#61 Happiness – Neuroplasticity and Happiness Habits
Happiness Podcast
Dr. Robert Puff, Ph.D.
4.5 • 955 Ratings
🗓️ 24 January 2015
⏱️ 20 minutes
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Summary
Research has soon that we can change our brains structure through activities we engage in. Learn how we can change our brains to be happier. If you what to learn more about the world of happiness, visit www.HappinessPodcast.org
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Happiness Podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff. You may not know this, but if you ever |
| 0:19.2 | want to be a cab driver in London, there is a very challenging test that they have to take in order to become a cab driver. |
| 0:26.0 | They have to memorize basically every street in London by heart |
| 0:30.0 | and then take a test and show that they know that. |
| 0:33.5 | And if you haven't been to London, they aren't like symmetrical nicely aligned streets. |
| 0:38.5 | They curve, they twist, they end, they go all over the place, and there's not much rhyme or reason to them. So it's a lot to |
| 0:46.5 | memorize. I mean a great deal for these men and sometimes women. It usually takes them |
| 0:51.7 | a few years to pass this test and they are spending a lot of time driving around London getting to know all the streets. |
| 0:58.5 | Believe it or not, scientists have been somewhat interested in these cabbies and wanted to look at their brains. |
| 1:05.3 | When I was in graduate school, they used to tell me that the brain was pretty much set when |
| 1:09.3 | you were grown and you could change it a little bit, but pretty much there was who you were, your brain was the way it was, |
| 1:16.0 | and you were going to live with that until you died. |
| 1:18.0 | If anything, it would just get worse. |
| 1:20.0 | But it was what it was. |
| 1:22.0 | Well, scientists, probably over the last 10-20 years, have began to question that truth, and the cab is that proved it not to be true. Let me explain. |
| 1:31.0 | Well, you can imagine that this test is very challenging and they are spending a lot of time memorizing streets and landmarks. |
| 1:39.0 | Well, what they did is the scientists said let's take the cabbies before they start preparing for this |
| 1:44.1 | test and look at their brain and let's look at the brain after they take their |
| 1:47.7 | test and see if there's any difference. And guess what? There was the part of the brain responsible from turning short-term memory into long-term memory was bigger. It was actually bigger. |
| 1:59.0 | So from this and many other studies since that time, scientists have come up with a new term called |
| 2:04.3 | neuroplasticity. |
| 2:06.4 | And what that means is the mind can change and evolve with time throughout our lives. |
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