Increase the Size of Your Brain & Improve Mental Health

10 Ways to Increase the Size of Your Brain

• • Self-consciousness
  • Self awareness
  • Limbic system (emotion regulation) (7)

Juggle

Juggling increases your brain’s grey matter, and white matter, regardless of your skill in the activity.  Grey matter is the part of the brain that contains nerve cells’ bodies. White matter consists of parts of the brain that contain mostly axons. These are outgrowths of nerve cells that serve as cell connectors. (8)

In 2009, scientists from the University of Oxford discovered juggling bulks up your brain’s “white matter,” too.   Study participants practiced juggling for a half hour daily for six weeks.  Diffusion tensor brain imaging  taken before and after the activity, showed that, while the white matter in the brains of the non-juggling control group did not change, the jugglers enjoyed more white matter in the parietal lobe part of the brain. And get this:

The increase in white matter  occurred in all jugglers, regardless of how well they could juggle. (9) The parietal lobe helps involves spacial awareness, proprioception and processing the sense of touch. 10)

Meditate

Numerous studies suggest engaging in meditation structurally changes your brain for the better.

In a 2011, Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital researchers published a breakthrough study showing that guided meditation and mindfulness-based stress reduction led to measurable brain changes in areas involved with human memory, compassion and stress. In fact, practicing mindfulness meditation for just eight weeks changes your brain in a way that MRI scanners can detect.

(Mindfulness meditation involves becoming aware of what is true moment by moment; to be present and turn attention to what is happening at that moment in a nonjudgemental way.) (11)

MRI images showed more brain matter density in the compassion, learning and memory centers in the hippocampus compared to pre-meditation scans. Interestingly, gray matter in the amygdala, a stress and anxiety center, shrank. All of this occurred with an average of 27 minutes of meditation practice a day for just eight weeks. (12, 13)

We know from earlier studies that mindfulness-based stress reduction bolsters the posterior cingulate cortex, the temporo-parietal junction and the cerebellum areas of the brain. These areas involve learning and memory, emotion regulation, empathy and sense of self.  Prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula areas of the brain were thicker among meditators. These areas impact sensory processing. Researchers say based on the brain-sparing properties meditation has, it could be a way to offset age-related cortical thinning.  (14)

Click on the link below to experience a guided meditation for stress relief

A Meditation for Stress Relief & Anxiety: Walk Along the Beach Guided Meditation Visualization

Learning to play music literally increases the size of your brain, with the biggest impact occurring in children taking up music before the age of 7.             The details are astounding. Long-term, high-level musical training endows musicians with a better ability to integrate sensory information from hearing, touch and sight. So how does this work?

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