Transcriber: Rhonda Jacobs Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
I think this is a perfect day to change the world,
and I'm going to begin with God.
[GOD?]
Yes, God.
God?
(Laughter)
Oh god.
(Laughter)
No matter how you think about it,
God is going to change your brain.
And it doesn't matter if you're a believer or a disbeliever.
It may anger you.
It may delight you.
It may confuse you.
It may even mystify you.
But our brain scan research at the University of Pennsylvania
is definitive.
God will change your brain.
Why?
Because God is a big idea.
And perhaps the second biggest idea in the world.
And any big idea,
any really big idea
is going to grow dendrites
in some of the most important parts of your brain.
Big ideas
like peace,
compassion,
or love.
Like God, there's no scientific evidence
that these ideas actually exist in the world,
but they will build a better brain.
Some ideas can reduce anxiety,
depression, or rage.
Others can actually improve memory, cognition,
social awareness,
and consciousness itself.
And then there are a few ideas
that will actually scare the living dendrites
out of your amygdala.
(Laughter)
Like money.
Or to be more specific,
the fear of losing money.
And here, we have an actual brain scan study
of an individual who is about to lose $12
to a computer.
(Laughter)
[FEAR OF LOSING MONEY]
How is this possible?
How can a single idea or even a single word
change the structure and function of your brain?
It can.
It does.
All big ideas, whether it be God or peace or compassion
begins as an idea in your frontal lobes.
And this information is sent to your thalamus.
Grand Central Station of reality processing.
And this is the thing that tells your brain
what it thinks is going on in the outside world.
It may send the information to your occipital lobes,
where you can create a vision of what you want to bring in the world.
So this is your vision and your big idea coming together.
But what's really important
is that the information is sent to your parietal lobe back here.
And this is the part of your brain
that creates an artificial construction of you.
You do not exist in the world.
You are a fantasy - a useful one -
created in the parietal lobes of your brain,
and by meditating on your big idea,
you begin to align yourself with your dream, your goal,
and your vision.
If that dream and goal and vision is a positive one,
it's going to stimulate parts of your body and your brain
that are enormously healthy.
And we actually think that it will affect certain parts of your brain
that will add a few years onto your life.
If, however, your big idea is a little on the negative side,
like war, this will not stimulate those parts of the brain,
and it will create neurochemicals that will actually destroy
the limbic system that controls destructive emotions.
So the more you grumble, the more you complain,
the more you are frustrated, you are killing yourself.
And if you meditate on your big idea
for 45 or 50 minutes, a most unusual thing begins to happen:
your parietal lobe activity goes down.
You actually disappear.
You're losing your ego.
And all that remains is your big idea.
So if you're focusing on peace,
peace becomes your inner and outer reality.
Peace becomes anything that you want.
If your big idea is to change the world, then you will begin to change the world
because that's all there is that exists.
Now, these are our actual brain scan studies.
And what's important about this is that if you are a Buddhist
and you're focusing on pure consciousness,
or, if you are a Franciscan nun
who is simply attempting to feel closer to God,
we get almost exactly the same neurological stimulation
going on in the brain.
Two totally different belief systems.
But because they're positive,
because they're deeply meaningful to the individual,
you create a healthier brain.
And if you do this type of meditation for a few years -
and we can actually see it beginning to happen
in the first eight weeks in our studies -
your thalamus permanently changes its structure by ten percent.
You actually cannot see reality the same way
before you meditate.
So if you don't like the reality that you live in,
if your reality is one of worry or fear or depression,
do meditate on a positive belief system,
and maybe you too can end up with an asymmetrical thalamus.
It's a very weird thing.
(Laughter)
God is a big idea and it's good for your brain,
but only if your image of God is positive.
If you ruminate on a negative God,
if you ruminate on a negative thought
for more than 20 seconds,
you're actually going to do damage to your brain;
and yes, although we have to keep our subjects anonymous,
we do have evidence,
we've been working with him for years and years,
and you can see what actually happens
(Laughter)
to his brain.
And please! women out there,
forgive us
because we also think this is the notion
of most men's brains that are out there too.
We're just born that way; we cannot help it.
So what happens if you believe in something
or focus on something that you don't really believe in?
So I'm going to tell you a personal story.
I've meditated for many years,
and although I don't believe
in that story of an old man with a white beard in the sky,
I always found that doing a God meditation felt very, very good.
And I've tried out meditations
from virtually every religious tradition around the world,
and we find that they're all beneficial for you.
So I became one of Andy's brain scan subjects,
as disbelievers are an unusual creature to look at,
particularly disbelievers who happen to like to meditate on God.
And here I am about five minutes into the study,
and I'm visualizing the God that we all know best,
the God of the Cistine Chapel.
Incredible picture.
And he disappears!
Oy vey, right in the middle of a brain scanning.
What in the world am I going to do?
Well, fortunately,
I was filled with this sense of radiating light coming through me;
I know that that's also a very wonderful meditation
that will change your brain in positive ways.
I got so ecstatic, I couldn't sleep for three days, and I thought,
maybe, just maybe, we've captured a mystical experience on film -
this has been Andy Newburg's dream for about ten years,
to actually see what happens when you have that "aha!" experience.
Boy, was I wrong.
When the brain scan studies came back,
I discovered that one half of my frontal lobe activity
was going way, way up;
the other half was going way, way down.
We have a word for this:
neural dissonance.
It's not a very good thing to nurture.
And yes, I too, have an asymmetrical thalamus.
It's a very, very rare event.
So I'm going to encourage you all, throughout the rest of your life,
to find your big idea
and to meditate and contemplate on it day after day,
so that you turn out to be as weird as me.
(Laughter)
Our research also shows that focusing on a disbelief
is socially destructive.
Negative thoughts stimulate the amygdala.
Here is your amygdala.
And in Latin, amygdala stands for almond, and it looks exactly like an almond.
And it is literally that part of your brain
that makes you go nuts.
(Laughter)
Our advice: do not focus on negative beliefs.
A recent study found
that for a highly anxious or depressed individual,
if you look at a list of negative words -
[WORLD DOMINANCE, DESTRUCTION, DEAD, LETHAL VIOLENCE, DAMAGE, HATRED]
[FASCISTS, DUBYA, SUICIDE, OCCUPATION]
I'm sorry for destroying your brain right now -
you become worse.
In fact,
[NO]
if I put you in an fMRI brain scan machine
and show you this word for less than one second,
it will release more stress neurochemicals
than can possibly be good for your body or your brain.
And yet, if you see a positive word, hardly anything happens.
[YES]
Why?
It's not a threat to your survival.
This is why you have to meditate on your positive belief,
your positive image, your optimism
for a very long time
if you want to achieve the types of neurological benefits
that we've been able to document in the lab.
Now, our research shows that God, for most people,
is not a very big idea.
Money is a much bigger idea.
But it's still not the biggest idea in the world.
What is?
Well, Andy and I think that we've discovered a single question
that can help you find what that biggest idea is in your life.
Can you guess what that question is?
It is not "What makes you happy?"
If you Google that question, you get over three million hits.
And the question I'm about to ask you
brings up less than 50 hits.
How is that possible?
How can one of the most important questions
that could lead you to one of the most important issues
and big ideas in your life only show up 50 times?
How can we be so ignorant of what this is?
Why don't we focus on our own big idea?
I'm going to help you right now to find your own big idea.
But I need your help.
And I need you to close your eyes for a moment
and to relax.
In other words, I'm going to need you to meditate.
It's going to change your brain, right here and right now,
and it's the easiest thing to do
because all you have to do is breathe in deeply,
(Exhales)
stretch a little bit and move around in your chair;
(Yawns)
and it requires you
to do one other thing that we've become notorious for -
I'm going to ask you to yawn.
And we have 43 documented studies to show you
that this is one of the eight best ways to exercise your brain.
So let's begin.
Close your eyes if you feel comfortable.
Yawn.
It's very contagious.
Breathe deeply.
Stretch, even if you don't feel like it.
Roll around your head;
shake out your arms and legs.
And now think about something or someone you deeply love.
And now ask yourself this question:
What is my deepest, innermost value?
Find a single word or phrase
that captures that essential, deep value.
This is your big idea.
An idea so powerful, it will change your brain,
it will change your life,
and it may even change the world.
Christian, Jewish, Muslim,
Hindu, Buddhist, or atheist,
we all have a hidden value
that is our guide through personal life.
For me, it's compassion, and I'm not very good at it,
which is why I have to meditate on that,
every day of my life.
And when you share your deepest belief
with other people from other traditions,
you're going to find out
that we are all members of the same church.
The Church of Humanity.
The Church of Life.
And if you meditate on that word, that sacred belief, that big idea
for just a few minutes a day,
in eight weeks,
you will neurologically begin to change the structure and function of your brain.
It will bring a little bit more peace into your hearts.
And as our research documents,
if you bring those values into your speech,
with a half smile on your face,
and a soft gaze in your eyes,
as you speak as slowly as I am speaking for very brief periods of time,
you will change the listener's brain.
It's called "neural resonance,"
and it is the key to getting along with others.
Today you are going to meet and experience each speaker's big idea,
and so I suggest that before they come on stage,
that you take a moment and yawn,
breathe, and stretch.
They won't be boring, so you won't have to yawn during their talk.
(Laughter)
But this is actually why students do yawn in the morning
when they're listening to boring people like me.
It keeps your brain alive.
It arouses your precuneus in 60 seconds, and it's legal!
(Laughter)
It's wonderful!
It's an incredible thing that you can do.
Even Bill Clinton can do this,
and he would have still been president, three, four, five times over.
(Laughter)
But listen, as deeply as you can; I want you to actually meditate.
Breathe deeply as you listen to each person's words today.
If you do that, their big idea will change your brain,
and together, maybe, just maybe,
we'll all bring a little bit more peace into this world.
Thank you.
(Applause)