Networking grants

The selection panel is chaired by Professor Rajesh Kalaria FMedSci, Newcastle University. Details of the other members will be added in due course.

[21:21] JQ: We're back. It's Explain It To Me. I'm JQ, and this is Boston University's Andrew Budson. 

Andrew Budson: So I'm a neurologist, and I specialize in memory disorders. 

JQ: Andrew studies how we make memories and how we hold on to them. He says it all starts when we notice something. That information gets stored deep in our temporal lobe, otherwise known as the hippocampus. 

Andrew Budson: This hippocampus, it actually takes, like, the separate sights and sounds and smells and thoughts and feelings that you're having at that instant, and it binds them all together into a coherent whole. It then gets tagged with an index that will allow you to retrieve that information later. 

JQ: Is it like a filing cabinet? Because that's what I imagine, the little, I don't know, Inside Out people in my brain, like, reaching into the files and pulling stuff out. 

Audio from the Inside Out movie: Oh, here's one where she waved at a guy who was actually waving at a girl behind her. Oh, that was so bad. Good choice. Oh, here's when she forgot that girl's name. Oh, yeah. That was super awkward. What was her name? 

Andrew Budson: You know, it's a little bit like a file cabinet, but the twist is that the files are just the blueprints or the schematic of the memory. And what your brain needs to do is it needs to take this blueprint and it needs to very actively recreate the memory. It needs to actually recreate all the details that are going on. So there, another part of your brain called the frontal lobes get involved and they are sort of like the director or the contractor that is in charge of this active construction so to sort of get all of these pieces to be working together. And when we retrieve the memory and actively reconstruct it, it reproduces the pattern of neurochemical electrical activity that it had when that episode was originally created. 

[23:44] JQ: Biologically, what allows us to learn and retain new ideas? 

Andrew Budson: So it's one of the coolest things, and it really is part of neuroplasticity. So neuroplasticity is essentially the concept that our brains are elastic or, you know, they're able to make new connections over time. So memories are a strengthening of existing connections in the brain between one neuron and another, and they're also the creation of new connections between neurons in the brain. And so what happens when we sleep is the brain figures out, okay, this strengthening of connections here, this is an important memory, so we're gonna strengthen that even further or we're gonna grow new connections so those connections become permanent, and one of the really cool things about neuroplasticity is how it's something that people can use throughout their lives. When I went to medical school, I was told that it was really only, you know, like babies and children that had this sort of neuroplasticity available to them. But we now know that neuroplasticity is going on throughout the lifespan, including in people as old as me and and older.

[25:18] JQ: Yeah. So it sounds like our brains are a muscle like any other, and so is it one of those use it or lose it type situations? 

Andrew Budson: That is very true, and there have been studies that have looked at what happens when people get socially isolated. Our brains evolve for social interactions. You know, our math teachers might think it's, you know, to do arithmetic in our heads, but they're wrong. That's not what our brain is for. So when you're talking to your friend next to you in the math class, that is actually what our brains are for. They're for these social interactions. And so people who become socially isolated, their brains actually shrink. Even if they don't have a disorder, their brains shrink. And people who are socially isolated are at increased risk of developing dementia. 

[26:19] JQ: Okay. So if your brain is a muscle, does that mean we can train it to be smarter? 

Andrew Budson: Absolutely. We totally can. And the key is to train with the most direct example as you possibly can. So, what I mean by that is there are a lot of companies that are out there, many of whom are working very hard with lots of scientists to try to develop brain training games that are going to really help us. But so far, what the studies have proven is that if you spend a lot of time with these brain training games, you get better at the brain training games. You know, it it does not translate into everyday life. But, like, if you wanna get better at doing something like, you know, remembering, you know, French vocabulary words, you can get better at remembering French vocabulary words by basically working hard at, you know, developing sort of a routine or a program as to how you're gonna work on, you know, studying the vocabulary words, how you're gonna incorporate into your life. So we all can improve on almost anything our brain does, but the trick is to work on practicing that. 

[27:54] JQ: Yeah. You know, people have written and talked about how it can be difficult to focus and think critically these days. How does critical thinking and knowledge develop? 

Andrew Budson: You know, I actually think that critical thinking is a skill, and I don't know that I have a simple recipe, but I think it has to do with when you're faced with a complicated decision or something complicated that you're trying to do or achieve or create, of sort of slowing down, of listing, like, all the different things that you know, listing, you know, what is the output that you want to have, what's the final product, and then going through and thinking about all the different possibilities so that you won't miss something that's important and often another thing that happens when we sleep is we allow our unconscious brain processes to work on problems. So, I think critical thinking is really the conscious part of it, but we want to use our unconscious mind as well because often we can get insights when we sleep. 

[29:17] JQ: Yeah. You know, before I let you go, I'm curious your thoughts on something. There's all this talk about how, like, oh, we're not as smart as we used to be. I don't know. You look at a lot of brains. Like, how are we stacking up these days? 

Andrew Budson: Yeah. So, you know, I do think that there are some reasons that we may not be as smart today as we used to be. I think the average person's ability, for example, to navigate from one place to another has been dramatically reduced by the use of Google Maps and other programs like that. The part of our brain that's involved in navigation does actually shrink for many people. The one other thing I'd like to mention because it was actually studied is that people who spend more than an hour a day watching TV actually end up getting less smart over time. And what do I mean by that? It's gonna make your brain smaller because you're not using it. It's important to use your brain. And don't forget, the thing that our brains evolved for is to have social interactions. So I don't want people to, you know, go out and, you know, spend their time in a windowless room, you know, studying math texts. What I want people to do is to get out there in life, interact with people. That's how to use your brains the best.