Transcript of Change Your Brain Forever, Starting Today! Feat. Dr. Wendy Suzuki | Mel Robbins Clips

Today's guest is someone I have been wanting to sit down with ever since I started this podcast. Who am I talking about? Dr. Wendy Suzuki. Dr. Suzuki is a world-renowned neuroscientist and the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at New York University. She is a leading researcher known for her ground-breaking research in the areas of memory, brain plasticity, and the simple things that you can do every single day to improve your learning, focus, memory, and brainpower. She's also a pioneer in researching how moving your body and exercising improves your brain health. And what I love about Dr. Suzuki is that she's just one of those people that you want to hang out with. She's super cool, and she makes neuroscience easy to understand. She's so passionate about it, and she has this unbelievable ability to make neuroscience personal and profound. So please help me welcome Dr. Wendy Suzuki to our Boston studios.

Thank Thank you for having me. I cannot tell you what a big fan I am of this podcast and of your teachings and on Audible. Really? Yes, absolutely.

Holy cow. I have a brain crush on you, so that's a really amazing compliment. Thank you. And what I love about the work that you share is that all of this stuff is free and accessible and things that you can put to use as soon as you listen to this. Yes.

You named the thing that is also my favorite thing. You don't have to have lots of money or influence. You just need to decide to do these things in your life today, and you have access to the power of neurobiology to change how your brain works.

I have to say, if you're listening to this and not watching YouTube, she is exploding with energy and vitality. And I am so excited to dig into this because you not only walk the talk, as you say, but you can feel it in the energy that you bring just by how you're moving through your day to day life. And one of the things that I also love about your work is that some of the simple changes in the science that you're about to share with us today can impact somebody's mood or focus or well-being starting today. Absolutely. Can you speak a little bit to that? What somebody might expect as an immediate impact?

Yeah. I mean, What you're going to learn is really about the power of neurobiology, the power of the neurobiology of movement on your brain, of meditation on your brain. I hope we get to sleep in your brain. I know you talk a lot about the power of social connection. We are social animals. There are so many circuits in our brain that evolved so that I could see what your energy level is. Are you happy? Are you sad? Are you excited about this conversation? And I think anybody watching will I would say that we are both really excited about this conversation. We can tell that because there are brain areas specific to helping us interpret that facial expression. That is why I love being a neuroscientist. It is teaching me about myself, about how to be better in this world, to feel better in this world. And this is also why I love being dean of a large undergraduate college like New York University College of Arts and Science, because I'm I'm the Brain Health Dean. I want every single one of my students to have a big fat fluffy brain and to be able to soak in all of the information, all the education.

That is my mission as dean.

What is a big, fat, fluffy fluffy brain?

Well, a big fat fluffy brain is a brain that has constant what I call positive brain plasticity going on. So brain plasticity is the human brain's amazing ability to change and grow in response to the environment. Brain plasticity is growing in the positive direction. Unfortunately, there's also negative brain plasticity, where things can shrink and get smaller and functionality can disappear. But imagine Can you imagine that certain choices that you make in your life can improve the brain's anatomy, physiology, and function. And that has been the focus of my neuroscientific research for the last 30 plus years.

That is so cool. And when I hear the word plasticity and neuroplasticity and the fact that your brain can grow, are you talking about it can actually get bigger or smaller, or are you talking about the insides of it can change? What do you mean for a normal person like me when you say your brain can grow positive or negative? Yeah.

So let's take the positive. My brain can grow in the positive direction. Certainly Human brain areas, in fact, my very favorite area of the brain, called the hippocampus, critical for our ability to form and retain new long term memories. That is one of only two brain areas in the human brain, where brand new brain cells can be born in adulthood. So you and I are already growing brand new shiny hippocampal cells. And one of the wonderful magical secrets that we'll talk about later is the fact that physical activity actually help even more hippocampal cells grow. And yes, that means that your memory will get better. So not just cells growing, but positive brain plasticity also means that the connections between the neurons that are already there can grow. So you can have more connections. And that also we know, can correlate to better performance, say, in your prefrontal cortex for focus and attention.

As you're listening to Dr. Suzuki, I'm sure you're having the same thought I'm having right now, which is, boy, I wish I had taken a class from you in college. I mean, you are so exuberant about the topic that I cannot wait to just start to peel away the layers. Why is it important, just at a top level, baseline understanding, to care about the health of your brain?

That's such a great question. And my answer is that the human brain is the most complex structure known to humankind. Not Einstein's brain, not Marie Curie's brain, but your brain, Mel's brain, Wendy's brain, every single one of your listeners' brains. Imagine that. The most complex thing known to humankind, and everybody has things they do well, things they don't do well, that is so unique to you. It defines how you see, feel, smell, laugh about the world, and it's unique to you. The reason why you need to take care of that brain is really about taking care of who you are as a person. Your personal history is in there. Your future decisions are in there. And it truly is an awesome thing when you think about the structure of the brain. And that is part of my nerdy neuroscientific reason for doing all the things I do to make sure I do take care of my brain.

So how would the person who's listening to us right now feel different in their day to day life if they were to prioritize their brain health As much as we tend to focus on the things we eat or taking care of our muscles, what would happen if you did this?

So many different things. You would have lower levels of depression and anxiety, higher levels of energy. Your focus would be better. Your memory would be better. Your creativity would go up. All of these things come from the studies that have been done, both in animal model systems and in humans, about the effects of positive brain plasticity and bringing those elements into your life.

Amazing. I would love to hear you share how you got interested in the brain and becoming a neuroscientist in in the first place.

Yeah. I have a very specific origin story of how I decided I wanted to become a neuroscientist. It was my first day of my freshman year at UC Berkeley, and I walked into a first year seminar class called The Brain and its Potential. Had no idea who taught this class, but I thought the title was interesting. And I remember walking into the class, there's only 15 students, and I saw this professor at the front of the classroom, and I describe her as a neuroscientific Beyoncé. She had control. She was fierce, but in a very positive, welcoming way. She controlled that classroom, and she started telling us about how the brain was the most complex structure known to humankind. Then she put on these gloves, and slowly and dramatically, she had a hat box in front of her, and she dramatically opened the lid of that hat box and she pulled out a real preserved human brain right there in front of all of us students who had never seen one before. And the gasp in that classroom was audible. And she told us about brain plasticity, which turns out she discovered. She discovered. She discovered.

Her name was Marion Diamond. She was the very first female PhD in neuro anatomy conferred by UC Berkeley ever. And in the 1960s, she and her colleagues discovered that the adult mamillion brain, she was studying rodents at the time, could change and grow in response to what she described as an enriched environment, which was, I like to describe it as the Disney World of Rat Cages. You compare rats in Disney World of Rat Cages compared to more of a shoe box condition. Both rats got free food and water. But if the adult brain couldn't change at all, which was the dogma of the time, then those experience should have no effect on the brain. This is where she discovered that the outer covering of the brain, the cortex, actually grew in response to the Disney World of Rat Cages. And that was one of the very first demonstrations that the adult brain could change because of the environment that you live in. And she told us that, and I'm like, Okay, Beyoncé of Neuroscience, the coolest thing I've ever seen. This is a human brain. I want to be just like her. And so that's when I decided I want to be a neuroscientist.

And now you're even better because you're Dr. Wendy Suzuki, man. I love that.

This is a real preserved human brain. Her name is Betty.

Holy cow.

Can I give you some gloves?

Oh, my God.. There you.