Name: This Addiction Psychologist Shares Hacks on How To Better Our Brains
Uploaded: 2019-04-03
Duration: 9 min 3 s
Description: A mindful presentation by Dr. Judson Brewer on how we can train our brains and kick bad habits.

I'm addiction psychiatrist. I actually became a doctor to help people yet much of what I learned in medical school was wrong from helping people change habits to addictions and here's why. Have you heard of the positivity ratio? Just have three positive to everyone negative emotion and you'll succeed in life The paper published in 2005 by two researched, where they plugged daily motion batteries from college students into a nonlinear fluid dynamics equation, and wala. Mathematical principles for human flourishing. This is why they've taken it by the press led to a best selling book, yet in 2013, it couldn't be replicated and was debunked. So why was this so popular? Why were people so quick to jump on board? It's great to have a mathematical formula for happiness. Yet it wasn't based on sound science. So what can we believe? Well, ask anybody that's play the lottery. Do you have money in your pocket or not? Wanting to win isn't the same as actually winning and for science for we scientists Cash in our pocket is replication. So see if you believe this theory. The guy in the 1950s named BF Skinner, he was studying animal behavior. In fact he found that he could train pigeons to win a cross- court shot in ping pong for a food reward. Came up with a theory, called it operant conditioning or reward- based learning. And what we think now is that this was actually set up as a survival mechanism to help us remember where food is and how to avoid danger. It has three elements that trigger behavior and reward so you see some food, you eat the food and your stomach sends this dopamine signal to your brain that says remember what you ate and where you found it. In 2000, Eric Candela got the Nobel Prize showing that this is evolutionarily conserved all the way back to the sea slug. So rock solid theory, replication heavy replication. I learned about this in college didn't think that much of it yet when I was starting as an addiction psychiatrist I was really struggling to understand my patients, whether they were struggling with alcohol or cocaine or heroin or whatever. And then I had this lightbulb moment. I realize that this could actually explain so much more behavior beyond classic addictions. For example, we're in the middle of an obesity epidemic. We learn to eat food to feel good, not when we're hungry but when we're anxious. We're in the middle of an opioid epidemic, we learn to take pills to numb ourselves from physical and emotional pain We're in the middle of a tech boom. We learn to look at cute pictures of puppies on Instagram when we're bored. In fact, social media is designed for those likes and retweets. Food is engineered to be addictive. So what do we do when we're addicted? Well, just control ourselves. That's what I learned in medical school. You wanna lose weight? I've actually learned a simple formula, make sure you have more calories out than calories in. You know, just eat the salad instead of cake. You wanna quit smoking? Well, just set a quit date for two weeks out, tell your quit buddies so you get some support, and we'll give you some medications to help with withdrawal and quit, right? Well it doesn't work that way, so why doesn't will power work? Well, There's a part of our brain called the prefrontal cortex. This is the youngest and weakest part of our brain from an evolutionary perspective. It's the first that goes offline when we're stressed out. And that's where willpower is thought to be seated. So if we can't rely on this, what can we rely on? Well, reward based learning, old and strong, why not start there? Now what if I told you that to tap into this process all we needed was awareness. It might seem a little strange. I actually gave a Ted Talk on this a couple of years ago and it ended up being the fourth most watched talk of the year. I don't think it was me, but it was the message. And the message was pretty simple which was awareness trumps self- control. By awareness I mean paying attention to the results of our behaviors so paying attention to the results of our behaviors right? That's really critical. Now there's a There's a piece that you need to know about this. Remember, reward based learning is based on rewards, it's not based the behaviors themselves. Pigeons aren't particularly prone to playing ping pong but they will play it for a food. So what do we need to know? There is a part of our brain called the orbitofrontal cortex and it stores reward value. So, for example, if I eat some milk chocolate my brain is gonna compare that to other things that I have eaten, like broccoli. And then it's gonna set up that rewards hierarchy. If I eat some dark chocolate, it's gonna then compare those as well. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Give us a second. Now, then my brain sets up this hierarchy that says, I like dark chocolate more than milk chocolate, more than I like broccoli. I think of the orbitofrontal cortex as the BBO part of the brain. It's always looking for that bigger, better, offer. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Now how does this fit with awareness? Well, what are we doing when we're doing habitual behaviors? We're not paying attention. So we bring awareness in. It helps our orbitofrontal cortex get accurate and updated information. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] This is, there we go. So is awareness actually enough to hack our brains into better health? This question led me to shift my career from molecular biology to cognitive neuroscience to forming a start up company to make app based behavior change programs. Specifically to ask this question, is awareness enough to change behavior? So what do we do? Well, we did something simple. We used mindfulness training and helped people pay attention to the results of their behavior. And what did we find? Pay attention when you're smoking, what happens? The reward value drops. Pay attention when you're stress eating. What happens? The reward value drops. So this helps our orbital frontal cortex get accurate information and see that these things aren't quite as rewarding which then opens up this door for something better, that bigger, better offer. Now what if I told you that awareness itself, and in particular this attitude of curiosity, That's enough, that's even that bigger, better offer. For example, here's somebody using one of our programs to work with anxiety. She said, when I first started the program, I didn't quite buy into the benefits of curiosity. Today I felt a wave of panic and instead of immediate dread or fear, my automatic response was, hmm, that's interesting. So you can see her brain is preferring curiosity to worry. It feels better. Now examples are illustrative, but results are definitive, so we've gone on to do the studies. For example, in a study of obese and overweight women who received [ INAUDIBLE ] mindfulness training, we got a 40 % reduction in craving- related eating. In a study of anxious physicians If this goes to the next slide, there we go. We got a 57 % reduction in anxiety in folks who received app- based mindfulness training. We've gone on to study the brain regions that get activated when you get caught up in craving or caught up in anxiety. For example, the posterior cingulate cortex, and these same brain regions quiet down with mindfulness training. In a recent study, we actually brought people in who wanted to quit smoking. We showed them a bunch of smoking cues, and activated their posterior cingulate cortex, and measured that activity at baseline. We then randomized them to get mindfulness training where an active comparison group and then brought them in a month later to see if changes in their brain activity could actually predict chemical outcomes. What did we find? We got a very significant correlation between a reduction in Post CC activity and reduction in cigarette use. This was specific to the mindfulness training group. We even found that there was a dose dependent relationship. The more modules they completed, the better they did. No correlation in the control group, even though they completed the same number of modules. So three to one sounded a little too good to be true. But the answer doesn't need to be complex to be true, it just needs to be true. Even better if we know why it's true, and why something works. Well we've known for a long time that habits, that every day addictions, the classic addictions, are actually formed through reward- based learning. We now know that awareness might actually help us hack into this system, to help our brains see the relative lack of reward, and become disenchanted with these old behaviors And then find a bigger better offer that might have been [ UNKNOWN ] in front of our noses all along. Our brains are actually really strong we just need to know how they work and we can harvest that strength, we can harness that power and we can move from magical thinking to moving mountains. Thank you very much. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

This Addiction Psychologist Shares Hacks on How To Better Our Brains 

Health

A mindful presentation by Dr. Judson Brewer on how we can train our brains and kick bad habits.