We’ve all made self-deprecating jokes every so often when we’ve flubbed the name of a longtime coworker or forgotten the PIN on a bank account. But this humor can hide a genuine fear rooted in long-held beliefs about our minds: that they peak in early life and inevitably decline, like the lights of a city during the night slowly blinking off into darkness.
There are obvious factors that may damage neural functioning: head trauma, illness, and aging (though we all age differently and have control button over how it affects our brains).
Less obvious but increasingly evident are the factors we might not consider: sleep deprivation, traumatic experiences, eating habits, gut health, and inflammatory processes.
In short, the mind operates interdependently with the body’s others and functions — and the health of those systems can affect the health of the brain (and vice versa).
Given all that may influence the brain, for better and for worse, scientists are reconsidering the timeworn notions of inevitable decline and irreversible damage. They now believe the brain is much nimbler than once imagined.
New research, practices, and therapies are upending the way we think about the resiliency of memory and cognitive function, as well as mental health, including depression and anxiety.
At the center of these exciting advances may be the concept of neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to evolve throughout life. That means we can change our brains for the better, and, by extension, unlock new methods for seeing and living in the world.
The traditional concept of the brain is based on a notion of abundance followed by scarcity: We’re allocated a finite number of brain cells at birth, which expire gradually — or suddenly, when it comes to injury. Then we live with the diminished capacity that remains.
Many leading researchers now insist this isn’t so.
“If the brain is healthy at any age, then neuroplasticity is always possible — if not inevitable,” says Rudolph Tanzi, PhD, a Harvard University professor of neurology along with a specialist in brain health and aging. “The brain has a capacity for self-repair. The same processes that rewire and reshape the mind at every moment, by connecting old synapses with new synapses, may also be used to repair the brain.”
What we might think of as inevitable decline — memory lapses, poor concentration, dysregulated moods — might be symptoms of a broader physiological condition. Treat the underlying problem and neural regeneration may occur. Tanzi singles out common options that come with an inflammatory lifestyle (insomnia or a bad diet, for instance) as accessible points of intervention.
“Lots of people think that once the brain starts to degenerate there’s no returning,” he says. “But if you can stop the attack of neuroinflammation, compensatory regeneration will allow those neurons to regenerate.”
“Neuroplasticity helps all the time,” he adds. “A large amount of your brain is plastic, forming new synapses each and every single sensory signal.”
This capacity for forming new connections between nerve cells is essential to the brain’s recovery and improved function, Tanzi explains. And merely as the brain can change itself, our lifestyle choices can change it, too.
“As an infant, you've got a quadrillion synapses that get sculpted down like clay until you only have the 10 trillion you'll need as the template for living on this planet, at this time, with this society and this family,” he says. “If you don’t have a particularly good lifestyle, those synapses start dying because inflammation takes them out as you become older.”
The good news is that an anti-inflammatory lifestyle and diet can help our surviving neurons develop new synaptic connections, which supports neuroplasticity to repair and heal the mind. The following five strategies offer some effective ways to build — or rebuild — your mind.
1. Meditation
Experienced meditators often compare a sitting practice to training for a long-distance run: It’s challenging at first, but skill and resilience develop over time.
Meanwhile, volumes of research has substantiated meditation’s many benefits, and recent research reveals its salutary effects on short- and long-term brain function. For instance, researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds examined the effects of meditation on a selection of subjects, from casual meditators to world-class yogis. The results are striking.
For those new to meditation, an eight-week program in mindfulness-based stress reduction, or MBSR, a technique made to reduce pain, anxiety, and depression, was discovered to dampen activity within the amygdala, a part of the brain that mediates our stress response. In accomplished meditators, these changes in mental state become inherent traits, signaling a baseline improvement in stress regulation.
Likewise, lovingkindness meditation has been shown to activate circuits associated with empathy and benevolence. Less than eight hours of this practice can help to eliminate negative biases, and the effect becomes stronger with increased practice.
Other measured gains include improved attention and memory and fewer mind wandering — also known as the brain’s default mode, a reactive state marked by mental chatter and anxiety.
The UW–Madison lab has additionally measured brain function in some from the world’s most experienced meditators, namely Tibetan monks, including master and author Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. A few of the findings are stunning, including massive gamma activity in the monks’ brains — indicating nearly superhuman levels of awareness, compassion, and concentration.
Few meditators are likely to reach such lofty heights, however the gains in focus and thinking processes the practice offers claim that neuroplasticity’s benefits last well past childhood.
In addition to better focus and memory, there’s mental acuity: Among the Center’s studies found that for only two weeks of meditation, some subjects increased their scores on graduate-school admissions exams. (Look at this for more on starting a meditation practice.)
2. Neurofeedback
Many of us have become accustomed to some everyday forms of biofeedback from apps that tell us how well we’re sleeping, for example, or that report on our heart-rate variability. Professional neurofeedback — the entire process of observation and stimulation using sound or visual signals — takes this process a step further, measuring real-time brain activity and providing skilled intervention to help change our neuronal wiring.
Brain imaging through EEG (electroencephalogram) technology records electrical activity in the brain via electrodes placed on the scalp. This provides clinicians and technicians a real-time look at how the brain is working, which might help them develop treatments for a host of conditions, including ADHD, depression and anxiety, epilepsy, addiction, and mental illness.
“We've the ability to do a quantitative analysis of EEG data,” says Tampa-based neurofeedback practitioner Penijean Gracefire, LMHC, BCN. This could reveal how an individual’s brain responds to stimuli, and whether some brain regions are more or less connected than others, which influences overall thinking processes.
Gracefire describes the brain in terms of resource allocation. How well supplied it is (or isn’t) may be affected by overall health and lifestyle, in addition to illness and injury.
The neurofeedback process helps rewire the mind for better function when it’s flagging. In the case of brain injury, for instance, it can improve coordination between the parietal lobe, which governs sensory integration, and the frontal lobe, which controls executive function.
“With real-time measurements, we can give your brain feedback when it’s changing and integrating,” Gracefire says. “We’re using the same sensory input systems based on how the brain takes in information and adapts. It really works because we can identify and base feedback on activity in specific locations.”
Neurofeedback’s ability to improve the brain’s integration suggests it’s possible to make all kinds of changes, including the way we look at things. “We figure out what we decide to attend to,” explains Gracefire. “Brains are people. We're made out of the experiences we've — and the stuff we decide to concentrate our attention on.”
You can search for a local neurofeedback provider at the Biofeedback Certification International Alliance (www.bcia.org). Look for the credentials “BCN” after their names; this suggests that they have completed the brain-specific training.
There will also be at-home, app-based neurofeedback tools that can help you monitor your brain activity during meditation. Muse, for instance, offers practices for staying calm and focused.
3. EMDR
Traumatic experiences can etch themselves on the brain. When those internal bruises won't fade, this can lead to decades of suffering and emotional distress.
A therapy called EMDR, or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, might help defuse the emotional and physiological results of traumatic experiences.
“EMDR is a therapeutic approach that views problems as the result of memories that are maladaptively stored in the brain,” says psychotherapist and EMDR practitioner Roger Solomon, PhD. “These distressing events can be too much to process and get stored in the brain the same way they were input there: through emotions, thoughts, images, sensations, and beliefs that are isolated in their own neural network.”
The treatment frequently involves clients’ tracking a therapist’s back-and-forth finger movements; other methods, for example hand tapping and spoken prompts, could also be used.
By accessing networks in the brain where the traumatic memory is stored, the technique helps the client reprocess the information, creating new neural connections and forming a less emotionally charged impression from the experience.
Recent research has shown that EMDR therapy can treat emotional trauma faster and effectively than cognitive behavioral therapy, dissipating negative emotions and disturbing images.
“EMDR is seemingly simple but usually quite complex,” says Solomon, who consults with government departments and has treated first-responders to the Oklahoma City bombing and also the Sandy Hook school mass shooting.
During treatment, “a series of associations starts to occur,” he explains. “The emotions and information that were part of the event reoccur, which can be quite intense. Simultaneously, adaptive information also begins to link in.”
The brain can then potentially rewire itself around a brand new perception of the trauma, allowing the body to recognize that it is no longer threatened.
“I'm continually amazed at people’s resilience and skill to process,” Solomon says. “It’s amazing how the mind comes up with these adaptive resolutions.”
Thousands of professional therapists and coaches trained in EMDR now practice in the United States. You can find a certified practitioner at www.emdr.com.
4. Sleep
Though it’s almost not a new technology, sleep remains among the brain’s most potent rebuilding tools. Neurology professor Michael Howell, MD, cofounder of the Minnesota-based Sleep Performance Institute, uses a tech analogy for understanding the brain’s potential for upgrades.
“The brain can continue to develop its basic wiring package, or its hardware, until about age 25. Next, you can provide updated software programs,” he says. “You are constantly making new synaptic connections along the way about your daily lived experience.”
The process that protects the most vital of these new brain connections, he offers, occurs when we’re asleep.
While we sleep, the brain prunes unnecessary synaptic connections. The strongest emotional experiences are retained, while less meaningful ones are erased. (The brain’s emotional center, the amygdala, is located next door to the hippocampus, one of its memory centers.)
There’s also a literal cleansing process that occurs in the brain during deep sleep. “During deep non-REM sleep, our brain clears out toxins,” Howell says.
While we’re in deep sleep, the size of our brain cells shrinks by about 30 %. “With all that space around your neurons,” he explains, “various metabolic byproducts and toxins get cleared and washed out through cerebrospinal fluid.”
Among the byproducts the fluid removes is beta amyloid, a plaque associated with Alzheimer’s disease. This suggests the condition may be understood in part like a sleep disorder: The brain simply isn’t given enough time to clear out beta amyloid.
To ensure you’re getting sufficient sleep, try to maintain these habits:
- Aim for 8 hours each night.
- Stick to the same bedsome time and wake time to improve sleep quality.
- Prep your environment for good sleep by keeping electronic devices out of the bedroom and making the room completely dark.
(Read this for more on restoring and improving sleep quality.)
5. Psychedelics
While indigenous people have used psychoactive plants for millennia to achieve heightened mental states, the contemporary psychedelic era kicked off in 1943. That’s when Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann ingested an ergot derivative called LSD that he had developed for industrial use — and it sent him on a psychedelic trip.
Hofmann described LSD in an effort to access “the mystical experience with a deeper, comprehensive reality.”
A wave of LSD therapies for depression, anxiety, and other psychological issues quickly followed. Certainly one of its most prominent beneficiaries was screen icon Cary Grant. “Within my LSD sessions, I would learn a good deal,” Grant once told an interviewer. “And also the result was a rebirth. I finally got where I needed to go.”
Yet by the 1960s, psychedelics were regarded by much of the scientific establishment as dangerous — even a route to mental illness. And, until recently, that was more or less the consensus among physicians.
Today, a new wave of research is exploring how natural and synthetic psychedelics affect the brain. This trend is the focus of journalist Michael Pollan’s 2021 bestseller How you can Change Your Mind.
One study at Imperial College London began from the hypothesis that psilocybin, a psychedelic compound produced by certain mushrooms, would increase brain activity, given the vivid thoughts and sensory experience users describe.
Yet scans revealed a surprise: Test subjects’ brain activity actually decreased, particularly in the default-mode network, a region associated with the ego or feeling of self. Activity in this network seems to abate in the brains of expert meditators.
Exploring the potential of psychedelic drugs to rewire the brain has suggested a number of therapeutic benefits, designed for anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Johns Hopkins University launched its Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research in 2021 to study these substances; it has already collated data linking psychedelics to positive clinical outcomes for smoking cessation and for depression and anxiety in cancer patients.
Johns Hopkins scientists also found that study subjects reported feeling more available to experience after using psychedelics.
A 2021 study in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, based on voluntary reporting, suggested a hyperlink between LSD use and reduced drinking in a small population of problem drinkers. A 2021 survey polled more than 190,000 Americans and concluded that psychedelic use may reduce suicidal impulses.
For the time being, the legal administration of psychedelics is limited to controlled medical settings, where trained researchers and therapists can help support positive therapeutic results.
Still, this growing body of evidence suggests psychedelics might eventually be an important tool to support more integrated thinking processes and improved mental health, one which may eventually be more widely used to treat a range of conditions.
The brain, as always, is full of surprises.
Further Reading
Read more about health and lifestyle interventions to support brain health in these features from the Experience Life archives:
“Healthy Gut, Healthy Brain”
“The Care and Feeding of the Healthy Brain”
“Untangling Alzheimer's”
“This Is Your Brain on Exercise”
“Get synchronized: On Sleep and Health”
“The New Science of Concussions”
