Ich everyone knows that the brain is very

plastic early in life

so from birth until about age 25 you can

learn

so much later in life you have a lot

more control generally over your life

circumstances but the brain becomes less

plastic

however we know based on nobel prize

winning work and

recent work in addition to that that the

neuromodulator

acetylcholine is secreted when we pay

attention to something very specific it

acts as sort of a spotlight in the brain

making certain synapses the connections

between neurons more active and more

likely to be active again

than others so when you hear that song

that you love so much

and it moves you and you feel dopamine

being pulsed into your body that's a

real thing you're actually getting

dopamine secretion you've

formed that deep association with that

and acetylcholine

draws your attention to that and that

song

is essentially wired in a very indelible

way
into your nervous system multiple you

can probably even with certain songs you

can feel your body start to energize

because of course the brain

through connections with your muscles

controls your body so

for things that are traumatic or

negative what we're really talking about

is neuroplasticity that's

focused on unlearning and most of the

therapies for this

whether or not it's emdr eye movement

desensitization reprocessing

or it's traditional psychoanalysis and

psychotherapy or

it's somatic embodied release big you

know kundalini breathing type

almost all of those are designed to do

something which is to bring the person

or you bring yourself

into a state of heightened alertness

right you can't do this stuff when

you're sort of

half asleep heightened alertness and

then focusing your attention

on the traumatic or negative event this

is the way that it works and then

pairing that was something new you know

traditionally this was done with things

like nlp

or in talk therapy where people would

feel the positive relationship with the

therapist that was kind of

the main rationale in association with

this very traumatic sometimes even you

know shameful type events and the idea

is that you

you would simultaneously have those two

experiences the negative one

and the feeling of safety and you would

rewire those circuitries i actually

believe that can work but it can take

a lot of times it can take a lot of

visits to the therapist which is not to

say it's bad it's just not everyone has

access to those resources

things like eye movement desensitization

reprocessing simply moving the eyes

laterally while recounting these

negative events

the woman who devised this figured out

that somehow when people recount these

traumatic experiences when they're doing

these lateralized eye movements not

vertical eye movements

they somehow separate out the negative

emotions and i thought for years people

would ask me about this stuff and i

thought
this is ridiculous first of all i'm a

vision scientist and i work on stress

it's like there's no way and then i

really ate my words because

four papers two in humans two in mice

and then

a fifth paper published in nature which

is kind of our super bowl of scientific

publishing

showed that these lateralized eye

movements quiet the amygdala

they actually suppress activation of

this threat detection center in the

amygdala

turns out because of when

the way that we view the visual world

when we move through space when our head

moves or when we walk and things flow

past

us that these lateralized eye movements

are

what happens when you move forward in

space when you're walking when you're

moving forward towards something and

that suppresses

activation of the amygdala now you say

why well okay so then

2018 my laboratory did an experiment

there was actually graduates in my

laboratory where we're

looking at fear in this case we're

looking at fear to big looming objects

that either trigger freezing or running

and hiding there's a brain area that's

in your brain and migraine that mice

also have

that triggers a third option not run and

hide not freeze

but forward confrontation this is the no

i'm gonna fight i'm gonna move forward

in the face of diversity this is the

growth mindset i'm gonna lean into

friction

and it turns out that this circuit is

linked to the dopamine reward pathway

when we move forward in the face of a

threat and obviously we want to do this

in healthy

adaptive ways we suppress activity of

the amygdala

through physical action of moving

forward and there's a signal sent to the

areas of the brain that control dopamine

reward those reward centers

then trigger the release of dopamine to

reward forward effort

in the face of stress or threat so when

you hear about people

saying look take some physical action

when you're feeling exhausted

take some forward physical action when

you're feeling overwhelmed by this

traumatic experience

now that could be in the form of a walk

in the now this therapist she figured

out with emdr

because you can't take people walking

around for therapy sessions

she figured out that these lateralized

eye movements are what triggers

suppression of the amygdala and it makes

perfect sense because

the amygdala this threat detection

center in our brain it doesn't connect

to the limbs

so how does it know if you're moving

forward well

because the eyes are moving you have

these reflexive eye movements that move

anytime you're moving through space

so to make this a little more succinct

it's really

forward movement action pushing yourself

across that threshold

not only rewards you but it suppresses

activity of the fear centers in the

brain and these are ancient hardwired

mechanisms these aren't hacks

these are things that mother nature

installed in us