Hi everyone and welcome to episode 68 of my podcast, The Executive Edge which I’ve recorded. I’m fascinated by new approaches to science and how they affect Psychology.

This week I’ve recorded an episode because as Psychologists there has been a raging debate about how much individuals are influenced by nature, in other words their genes, and nurture, their environment. This has resulted in a lot of scientific studies. The one I’m talking about this month is neuroplasticity. This is the ability our brains have to regenerate themselves.

Why is this important?

It matters because if we can regenerate new neurons in our brains, we can do a number of things. It’s possible we can learn to recover from brain damage, alter or produce new pathways,  and get better from injury. This means we can think differently and that might have some bearing on how we overcome anxiety or depression. We might be able to influence how we repair our thinking and our approach to situations too.  There is a lot that we can do if we only understand how our brains work better.

Neuroplasticity is the ability we have to generate or alter the way our brains work. We can grow new neurons so rather than thinking dementia is a fact of life, or indeed that ‘we cannot change’ the way we are, in fact, we can. In this week’s episode I discuss 5 tips and suggestions for how you can alter the capacity of your brain. These include learning a new skill or idea, stimulating your brain by pushing yourself to try a new activity, and connecting with other people.  Amazingly, this alters how your brain’s chemistry works. As a result, we can feel better but we also grow new parts of our brain!

I hope you enjoy this week’s episode and find it of value.

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