Neuroscience Experts: Understand Your Brain For Optimal Health
Rich Roll
Aug 28, 2025
Mindsip insights from this episode:
Activate bonding and awareness through spiritual experiences
FMRI studies show that spiritual experiences quiet the brain's default mode network (rumination) and activate networks associated with bonding, orientation, and broad awareness.
Calm your mind by utilizing hypnosis to reduce salience network activity
Hypnosis works by turning down activity in the brain's 'salience network,' the part that acts as a context detector and decides what you should pay attention to.
Explore genetic link between hypnotizability and dopamine metabolism
High hypnotizability is associated with a specific genetic variation in the COMT enzyme, which affects how the brain metabolizes dopamine.
Align internal pace with external world to overcome impatience
The feeling of impatience arises when your internal metronome, or the perceived speed of your bodily processes, is not matched to the pace of the external world.
Harness focus to trigger neuroplasticity and enhance brain change
Neuroplasticity in adults is triggered by intense focus, which marks neurons for change, but the actual rewiring occurs during subsequent periods of deep rest and sleep.
Control Alzheimer's risk through lifestyle choices
Only up to 3% of Alzheimer's cases are 100% driven by genes, while the other 97% are influenced by risk genes that can be controlled by lifestyle.
Prioritize vascular health to protect brain function
Vascular problems can predate Alzheimer's pathology by 20 years, meaning brain health is fundamentally about maintaining the health of its 400 miles of blood vessels.
Restore pleasure-pain balance to combat addiction
Addiction creates a dopamine deficit state where the brain's pleasure-pain balance is chronically tilted to the side of pain, requiring drug use just to feel normal.
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