The discovery of mirror neurons in 1995 by Iaccomo Rizzolati of the University of Parma was a very happy accident. This breakthrough has had a profound effect on our understanding of how the human brain functions. But to do so requires a little background information.  There are a hundred billion neurons in the human brain with hundreds of TRILLIONS of connections.  Neurons, or nerve cells, differ from other kinds of cells in that over the course of an animals life these cells generally do not divide or regenerate, so  basically the neurons you have now are the ones that you were born with. This is why damage to the nervous system like head traumas, spinal cord injuries and strokes can have such devastating consequences.  Because nerve cells live so long individual neurons are very specialized  – they act in a very consistent way.  For example, a motor neuron will turn on to signal a particular muscle so that we are able to move voluntarily.  That way an intention you have in your brain can result in a specific action, such as picking up a cup.  On the other hand a particular mirror neuron will not only turn on when you make a specific action, it will also turn on or “fire” when you observe someone else making that action.   

So how did this amazing breakthrough occur?  Well, as the story goes, one day a researcher went into the lab to check up on the monkeys. These monkeys were wearing measuring devices on their heads that recorded individual neuronal activity associated with behavior and movement. While going about his routine tasks the researcher helped himself to some peanuts that were placed a few meters away from a monkey cage. As he picked up some nuts he was startled by the sound of the monitor buzzing wildly. Why was he so surprised? Well, because the monkey was not moving! 

An enormous amount of research has been initiated to understand what happened. It was then confirmed that area’s of your brain that were thought to be specifically associated with movement will “fire” or activate when you watch somebody do something, JUST AS IF YOU HAD DONE IT YOURSELF. Thus the term mirror neurons was born. At this time it looks as if monkey’s and primates have mirror neurons  (giving a new twist to the old saying “monkey see, monkey do”) but human mirror neurons appear to fire more readily and in a more sophisticated manner.  For example, in humans, mirror neurons will not only fire when you watch another person performing a certain action, they will also fire at a photograph or video of another person performing that action.  

Have you ever heard that you are the average of the five people that you spend most time with?

Mirror neurons allow us to learn and be influenced by others. Some scientists, such as world renowned neurologist  V.S. Ramachandran, believe it is mirror neurons which are responsible for the extraordinary advancements of the human species. For example if you are a bear, and suddenly your environment gets cold, you would need a few million years of evolution to build up polar bear type layers of fat and fur. If you are human, you watch your father killing a bear, skinning it and using the fur as a coat, and as you watch it your mirror neurons start firing and you learn. So instead of going through millions of years of evolution you have learned to adapt to your environment in ONE generation.

We have mirror neurons because we are extremely social beings. They would not have much use if you did not interact with other humans. Mirror neurons are what allow us to feel what other people are feeling. If you have you ever watched a football game where somebody got a terrible injury and you grimaced in anguish, then you know what I am talking about….you had this response because at some level you felt like it was you getting injured. Or maybe you a watching a sad movie and you begin to feel a bit sad yourself. These are just some examples of your mirror neurons at work.

We are not aware of mirror neuron activity. They function in the background firing automatically in response to our environmental observations. We are constantly and involuntarily reacting to the actions of everyone around us. When it comes to maintaining a healthy weight the eating behavior of the people around you can have profound effects on your dieting success. You see, mirror neurons can be your best friend or your worst enemy. In our brains they reproduce the activities that we are observing. So if you see somebody eating a chocolate brownie, “chocolate brownie eating” parts of your brain get activated. Additionally the emotional part of your brain remembers how nice it was to eat a chocolate brownie and so it increases your desire to eat one. Even just looking at photos, particularly of people who appear to be enjoying the food, can activate these areas of our brains and motivate us to eat. The more our mirror neurons are exposed to eating, the more powerful the brain activation and the more intense the craving.

But there is even more to the story. As you watch your friends eating the chocolate brownies your mirror neurons are telling your brain about brownie eating, but because you are not ACTUALLY eating the brownie your pleasure centers are not getting any stimulation. This amps up your cravings even more, because now your brain begins to ANTICIPATE what eating the brownie would be like. You start to think how delicious it would taste. You think how the texture would feel in your mouth and how you would feel if you just took a bite. This is all the workings of your brain, as it goes through your past experiences of eating foods similar to the chocolate brownie.

You are doing well if you have still managed to hold out, but next comes the biggest craving. The greatest brain activation is achieved when anticipation is paired with a degree of uncertainty. So you have your limbic system telling you how delicious it will be, your mirror neurons are activating the movement patterns that are associated with eating the chocolate brownie, and your pre-frontal cortex is saying “No please, I have to stick to my diet!”. Under these conditions of “it might happen, it might not happen”, humans are extremely motivated to seek pleasure because we get an intense reward when it does occur. This is what you constantly face when you see people eating foods that you desire but cannot have. It’s not long before the intense cravings finally overpower your willpower and you give in to temptation.  

The food industry knows about mirror neurons all too well. That’s why they place their food everywhere for you to see. They know that the more you are exposed to their advertisements the more you are likely to consume what they are selling. They are also extremely clever in how they present their product. Have you ever noticed that food manufacturers advertise their products by showing images of people consuming their products in a very fun and positive way. Manufacturers know that when you observe these scenarios the areas of your brain related to happiness and fun and pleasure get associated with their particular food or drink. Check it out the next time you watch an advertisement. Oh and isn’t it ironic that the actors are usually physically fit and very attractive? Its almost like consuming their product can help you with that too…..

The BrainChanging Diet is all about neuroplasticity. Neuroscientists will tell you that in your brain you have hard-wiring and soft-wiring. The hard-wiring in your brain ensures that structures are connected to one another. The soft-wiring refers to your brains ability to enact change determined by our experience in the world. Through neuroplasticity, our brain reorganizes and restructures itself in response to the demands that we place on it.

This capability is not very surprising. Without neuroplasticity we would not be able to learn anything. The area of your brain called the hippocampus has been dubbed the memory centre of your brain and neuroplasticity allows this area to reorganize itself by creating connections with other areas of your brain, and to restructure by growing more neurons (brain cells). It was only until scientists gave this process a name – neuroplasticity – that people began talk and think about it. Now it has become clear that in order to make any significant long term change in your life and your behavior, you must understand neuroplasticity and how to use it.

So how do we do this?  After all until very recently we really didn’t know the adult brain was even capable of real structural change. We used to think that learning was all about thinking and the “mental mind”,  when in reality our brains actually change physically as we live and learn.  Simon LeVay summarized this brilliantly with the statement “the mind is just the brain doing it’s job”.  With this new knowledge we can use strategies that can effect real changes in our minds and our behaviors instead of just subtle “tweeks” that typically take place on a day to day basis.  

Most people consider learning to be the conscious acquisition of new knowledge or skills.  For example studying math problems, balancing on a bike or mastering a piece of music.  In reality the vast majority of learning takes place in our brain while we are unaware or even asleep.  Our brain is always monitoring our experiences and emotions and making associations so we can make predictions and plans about the future. This is neuroplasticity. You can’t turn it off, and you have limited awareness of it most of the time.  But there have been many new and exciting studies that show us that we do have a lot of control over this neuroplastic process.  This means that your brain can change for the good, but it can also change for the bad.  Changing for good literally means both change in a positive direction AND change for a lifetime.  

What does neuroplasticity or brainchanging have to do with eating?  Eating is one our very first actions and it is repeated over and over again throughout our lifetime.  So we make some very strong eating habits which translate to very strong brain associations.   Habits are formed by repeating things over and over and they are reinforced by other experiences that support a particular behavior.   We know that eating is a highly rewarding action – it needs to be because it is crucial to our survival.  So we are always driven to seek food when we are hungry but our brain also rewards us whenever we eat.  Well some of life’s rewards are small and some are much much more.  Of course usually our brain thinks more is better and much more of a good thing is better still.  Who wouldn’t rather be rewarded with dollar than a nickel?  The same hold’s true with eating rewards. The basic reward of eating is easily supplemented or amplified by other life experiences.  

Lets take an example from your childhood. Excited, and raring to go you take your new bike out for a spin but during the adventure you fall off and hurt your knee. You feel the pain and start to cry. Your mother soothes you, brings you in and gives you an ice cream. All of a sudden you feel better and want to go out and play again. In your brain this translates to, “when I feel bad or something bad happens I can eat some ice-cream and I will feel better!”. Now this one incident will not create an addiction. But every time you eat an ice-cream to feel better, that connection in your brain strengthens and makes it more and more likely that the next time you feel bad you AUTOMATICALLY think – “I want ice-cream!”

This process is called myelination or “Neurons that fire together wire together”. Every time that you feel bad and use food to feel better you strengthen that connection in your brain. Your brain is all about efficiency. So every time you do something your brain tries to make it a little bit easier for you to do it the next time – you might know this as “Practice makes Perfect”. Over time these connections become so habitual and unconscious that we are not even aware of them. This is the power of neuroplasticity. So it is probably more accurate to say “Practice makes Permanent.” 

There is a flip side.  In an attempt to be efficient, strong associations can convert a tangled underbrush of connections into your brain into a well worn easy to follow path.  This well worn path can get you “into a rut”. Neuroplasticity is not only the process we use to learn by strengthening brain associations it is also the process we use to “unlearn” by weakening associations. Neuroplastic change will only happen if you weaken associations over time and at the same time replace old automatic behaviors with new and better habits.  As far as your brain is concerned one of the governing principles is “use it or lose it”.  But because we are unaware of many of our habits we must make an effort to bring the behaviors we want to change to our conscious awareness.  We must practice mindfulness when we want to make intentional neuroplastic changes.  Just as “neurons that fire together wire together creating strong habits” the converse “neurons that fire apart wire apart” is an important rule of neuroplasticity. This is great news. If you have learned to love certain foods that you just can’t stop eating, you can also unlearn them through the process of brainchanging.  

Remember, simply telling yourself “I am not going to eat my favorite food” is not going to work because you are fighting a learned behavior. The neurobiological pathway is carved into the very structures of your brain tissue. Simply dieting and willpower alone will really have no chance of bringing about long term weight loss.

If you can identify these pathways in your brain which create the behaviors that hinder your weight loss goals you can alter them by restructuring your brain. You can put neuroplasticity to work for you, because remember, you are always BrainChanging.

A key word here is endogenous, which means having an internal cause or origin.  That’s a critical concept and we will return to it in a moment. Your subjective experience of pleasure refers to the fact that we all get varying amounts of pleasure depending on the activities that we enjoy. This  experience is totally individual; for some people it might be reading a book, other people might prefer interacting with their friends, and of course almost everybody relishes eating the foods that they like. 

These gratifying experiences are produced in one the older parts of the brain, sometimes called “the mammalian brain”.  The scientific name for this region is the “limbic system”.  Located deep inside the brain, the limbic system is responsible for the feelings and emotions we experience from our body.  It is intimately involved with learning and memory.  Our limbic system basically works to tell us how we “feel about something” so that the cortical area of the brain knows how to think about it or do so something about it.

The Limbic System contains two structures, commonly called the “pleasure centers” of the brain. These structures are called the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens septi. Don’t worry about the names, basically what this means is that if you were to look at images of your brain then these areas would show a lot of activity when you are having a pleasurable experience. The crucial point here is that these pleasure centers are in close and constant communication with the more evolutionarily advanced area of your brain (the primate brain). Within this area there are two regions, the prefrontal cortex and the orbitofrontal cortex, that are very involved with our planning and actions. It is pretty obvious that if your limbic system tells your cortex that an activity is pleasurable that your cortex would want you to act by doing it again or planning to do it again!  

Here is the really important piece. Biochemically, the neurotransmitter dopamine is used to communicate between these various parts of your brain (there are others, but dopamine is the major player). Dopamine is an endogenous neurotransmitter which can be translated to mean “self-made drug”. Drug you say? Yes your brain makes drugs, and lots of them!

Typically, when we think of drugs we mean substances that we ingest or inject. In medical terms these would be referred to as exogenous drugs. But we now know that we also have endogenous drugs. For the sake of simplicity let’s call the exogenous drugs man-made drugs. So we have self-made drugs and man-made drugs. An example of a man-made drug is cocaine, a drug that induces your brain to release dopamine. Typically dopamine is a chemical released in certain areas of the brain when we experience something as pleasurable.  So cocaine produces the same feeling in your brain but doesn’t require you to do anything (except take the drug in one form or another) in order to get pleasure.  So dopamine is a “self-made” drug that makes us feel very happy or euphoric and cocaine is a man-made drug that does the same thing but it does so by cheating.

The problem that we now face is that we are often relying on man-made drugs rather than self-made drugs to allow us to feel pleasure. Nowhere is this more evident than in our relationship with food. Can food act like a drug? Absolutely. When we eat food our limbic system releases some dopamine into those pleasure centers. It’s a good strategy, your brain needs to reward you for eating food because it is essential to your survival. For most of humankind’s history food wasn’t necessarily very easy to come by and we needed the extra incentive of a reward to motivate us to pursue it.  So it has been very important for our survival to have these self made drugs.  They give us incentive to work hard for things that may not be immediately available because we anticipate a reward at the end.  But in today’s world, acquisition of food has really changed.  Not only is it readily available it is prepared, packaged, plentiful and palatable… it requires so little work we barely have to chew it! But our brains still compel us to seek reward, especially if we are stressed. So we engage in behaviors that stimulate production of those self-made drugs. 

This however, is not the whole story. Our physiologic well being is geared towards alway trying to maintain balance or equilibrium.  The medical term for this is homeostasis and it is essential to our health and survival.  Our endogenous drugs are designed to help us maintain homeostasis.  Exogenous drugs can easily upset this balance. Exogenous drugs stimulate your pleasure centers with unnatural intensity.  This can result in addiction which means balance is lost and pleasure seeking or reward seeking turns to pathological craving.  Modern day food offers a lots of convenience but are also highly stimulatory to our pleasure centers.  The food industry knows how your brain works and one of their major goals is to chemically enhance foods so they are more attractive to your pleasure centers. Think about it, when you eat a food that makes you produce self-made drugs and also contains man-made drugs, it acts as a super charged blast to the pleasure centers of our brain. We are in a sense programmed to pursue and consume. These altered foods taste delicious and make us feel better, so we are much more likely to eat them again.

Over the coming week, we are going to take a closer look at the food industry and how you can become addicted to food, just like you would to any other drug.

Fast for 24 hours.

Fasting for 24 hours means that you go to bed, wake up the next morning and don’t eat anything until you go back to bed again that night. This might sound pretty easy but give it a try. At first you will feel pretty good about it. You will get through the morning ok and think its no big deal. Around lunchtime you will start to feel pretty tired and maybe a bit agitated. Then in the late afternoon/early evening your going to really want something to eat, but you tell yourself that you can make it through. Around dinner time is when the real fun begins though. You start to get thoughts in your head… “Is this safe?”…. “Has anybody ever DIED from this before?” ….“I feel really bad, I should eat something, just in case….”. Just in case what? That you will die? As irrational as it may seem, thought’s like these will actually enter your mind as you go though this process. Logically you know that fasting for 24 hours is totally safe, you are not going to die and nothing will happen to you. So where on earth are these thoughts coming from?

Enter Your Reptilian Brain.

Your reptilian brain is your biggest friend. Without it you would be in big trouble. It is responsible for running the background show and keeping you safe. Its main concern is survival and it knows that your immediate needs are oxygen, water, sleep and food.
If you go a certain period of time without one of these elements you will die. Oxygen is the most obvious, a few minutes without it and you are dead. Sleep and water have about the same time frame. About 10-14 days without one of these and you can not survive.

Food works a little bit differently in your brain. Not only is food important right now but also tomorrow and the next day and for the rest of your life. You see air and sleep are easy to come by in terms of your brains thinking – oxygen is available in the atmosphere and you can sleep almost anytime you want. In fact it is very difficult to die from sleep deprivation because your brian will just make you fall asleep. Next in line is water and unless you are stranded in the ocean or the desert you should be ok. Also once you find water all you have to do then is drink it, there is no hunting, killing and preparing involved. Out of the four elements we need for survival, food is by far the least available in terms of our brains hard-wiring. This means ensuring that you have food in the future is a HUGE priority for your brain.

In order to fully appreciate how our reptilian brian works we need to take a quick look back on the history of human evolution. It has taken millions of years for our species to become what we are today. Evolutionary changes happen over long period of time so we can say that the body and mind that we have now are very similar to that of a humans hundreds and even thousands of years ago. The point being that we have not evolved in this “short” period of time.

Now lets take a look at the evolution of our society. Things are a lot different today than they were even a hundred years ago. We now have food on demand. In terms of evolution then, we are way behind. Our reptilian brain still thinks that we are hunter-gatheres. It still thinks that food is hard to come by and that we need to constantly worry when our next meal is going to come. It doesn’t understand that we have 7-11’s and fast food chains outside our front door. Its primary objective will always be survival so if it knows that there is food available then it is going to say “EAT IT”. This leads to massive overeating and a lot of weight gain.

In order to prevent yourself from over-eating and constantly thinking about food you need to tame your reptilian brain. You must communicate to it that you are safe and that it doesn’t need to worry about food because you have food available. Remember your reptilian brain is your friend, not your enemy, so lets work with it to achieve your goals.

The Reptilian Brain
The Mammalian Brain
The Primate Brain

The Reptilian Brain

The Reptilian Brain consists mainly of brain structures such as the brain stem, the medulla, the pons, cerebellum an other what are considered “primitive” structures. Its major function involves mainly reflexive and internal body functions such as breathing, circulation, digestion etc. It also handles primary instinctive and reflexive actions which serve to protect us. In terms of our understanding its motives lie in such characteristics as aggression, power, sexuality and protection. It’s number one primary goal is survival, i.e To make sure that you stay alive.

The Mammalian Brain

The Mammalian Brain, often referred to as “the limbic system”, contains lots of brain structures or “nuclei”, however most neuroscientists disagree as to which brain structures should be included into the limbic system. For the purpose of our learning we will describe the limbic system as our emotional, memory and pleasure centers of the brain. The limbic system houses brain structures such as the amygdala, the hippocampus and the ventral tegmental area (VTA). The limbic system gives rise to a lot of our feelings. These areas and others will be discussed. An understanding of the mammalian brain will be critical in our understanding of our behavior, particularly towards eating.

The Primate Brain

The Primate Brain is generally composed of the neo-cortex (also called cerebral cortex). It is because of our very large neo-cortex in comparison to other animals that makes us human. The neo-cortex allows us to do things like engage in complex social interactions and to plan for the future.
The neo-cortex also gives rise to rational thinking. For example you can probably remember a time when you really wanted to do something, but you “knew” that you shouldn’t. It was your neo-cortex telling you not to do it.

Although it is true that we have one brain, there are certain parts of our brain that have their own “motives” and this can cause extreme conflict. We all like to think that our neo-cortex is in control all the time, however it can often get “hijacked” by the other brian structures. So while your neo-cortex might be telling you not to eat that cookie, your reptilian brain is shouting at you to eat it because it is afraid that the cookie won’t be available to eat tomorrow or anytime soon in the future. Plus it also knows that the cookie is high in fat and sugar, which is in essence, brain food. Then your emotional brain whispers to you and expresses how delicious it will taste. All in all its a losing combination for your neo-cortex.

Fortunately our neo-cortex comes equipped with a powerful process that we call willpower. So we use our willpower to suppress the desire to gorge and overeat. Unfortunately however we have limited willpower, and eventually we break down and give in to our cravings. In order to change your brain we need to learn how to tame our reptilian brain and work with our emotional brain to put your cortex back in control. This is one of the fundamental steps in controlling the way you eat.

Now that we have a brief understanding of the three brains – join us back when we will discuss how to use our knowledge of the “three” brains to dramatically increase our likelihood of diet success.

Good luck, and remember, It’s All BrainChanging.