identity Aneta cailli do they look identical to you no well there's a gene called the agouti gene when the agouti gene is turned on then the diet then the
• 16:30 - 17:00 mice are obese diabetic and blonde that's what that gene does so beef diabetes and blonde if the gene is shut off the single gene the mice are thin non-diabetic and brown and you can see there can be partial penetrants of this gene expression here you see some brown fur you can see some brown fur and you see isn't brown fur coming through different places and so the glucose tolerance and the weight and obesity depending on how many of the genes because every cell has its own gene in
• 17:00 - 17:30 it so how many of the cells have it on how many cells turn it off well that will affect the health of the of the mouse well what turns on the agouti gene because if it's on your obese diabetic and blonde what turns it on bisphenol A which is a byproduct of plastics this phenol I will turn this gene on and I put the cans on here because every can if you eat canned food it's lined in plastic so that the plastic presents a protective layers to the the chemicals and the acids and things in food won't cause a chemical reaction with the metal so bisphenol A turns our well what turns
• 17:30 - 18:00 off the agouti gene methylation a methyl group and so they took these obese diabetic blonde mice who had the agouti gene turned on and they had them get pregnant and during their pregnancy they gave them a diet supplemented with folic acid in b12 folic acid and b12 our methyl donors they get lots of methyl groups over and their children the pups from these mothers were born with the agouti gene turned off they were born thin brown non diabetic
• 18:00 - 18:30 mice and then they let the children have children but their diets were not supplemented with the b12 in folic acid and their children were born with the agouti gene turned off and they let those have more and so the Scootie gene being turned off passed down three and four generations with only the first generation of the blonde diabetic mice having the Supplemental diet with the b12 and folic acid so doing something good passed down three and four generations protecting the next three or
• 18:30 - 19:00 four generations of offspring human studies Netherlands during World War two was a severe food shortage children born of mothers in the average caloric intake during this time they were getting about 500 calories a day which is a very low caloric intake and the children born to mothers during World War Two in Netherlands had higher rates of diabetes obesity and metabolic problems than their siblings of the same biologic parents and they did studies
• 19:00 - 19:30 and their genetics and they found that five percent they had five percent less methyl groups on a particular gene and that gene helped the body absorb energy from food and so were less methyl groups it means it had a five percent increase in the expression of this gene which means that these children could extract more energy from food and so when moms pregnant and you've got 500 calories a day what's happening is the message is being sent you're coming out into a world with very little nutritional
• 19:30 - 20:00 resources for you to survive so in order to help you adapt we're gonna we're gonna decrease the methyl groups on this dream so that your GI system will like be able to absorb more nutrients than your brothers and sisters who don't have this gene and then of course the war's over they get plenty of nutrition they can eat the full robust meal but now they're still extracting more energy from the food and they end up a beast and diabetic with metabolic problems a Metheny enriched diet worsens memory my
• 20:00 - 20:30 sisters of animal does not this is not a human study but mice were fed a diet high in methane eNOS fish eggs and meat and low and B 12 in folic and full and they had a particular gene that codes for a protein called Metron methylated more methyl groups were attached to methyl groups shut it down and resulting in worse memory Metron is a brain part protein that helps synaptic plasticity growth of new neurons axonal guidance and making those connections
• 20:30 - 21:00 between neurons and so this particular protein being shut down shut down this process of making new pathways and new neurons in your brain when they introduced Metron just interest cerebrally with a syringe they just injected some in there it reversed 50 percent of the memory problem because they had this protein now available again mother's intake of mercury and fish oil study of 400 children over 8 years found that mothers of children children of mothers who had a mercury level of one microgram per gram had higher rates of
• 21:00 - 21:30 ADHD than children of mothers who did not have that mercury level so mercury and that probably doesn't shock anyone that mercury is not good for the brain and then children of mothers who ate fish though twice per week had lower rates of ADHD because omega-3 fatty acids from fish are very important for neuronal membrane integrity and health and their anti-inflammatory and omega threes from most plant sources the brain can't use those are the short chain omega-3s the ala omega-3 and the brain uses DHA epa long-chain omega-3s and
• 21:30 - 22:00 that comes from fish oil mostly and so the high fish oil omega threes actually were very healthy for brain development additionally studies show that women who are low in omega-3s have higher rates of postpartum depression because when they're pregnant the brain is taking omega threes from them in order to make a new brain and omega threes make women vulnerable to mood disorders and depression and so most I don't know how it is in Australia but in America essentially all the prenatal vitamins now are supplement Amiga 3s in addition to some of the other vitamins RNA and
• 22:00 - 22:30 food micro RNA is a little short scripts of RNA act as signaling molecules altering gene expression in other words epigenetic modifiers plant RNA from food when you eat food you know only absorb the proteins and the fats and the sugars in the food you're absorbing the DNA in the food and some of this DNA gets expressed in your body altering how your DNA is being expressed it's very fascinating research so yes it's not just the the molecules becoming
• 22:30 - 23:00 building blocks the DNA information can alter how your DNA is expressed and in this particular study this micro RNA which is abundant in rice was highly enriched in the serum in other words when you drew serum of Chinese people eat a lot of rice you could actually measure this particular RNA molecule which is from the from the rice in this particular RNA molecule in mice and in humans altered the LDL protein receptor adapter altering how your liver
• 23:00 - 23:30 expresses low-density lipoprotein cholesterol so brain circuits parental environmental influences so are you getting a sense so far that it does matter see a lot of kids you talk together that's my body it doesn't matter I'll do what I want only if you're not planning on having children yourself if you're planning on having children yourself then what you're doing is not only affecting you it's affecting your kids your grandkids your great grandkids and most likely your great great grandkids we're all being affected by what you're doing with yourself today
• 23:30 - 24:00 what's the Bible say about that passes down three and four generations doesn't it this is exactly what the science shows so brain circuits for those who aren't here this morning I'll just run through this really quick metaphor a fire alarm in the school building you pull the little red box set off the alarm that's analogous to your amygdala in your brain it's your alarm when the alarm goes at alert zero zero zero zero operator which is your emergency operator and that is your hypothalamus in your brain and the job of the emergency operators to call an emergency responders which come out of your
• 24:00 - 24:30 adrenal glands adrenaline and glucocorticoid when the emergency responders arrive at the school the scene of the fire there's a fire chief who says it's how big the blazes how many responders we have calls back to the emergency operator and says hey we've got enough you don't need to send any more in our brain those are hippocampal neurons they register the rise of those stress hormones it'll signal back to the hypothalamus to say hey we've got enough you don't need to send anymore and then there's a principal and administrator who assesses whether some kids playing a prank or whether it's a real fire and that of
• 24:30 - 25:00 course is your dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and so when the alarm fires the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex will you ate and calm down if there's actually not a threat there as we talked about this morning and then the salience network we've talked about this morning all sensory input as it's coming into your brain passes through your thalamus on its way to its ultimate cortical destination if it's threatening to you in some way it will activate your amygdala your alarm sir if you will tag that information is as important watch out check pay attention to this and send
• 25:00 - 25:30 this information up here for you to take an action plan so you all hear this fan blowing in here everybody hear it it's been blowing the whole time that activating your tympanic membrane your acoustic nerve going through your thalamus but it's non-threatening your automated sailings Network said it's it's nothing ignore it and you haven't paid any attention to it but if you smell smoke like the buildings on fire smoke right now your salience or network will automatically say pay attention that's important and so if this becomes disrupted though then the energy from the alarm circuitry that is disrupted at
• 25:30 - 26:00 the interesting of the cortex level doesn't come up here to be processed reasonably it gets sent into your orbital cortex and your orbital cortex is job is to give you a conviction of wrongdoing and redirect you away from doing an appropriate thing so as we talked about this morning I know there's a few people that weren't here this morning so I'm gonna give these examples again to help them kind of catch up with us and if you were to stand up in this room and try to take your clothes off in front of the rest of us your orbital cortex would begin firing like crazy and activate your stress circuitry and don't do it don't do it that's the job of the
• 26:00 - 26:30 orbital cortex and and then so if you disrupt the salience Network what happens then is this information that should be processed up here gets ended the orbital cortex but you get a conviction of guilt or wrongdoing which activates more stress circuit you get negative ruminating loops going in the classic example of somebody who's lost a loved one and they in denial no no uh-uh no I'm not gonna deal with so they're not processing here so the energy goes here and they'll go it's my fault if I would have called them and kept on the phone two minutes longer they wouldn't have been in the wreck if I would have booked them on a different plane if I
• 26:30 - 27:00 would have done this if I would have done that and they get these negative ruminating loops going and if the amygdala doesn't calm at activate your sympathetic nervous system which activates macrophages which activates your immune system which kicks up inflammatory cytokines which act which damaged the fire chief damaged insulin receptors cause increasing glucose in yours increasing the risk of diabetes have hyperlipidemia obesity strokes heart attacks all because of this disrupted neural circuitry now what I didn't share
• 27:00 - 27:30 with you this morning I'm gonna share with you now is what actually happened so when I share with you this morning and we just run through really briefly is if you have negative thought patterns you disrupt your salience network you activate the fear circuitry which activates your immune system causing inflammatory Cascades in your body now I'm going to take you to the next step how that inflammatory cascade reacts back/on your brain in order to understand this is synapse this is a micrograph of a synapse this is your presynaptic and this is your postsynaptic neuron this is these little vesicles here or would be filled with things like dopamine and serotonin and
• 27:30 - 28:00 norepinephrine that dark area right there is the synaptic cleft between the two this is this a drawing of that the green is an astro site an astro site and if you want to wear an astrocyte does think astronaut even though it's spelled differently and you'll remember because an astronaut never goes out into space without their spacesuit and the job of the spacesuit is to create a nice milieu or a nice environment to keep the astronaut healthy the job of the astrocytes are to create a nice milieu for your neurons to keep your neurons
• 28:00 - 28:30 healthy they buffer potassium calcium make glutamate and other signals and they just create this nice meal you that your neurons like and keep them healthy that's the job of the astrocyte remember that as our next slide now this your bloodstream and your stressed you've got your negative circuitry going on you got your immune system kicked up your moon system you systems kicking out all these macrophages which kicking out those inflammatory cytokines and now they're circulating your system there's another cell here that monitors your circulation called the microglia now the microglia normally will take a substance
• 28:30 - 29:00 called tryptophan anybody heard of tryptophan and you know what tryptophan normally gets turned into in your brain that's right serotonin it's the precursor to serotonin and the microglia or one of the cells in your brain that makes serotonin not the only but one of them and they will turn tryptophan into serotonin normally unfortunately when this inflammatory cascade happens this inflammatory cascade causes an epigenetic change in your microglia where the gene that is turning tryptophan into serotonin gets shut off
• 29:00 - 29:30 and another gene gets turned on and tryptophan instead of turning into serotonin is now turned into Quinn Olynyk acid cone and linic acid is toxic to aster glia and so you're out in space this would be like having little micro meteors hitting your spacesuit and you start venting atmosphere you are not a happy astronaut okay and so what happens is with this inflammatory cascade the Astra glia gate to be damaged and the Astra glia begin kicking out a loss of glutamate which opened up calcium channels and it rushes
• 29:30 - 30:00 in and this is toxic to neurons we actually begin losing volume in hippocampal regions the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex of people who have this type of thing going on which is happening in depression you can actually see thinning of the brain in these areas additionally remember we talked about BDNF this morning brain derived neurotrophic factor fertilizer for your neurons when it's there the neurons will sprout new connections and so forth this inflammatory cascade that I just went through in the neurons itself will cause an epigenetic modification where methyl groups will attach to the DNA region
• 30:00 - 30:30 that codes for BDNF and BDNF gets shut down and you lose that protein which keeps neurons robust and healthy interestingly enough every antidepressant treatment that we've been able to identify that works and to the present medications shock treatment MRR up magnetic treatment any of the treatments at work epigenetically turn BDNF back on and BDNF starts being produced in neural sprouting starts going on and neurogenesis starts happening and in depression resolves and and with the medicines that turn on on
• 30:30 - 31:00 the BDNF gene they do it not by removing the methyl group but by attaching acetyl groups to the same region and the acetyl groups basically pull the methyl group out to shirttail out of the zipper basically and they pull the methyl group out and now the DNA can unzip in BDNF starts being produced again the problem if you know all of you remember your organic chemistry and the problem with your organic with organic chemistry in this is that acetyl groups have weaker
• 31:00 - 31:30 chemical bonds or another ways say that is methyl groups have stronger chemical bonds than the acetyl groups do and so somebody is depressed they've had this whole vomitoria cascade go on they come in and there and they've got their BDNF shut down with these methyl groups attached to their DNA that are and a doctor put some an antidepressant and the antidepressant causes a second messenger cascade cause the acetyl groups to go down into the DNA attached to the DNA pulling these methyl groups out and the BDNF gets produced again you get neural sprouting happening a neural
• 31:30 - 32:00 regrowth happening the person perks up depression clears I'm feeling good I feel so much better Thank You doc stop there medicine acetyl groups have weaker chemical bonds than methyl groups the acetyl groups start breaking off the methyl groups are still attached B&F gets shut down again they start losing that neurofen protein they be heart losing volume again they get relapse back into depression in every episode of depression because every neuron billions of neurons have their own complement of DNA and every
• 32:00 - 32:30 neuron has the potential to have a methyl group attached to that DNA region and so every time you're depressed you get greater and greater saturation throughout the brain of this methyl shut down and it makes you more vulnerable to recurrence after depression is treated so animal studies they took a mother they took pups of nurturing mothers so we looked at we've looked at some pre gestational gestational now it's it's a
• 32:30 - 33:00 post post gestational postpartum we're looking at now so pups of nurturing mothers versus neglect moms so these pups were born then some of the pups had nurturing moms who would lick and groom them and pay lots of attention to them and others had moms who just neglected the moment pay any attention to them and they looked at brain development the pups with the attentive mothers had alter brain development such that they had without the attentive mothers than the Gluck mothers had upregulated amygdalas more anxiety more stress they were more socially impaired than those with attentive mothers the point being
• 33:00 - 33:30 is mothers who attend caress love hug touch their children alter the developing brain such that they calm the fewer circles you down love is casting out fear neural biologically but if they neglect the child and they don't have a lot of this love touch affection thing going on then the amygdala up regulates and they get more fear and anxiety neural biologically there'll be more anxious and worried and stressed kids but some people thought okay hold on maybe these neglect mothers are neglect mothers because they've got some genetic problem that causes them to
• 33:30 - 34:00 be so stressed and anxious that they can't be good moms and so maybe what you're seeing with this amygdala is is the actual cause of the bad mothering and then it's not really and then they inherit this gene and that's why they've got this upregulated amygdala so they took the the pups born of the neglect mothers at birth and they put them in with these these nurturing mothers who would lick and groom them and then when they did that their amygdalas develop normally so it wasn't a genetic flaw first week of postnatal life rat pups
• 34:00 - 34:30 were exposed to abusive mothering and they had altered BDNF expression in their prefrontal cortex and they those rats grew up to be poor mothers their brains did not develop normally if they were abused in that first week their offspring were also born with altered BDNF and also had mothering problems two generations worth now if taken at birth from the poor mother and raised with a nurturing mother there was some repair that happened in BDNF expression improved but it didn't fully resolve the damage that was done in that first
• 34:30 - 35:00 generation it would take a couple generations of good mothering to resolve and undo this damaged child abuse and gene expression and brain tissue 41 canadian men 25 or severely abused in 16 controls they looked at the DNA expression in the hippocampus that's the fire chief area and it's also the hippocampus 'as were all new learning take place if you're trying to remember what i'm saying right now that's your hippocampus that's like your ram it's your working memory when you go to sleep tonight memories get transferred out of
• 35:00 - 35:30 your hippocampus into your cortex for long-term storage if you use certain sleep aids certain medications they actually biologically in the hippocampus interfere with memory consolidation and you lose data so you learn something in school you go take us to certain types of sleeping pills and you sleep and you can't get it into your cortex because the chemicals are interfering with the cortex transfer so you lose data all the Z drugs basically the zolpidem s and they're Zola's Ella
• 35:30 - 36:00 plums and I don't know what the brand names are in Australia but but most of those types of sleep drugs didn't the benzodiazepine category of medications do that anyway they found in these particular group there were 362 different epigenetic changes from the abused group to the non abused group with some genes were hyper methylated meaning shutting them down some were hypo methylated meaning over expressing them and most significantly were the genes that regulated neuroplasticity the ability of the brain to rewire and restructure itself was
• 36:00 - 36:30 impaired in people who've been abused this is a very powerful study it was actually done in New Zealand it was a study over 32 years they followed these people for 32 years I wouldn't want to do a 32 year study I like results faster than that anyway they did this in this study they took individuals and they identified three measures of childhood adversity one was overt physical or sexual abuse that was one measure second
• 36:30 - 37:00 measure neglect severe neglect third measure severe socio-economic deprivation or poverty if you had none of those you are represented in this blue bar if you had one of those in childhood you're represented in the green bar if you had two or three of those you're represented in the gray bar and then they simply followed these individuals for the next 32 years and see who actually developed depression and if you had none of those risk factors 12% of people develop depression with none of those childhood risk factors if you had one of those 20 21
• 37:00 - 37:30 percent develop depression and over 30 percent if you had two of those and then they looked at metabolic problems such as diabetes obesity elevated cholesterol these types of things and you'll notice that parallels exactly the depression 12% 20% 30% depending on whether you 0 1 or 2 because of what I went through with you already today I'm know you're putting the pieces of these puzzles together because that child of diversity is up-regulating amygdala upright a
• 37:30 - 38:00 amygdala is causing those negative ruminating loops going which is activating your immune system causing an inflammatory cascade and that inflammatory cascade is causing insulin resistance and insulin resistance is gonna damage your fight and the inflammatory cascade damage your fire chief which is in a call for more glucocorticoid so you can get elevating glucocorticoids and insulin resistance and you get this terrible inflammatory loop going and that then reacts back upon the brain that I just went through so you increase both depression and metabolic problems childhood traumas and adversities so adults are abused this child have higher
• 38:00 - 38:30 rates of medical illnesses higher rates of mental illnesses higher rates of suicide higher rates of alcohol and drug problems and children who are not abused now I've given you the negative side let's give some positive stuff this was my see my study was interesting they engineered these mice to be stupid they actually had a gene defect they were designed to have a gene defect that caused memory problems where they had trouble learning learning disability these were special mice and then they put these mice in an in an enriched
• 38:30 - 39:00 environment for two weeks in their adolescence and this is what a mouse and riched environment looks like they had extra toys and extra substances extra smells to play with and not surprising at all the mice with the enriched environment had improved memory they had more things to experience and go on and so even with the gene defect they had better memory than the clones that didn't have the enriched environment but then they let this group of mice who had the enriched environment reproduce and their offspring were born with improved
• 39:00 - 39:30 memory basically normal memory despite having the gene defect and no enriched environment in their adolescence what happened was the enriched environment in their parents caused an epigenetic modification that neutralized the gene defect such that even though the kids were born with a G defect the gene defect was not expressed and they had normal memory and this modification happened at the level of histones whereas where acetyl groups attached to the histones which increased dendritic sprouting and connections and they were
• 39:30 - 40:00 over over to able to overcome the gene defect because of the environmental experiences causing an epigenetic modification and that cool other protective factors for kids family member confidante if a child grows up in a home where they have someone they can confide in they can actually share their their heart and thoughts with and they actually grew up that be more adaptive less mental health problems let's drug problems that's depression and so forth then kids without a family member
• 40:00 - 40:30 confidant and the other big protective factor is family cohesion that sense that we have each other's back that we watch out for you that you can trust the people in your family not gossip about you not to tell your secrets not to not to post you know pictures on Facebook that you wouldn't want posted you know those types of you you've got people at home that care about you and protect you that is also helps kids have a downregulated amygdala so they grow up healthier both physically mentally other environmental factors tobacco alcohol drugs tobacco nicotine binds the
• 40:30 - 41:00 receptors that regulate neural development teens who smoke have higher rates of psychosis and anxiety disorders depression they actually epigenetically altered the reward circuits and they are more physiologically addicted if they start smoking before the age of 20 then if they start smoking after the age of 20 so their brain it's hard some work it's more difficult to get off alcohol alters epigenetic it's called a neuropeptide Y which is coming into a lot of research and PTSD individuals now
• 41:00 - 41:30 because the the ability to express neuropeptide Y or not makes one vet vulnerable to having PTSD in trauma experiences but anyway alcohol alters the expression of this particular peptide such that when you're drinking it causes an anxiety an anti-anxiety effect during the intoxication but then the gene expression changes causing an upregulation and then you actually get more anxiety afterwards marijuana increased risk of psychotic disorders up to 40% and and we're talking this
• 41:30 - 42:00 morning about the difference being God's law and man's law this is a good example I don't know what's happening here in Australia but in America a lot of states are making marijuana legal do you all know that you all hear that in the news lots of states are making marijuana legal it's big big debate thing going on and see states and human governments can pass laws to make marijuana legal they can never pass laws to make marijuana healthy you see the difference this is the big difference we manage long ghazal they can never do that no matter what
• 42:00 - 42:30 they say marijuana is toxic to the brain damages white matter tracks impairs prefrontal cortex function lowers IQ for people who smoke before the age of 18 and young adults who smoke daily they actually followed and look at the structure of the hippocampus in their brain and they get actually physical structure changes that interfere with new learning and memory if they smoke daily media influences babies under the age of 1 watch approximately 1 hour of TV or more per day but at least in America I don't know
• 42:30 - 43:00 what's going on in Australia this is from the US seven studies have confirmed that any television watching of any kind including the old programs that are no longer available called Baby Einstein delay language development if they watch television before the age of two American Kevin Pediatrics macadam II of child analyst in psychiatry recommend zero television of any kind under the age of two because it delays language development so this this program was marketed for a while make your baby smart show them all these videos and these programs are off the market because of delays allowing language development don't show them to small
• 43:00 - 43:30 kids there are no studies that show TV of education with your under the h2 is beneficial children get greater than six hours a day of electronic media various kinds fifty percent of teens in America have a TV in their bedroom and the impact of television theatrical now we're talking theatrical television we're not talking watching my DVD lacquers okay that's not we're talking about that would be considered educational television so theatrical television has as its primary effect to activate your limbic system emotion
• 43:30 - 44:00 circuits while simultaneously turning off your prefrontal cortex reasoning thinking circuits that's what it functionally wants to do to you and if you remember normal brain development if you don't use it what do you happens yes and so normal brain development you're firing something that expands it gets stronger if you're not expend back television watching wants to get you laugh once you get you to cry once you get you afraid once get you aroused once get an emotional reaction while simultaneously turning off your thinking
• 44:00 - 44:30 and the stronger the emotional reaction me that was that's a good program yeah that's that's we're looking for for the first seminal study done on this and it's been repeated in other groups was done by Center well published in the Journal of American Medical Association in 92 and he wanted to see if there's an association between television watching and violence in society and he use a black and white indicator of violence which is homicide rates in society and he chose three societies the US Canada and South Africa United States and Canada television came in to those
• 44:30 - 45:00 countries in 1945 no television was in the entire nation of South Africa until nineteen seventy four and so he wanted to look at homicide rates in these countries before and after the introduction television and then he used Canada as a control because Canon has very strict gun control laws and if there was an increase in homicide rates in America and when people say yeah but you got guns everywhere so he uses Canada and in South Africa he looked at white on white only homicide to take out the apartheid tensions that were going on during this time and this is what he discovered from 1945 to 1974 homicide
• 45:00 - 45:30 rates in the u.s. increased 93 percent in Canada the increase 92 percent in South Africa during the same time they dropped seven percent and here's the kicker he looked at South Africa from 1974 to 1987 after the introduction of television white on white only homicide jumped 130 percent now you might have heard preachers and other people talking about well if you put bad violent content in you get bad violent content
• 45:30 - 46:00 out right this modeling thing this is primarily not modeling that we're dealing with in the sense of learned behavior based on behavior recognition patterns we're talking altered neurobiology theatrical television alters the brain structure such by watching it activating the limbic system mood circuits over and over again you up regulate those mood circuits you impair prefrontal cortex which reasons thinks and self restrains give you an example you're on the interstate as you're starting to get on the interstate somebody cut you off an almost hit you and you get an irritable urge to say something ugly
• 46:00 - 46:30 that's your limbic system that aggressive urge but if you go wait a second I'm a Christian I'm not going to act that way I'm going to forgive them and you restrain yourself that's your prefrontal cortex television watching causes under development of prefrontal cortex over development of limbic system circuits so the more TV kids watched by the time they hit adolescence in the hormones head then they have these raging emotions that they cannot process and restrain so they act out aggressively they act out sexually or they turn to substances to try and calm themselves because they can't calm themselves their brain can't do the work anymore this is what's
• 46:30 - 47:00 happening it's neurobiological you know if you remember do you know what programming was on in America between 1945 and 1974 the types of programs I don't even know if you've even heard of these or seen these but things like Leave It to Beaver anybody heard of that show Lassie okay these types of shows and I could list a whole bunch of them I'd love lucy' you've heard of these shows okay all of them every show is rated G every one from 1945 974 s g-rated programming
• 47:00 - 47:30 g-rated programming 90 to 93 percent rise in homicides with g-rated programming now the program he got worse after 74 and you get a magnifying effect so if you get worse content and it'll magnify it but even when she read the program you get this problem this was repeated in a somewhat different way Zimmerman and Chris stocky in 2007 looked at three types of television violent r-rated theatrical television non violent g-rated theatrical
• 47:30 - 48:00 television and educational television and then they looked at measures of attention and focus and concentration which is prefrontal cortex function and what they found was theatrical programming whether violent r-rated or G rated non violent impaired prefrontal cortex function and cause attention concentration problems educational programming did not so it's not just letting your kids avoid the the r-rated
• 48:00 - 48:30 it's also how much dosing they get of this medium because they're exercising emotion circuits while they're suspending their thinking circuits that's the problem the spiritual factors we talked about God constructs in the brain Newberg in his group 65 years and older they took individuals had a meditate 12 minutes a day on a God of love for 430 days and at the end of the 30 days they can measure growth in the interiors need at cortex we experience empathy and luck love and compassion for others they had
• 48:30 - 49:00 lower heart rates and blood pressure because when this part of your brain is active and you're empathetic and compassionate towards others this part of your brain actually turns off your amygdala so perfect glove is casting out fear neuro biologically and they had 30 percent improvement in memory testing so altruism studies show that adults who volunteer give of themself after counting for baseline measures of health live longer have less depression less dementia stay out of nursing homes longer and say independent longer than adults who don't volunteer
• 49:00 - 49:30 about prayer history study after September 11 2001 University of Michigan examined prayer in coping and those who prayed daily had better outcomes psychologically adjusted better one year later than those who did not pray but then they also did another study on Muslim refugees of coat Kosovo and Bosnia and they found that 60% of them had PTSD and 77% of them had negative forms of prayer such as praying their enemies would pay for what they have
• 49:30 - 50:00 done in other words prayers of vengeance and Muslims with positive prayers had high levels of optimism hope and healthy adjustment but vengeance and anger related prayers reduced had reduced levels of optimism hope and healthy adjustment so it's not just prayer it's what you're praying who you're praying to that matters jesus said you'll know the truth and the truth will set you free I showed you this data this morning if you do cognitive behavioral therapy
• 50:00 - 50:30 it actually normalizes the dysfunctional circuits and depression how many didn't see this this morning okay there's enough in here I'll run through this again really quick okay they took individuals with depression and they compared them to controls looking at activation of amygdala your fear circuits and dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex before and after cognitive or truth based therapy they put them in the PET scanner and they gave him a mild stressor in the PET scanner to see what would happen to their fear circuitry in the stressor they gave him as they showed in the picture of an ugly human face and they said well that kind of looks like you doesn't it and that was
• 50:30 - 51:00 their stressor and they'd the people with depression with that had significant activation of their fear circuitry the control group with the dotted line did not and then the depressed group after this truth based therapy cognitive therapy had significant normalization of their amygdala response to that stress and then they had them do a digit span which is taking those numbers and put them in order from the lowest to the highest if you're active doing that right now you're activating your dose through lateral prefrontal cortex and the non depressed group did it quite nicely and smoothly the depressed group struggled with it and then the depressed group after cognitive therapy who had more
• 51:00 - 51:30 normalization of their dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex why back to what I said earlier about normal brain development if you exercise it then it expands and gets stronger and cognitive therapy is exercising in with the fair this making the person think and reason works through stuff in their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and is exercises that then it will actually calm the fear circuitry down and their self-restraint is recovered in doing this process so it's it's it's a brain exercise type therapy that will result
• 51:30 - 52:00 in actual neuronal regrowth in healthy brain regions cognitive therapy and gene expression this is epigenetic stuff we're talking about right PTSD patients had lower expression of a gene of this particular gene which resulted in and so methyl groups attached shut this gene down this is your fire chief being shut down and when your fire chief being shut down your your glucocorticoid receptor is being shut down you get smaller hippocampus is you get thinning of the orbital cortex so forth well after cognitive behavioral therapy PTSD
• 52:00 - 52:30 patients didn't have a difference anymore in controls because this particular gene got turned back on they actually started expressing their fire chief which was holding their 9-1-1 operator in check again and they had hippocampal regrowth and so thinking new thoughts the study shows thinking new thoughts healthier thoughts altered how your genes are being expressed in your brain in healthy ways or saying another way thinking negative pessimistic fear-based thinking will alter your genes in negative ways and damage your
• 52:30 - 53:00 brain over time cognitive stress management therapy 199 women with breast cancer randomized to either 10 weeks of cognitive behavioral stress management or active controls and they looked at their white blood cells and they assessed their gene expression at baseline six months and 12 months later baseline negative effect associated with greater than 50% differential in these basically 201 transcripts there was that were affected by more than 50% expression through this but what was
• 53:00 - 53:30 noted was there was up regulation if he had negative effect up regulation in the pro-inflammatory genes and meta metastasis related genes so if a woman was stressed she was pessimistic she was she was negative all I'm gonna die did it all this kind of negative stuff it turned on genes that made it more likely she'd have met metastases if she went through the cognitive stress management however 91 genes changed expression by more than 50% specifically down-regulating the pro-inflammatory genes and up regulating
• 53:30 - 54:00 the type 1 interferon response genes those are your anti-cancer genes so positive truth based therapy and thinking healthy thoughts helped your genetics fight the cancer how healthy spirituality helps reduce mental illness healthy spirituality is a spirituality activates prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex calms amygdala slows and reduces the inflammatory cascade thus improving mental and physical health altruism
• 54:00 - 54:30 helps in the same way by activating anterior cortex calming amygdala reduced with that you have reduced anxiety and worry so you have reduced ruminating loops you have a healthier lifestyle often time so you have less oxidative stress and putting stubs and scissors or inflammatory into your body yeah usually have healthier relationships and the ability to forgive and not grudge hold which helps stop the negative ruminating loops and reconnect your salience network and so all of these things healthy spirituality is actually physiologically healthy for you so a
• 54:30 - 55:00 healthy brain is optimized by healthy parents of pick healthy parents please and I know we can't pick our parents but for those of you who are thinking about being parents or have know people who are about to become parents education can help them do things that can significantly benefit their children and grandchildren and so forth healthy inner uterine environment so again educate people you know to do things that are healthy of both mental spiritual
• 55:00 - 55:30 physical things that are gonna make a very nice milieu for the developing child proper nutrition for you and your brain still today affection responsive parenting so parents who are if you have kids really be sure that you're able to nurture spend time huddle cuddle hold those children lots of skin-to-skin touching and so for it's very good for brain development physical activity this is something I don't know how the school systems are here in Australia in America the school systems are the public school systems are just really in trouble they are so federally over the federal
• 55:30 - 56:00 government is so in in in to their business that they can't actually do what they think is good for the kids and they have these these means that they have to meet now with the three RS reading writing arithmetic and so a lot of things are getting cut out of the school systems that used to be there including a lot of physical activity and we know now the way your brain develops that the neural circuits that are involved in motor movement and initiating motor movement which are dysfunctional in disease tell me what
• 56:00 - 56:30 disease Parkinson's disease that's right so people with Parkinson's ease lose these neurons that initiate motor movement and so they have a hard time initiating motor movement if you know somebody Parkinson's if they're not on their medications they also have a hard time initiating thought they have a hard time expressing themselves because the same neurons that initiate motor movement initiate thinking and then that's the initiation of thought and then the part of the brain the cerebellum in the back of your brain
• 56:30 - 57:00 helps you coordinate smooth motor movement and balance and things and so when you're riding your bicycle your cerebellum is involved and in any type of motor coordination that you're doing your cerebellum is involved we now know that the vermis of the cerebellum which is the central portion of the cerebellum helps coordinate and make your thinking smooth and coordinated so we want kids to get out and play we want them to develop their physical skills we want them to be able to coordinate their bodies because in doing this or develop the very circuits they're going to need
• 57:00 - 57:30 to coordinate their thinking but much of the public education in America doesn't do this anymore we want to stimulate the five senses music art and things like this develop the those circuits as well avoid toxic substances I have one patient who struggles with addictions and he tells me when he was a kid his mother put whiskey and his baby bottle the common devlin crying so let's avoid that stuff mom's okay I know he could work on that education yes education is
• 57:30 - 58:00 very important and we do want to do the cognitive education but we don't want to lose the practical education just to learn the cognitive education so we want to hands-on education too and teach kids how to actually do stuff teach kids how to be responsible chores around the home really good for kids can you believe I just said that limit the Hat travel edge education limit theatrical education excuse me entertainment limit theatrical entertainment and you notice I didn't say no at the Afrikaner tainment because
• 58:00 - 58:30 in western society it's really virtually impossible not for them to get some theatrical entertainment but limit it and if you didn't if you gonna have some you could also do some things that would engage their thinking in the process like know when you're gonna have a movie if you're gonna do that say hey afterwards we're gonna have a little discussion what did you learn from that what was the point of that what was the metaphor this movie is a metaphor of what how does this connect to the great story the great theme you know most great stories are actually just spin off of the great controversy that's what
• 58:30 - 59:00 they are most of all of the great stories are spin off to the great controversy you can see it matrix if you look at matrix this is this is a messiah you know look at the Harry Potter dying and rising saviors I mean you see it all these metaphors are there but so have a dialogue and discussion they can think about it a healthy spirituality and altruistic endeavors we went in get include that and resolve guilt and forgive other and forgive other people don't hold grudges very toxic to do that sleep I didn't go into sleep asleep is one of them up so I see some some
• 59:00 - 59:30 adolescents and getting young people in here like adolescence meaning from age like 13 to 25 you're an adolescent because your brain doesn't finish developing till you're 25 and and these college students young college shoes and high school students don't understand that there are four physical requirements to have a healthy brain and to be alive air water food and sleep sleep as a physical requirement your brain has to have and if you actually don't get any sleep you can die from not
• 59:30 - 60:00 getting sleep so I have to educate to get your sleep because your brain the first part of the brain that gets impaired when you're sleep-deprived is prefrontal cortex so there's an old wives tale that goes something like this don't go to bed angry with your spouse you ever heard that wives tale toss it what I say to my wife and she can verify this is if we have a discussion that we need to get into that's of any substance it's not something real simple like where'd you put the toothpaste okay but
• 60:00 - 60:30 something of some substance I'll say I love you too much to give you only half of my brain you need my entire brain so let's sleep on this and talk about it tomorrow and then you'll find if you do this when you wake up the next day your prefrontal cortex is on your irritability levels way lower your tolerance level for frustration is way higher your ability to restrain impulses is much better so you're much less likely to say things that you don't mean it causes things just to blow up and those late-night dialogues are the worst time to get into
• 60:30 - 61:00 it with your spouse so because your prefrontal cortex is being impaired so summary brain is is highly complex and susceptible to change environment causes mark changes in brain development and environment alters gene expression which is passed down through the generations you