How To Rewire Your Brain
I’m at the University of Cambridge, having a panic attack. I can’t breathe, my head’s spinning, my heart’s going like the clappers and there’s a psychiatrist standing next to me who’s provoked it. Deliberately.
Dr Annette Bruhl works at the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute and she’s examining what happens to our mental functions when we’re under pressure, to try to help those with anxiety.
Some stress is vital – we need it to react to threat – but prolonged levels can affect our thinking, memory and decision-making processes. So Dr Bruhl is giving me cognitive tests to see just how differently my brain works when its tested to its limits.
I’m inhaling a mixture of oxygen and carbon dioxide: not dangerous, but designed to induce feelings of panic. Fifteen minutes later, with monitors showing my pulse is accelerating and my blood pressure’s rocketing, the results show just how differently my brain works to when it’s relaxed.Without the gas, a numbers task was straightforward, but with the mask on, I can’t think straight and make numerous mistakes.
There is a good reason why I’m sitting in a lab, gasping for breath. I finished an MSc in Psychology at the University of Westminster last year and am still studying, trying to understand how the brain provides consciousness and what affects it.
As a journalist, I want to find out if mental decline is inevitable or whether we can rewire our brains to halt it – and even stimulate growth. It was while doing my academic work that I first met Dr Catherine Loveday, a neuropsychologist and an expert on the ageing brain. She introduced me to her mother Scilla, a former consultant psychiatrist, for my new Radio 4 series ‘How to Have a Better Brain’.
Scilla tells me how frustrating her memory loss is. She finds the simplest things take her twice as long. When she’s cooking, she forgets what ingredients she’s put in and one family Christmas, the turkey came out of the oven, raw.
Scilla is fiercely bright and shows me her computer where she’s got four games of online Scrabble on the go, against her three daughters and a friend in the village. She’s winning every one of them. Sometimes the words come easily, on other days her brain lets her down and she can’t remember where she’s been or what she’s done.
Catherine spotted her mum’s deterioration a few years ago and gave her a series of tests. The results showed Scilla was up to 95 per cent better than those her age in tasks like planning, reasoning and attention. On memory, she was 99 per cent worse. Together, they’re using their combined knowledge of psychiatry and psychology to try to halt further decline.
“Memory is so important for our sense of self,” Catherine says, “so we’re doing every evidence-based thing we can, to hold onto it.”
That includes exercise and when we take Mimi the dog for a walk, Scilla tells me just getting out in the fresh air makes her feel happier and think more clearly. “It’s a free space with no distractions, when I can actually discover that I can remember things, that I’m not going completely doolally. If I don’t do it, I can feel myself going into a dark space.”
The science shows that physical activity doesn’t just make us feel better, it also helps protect the brain. Dr Alan Gow, associate professor at Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University, and part of a team investigating memory loss, tells me that even the simple act of walking can lead to brain functions improving – and that tests on people in their seventies suggest those who exercised had less brain shrinkage. “Those who did a bit more exercise were better in terms of their speed of thinking and their general reasoning,” he says.
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