here you are everything that is you your
entire personality your character your
hopes and dreams your memories and
emotions your creativity your
personality everything about you your
political beliefs your beliefs your
religious beliefs
there’s even studies looking into the
neural correlate of religious belief
everything about you that makes up you
it’s all here in this organ the most
complex system of which we know but is
this you is this everything
many people think yes many nur the
history of neuroscience has actually
shown that yes I mean even studies now
are showing that if you change this
right you change scientists have may
have just found a way to remove junk
food cravings from the brain for example
so if you do something to this you
change your mind your self changes my
answer to this is this all you are is
going to be a resounding no you are a
brain yourself but more than that your
brain that exists in a body and that
body moves around it’s capable of motion
and it moves around in an external world
and interacts with that environment
movement it turns out may be essential
for the mind it may be necessary for the
mind and movement actually affects the
mind and affects yourself that’s a view
called
embodied cognition and we’re now
beginning to study that I’ll begin by
talking about the brain and movement at
the level of the brain from the
perspective of that I study the brain
which is called complex systems next
I’ll talk about the human mind and
notice here I just typed in Google the
human mind and I typed in images and
what came up pictures of the head or the
brain not pictures of the foot or the
hand or the elbow or a fingernail
pictures of the head or the brain
because normally we think that’s where
the mind that’s where you are that’s
where you exist the minds here if it
exists anywhere at all and finally at
the end I’ll talk about I’ll tie all
this together with functional movement
fitness and exercise now let me give you
one of the punch lines of this talk
right up front the brain is a dynamical
system and the mind is an emergent
self-organizing Prem
process that happens because of movement
that’s what the mind is now perhaps one
of the most striking examples that
movement that brains may have evolved
for movement in the in the first place
for the organism is something called the
sea squirt this is a baby sea squirt is
a tadpole and it swims around as a brain
of 300 neurons
some of these neurons take in sensory
information and some neurons produce
motor outputs and it swims around until
the sea squirt looks like this and it
attaches itself to a coral reef and
what’s the first thing that it does
after attaches itself is it digests and
eats its own central nervous system it
eats its own brain because it never
needs to move again now our brains are
much more complex our brains are called
a complex system and we study the brain
through these properties called
self-organization emergence pattern
formation and coordinate coordination
dynamics this is the glass brain from
Adam gazzola’s lab and this is a person
playing a video game in real-time and
you can see the brain functions by
sending electrochemical signals across
these axonal pathways in what are called
large-scale brain networks so we used to
think this part of the brain does this
and this part of the brain does that but
now we know that cognitive processes
like attention and language and
creativity and perception actually
happen through large-scale brain
networks and you could see these red
parts of the brain lighting up for
fractions of a second they’re
coordinating in very dynamic ways these
are local nodes producing global
properties Scott Kelso the founder of
the Centre for complex systems and brain
sciences where I study actually
metaphorically likens this to a good
old-fashioned square dance
these red parts are dancing with each
other for a second and then one part
dances with another part then it lets
that go and then dances with another
part and lets that go and they
synchronize and they D synchronize and
it’s this ability to synchronize and D
synchronize like a jazz quartet for
example that cognition happens that your
mind happens so what does it mean to be
a complex system a complex system is a
system composed of many many many
different part
it’s all interacting and they’re highly
coupled so our brains are actually
eighty billion neurons and each one of
those neurons is connected to thousands
of other neurons totaling 100 trillion
about about connections and each one of
those neurons is following local rules
then they’re all following local rules
and they produce global properties this
is what it means to be the whole is
greater than the sum of the parts that’s
what that phrase really means no these
neurons are following local rules for
example do I fire or excite the next
neuron or do I and not fire or inhibit
the next neuron and each one of them
following local rules produces these
self-organized properties so it’s our a
great example these ants are all
following local rules and they can
self-organize to produce global things
like a bridge across a gap there’s no
one ant that’s a civil engineer or has a
concept of a bridge and okay guys that’s
time to build a bridge the bridge is a
spatial pattern that just happens that
emerges another example of these is this
starlings these starlings are producing
this phenomena called murmuration each
Starling is following local rules don’t
fly so close to me I won’t fly so close
to you you flap your wings this way and
I’ll flap mine this way for example I
make you produce these beautiful you see
a wave here going from one side to the
other life is movement these beautiful
patterns that can actually send a signal
of danger from one side to the other
and just these starlings this this swarm
if you will is constantly changing shape
your brain is also constantly changing
shape because of the movements of
neurons and a phenomenon called
neuroplasticity another great example
that we’ve all been part of in a Sports
Arena is the wave this is a well thought
a fascinating phenomena the wave doesn’t
exist in any one person it’s a pattern
when the mood and the timing is right
that spontaneously self-organizes
there’s no one person organizing the
wave it just happens and notice that
when it comes around it sort of enslaves
you and makes you a part of it so we
study these patterns of movement and
something called coordination dynamics
which you looks at the coordinated
movements in between living things this
is a scientific field of study and one
of the central models here is called the
hawk and Kelso boo
model this is a mathematical model that
it’s a simple model but it describes and
explains very well and makes predictions
about the real world and the movement
between things one example is the
finger-wagging experiment where you can
do this for yourself if you go like this
and then you increase the speed you’ll
see that they switch from anti phase to
in phase and there’s nothing you could
do about it it’s involuntary and there’s
a phase transition that happens this
model explains the movement between your
fingers but also between movements of
the more complicated movements between
limbs of a ballet dancer or they put
sensors on the ballet dancer and studied
them very impactful and emotional
movements not only between fingers and
between limbs but also between people
and between brains the social
coordination or the the coordinated
dynamics between people and economies
for example has been studied so I want
you to think about the mind as a pattern
of movement an embodied pattern of
movement classically this the
historically one view is called
materialism this is a view was
championed by actually Francis Crick one
of the co discoverers of DNA who wrote a
book called the astonishing hypothesis
and mastani a hypothesis is simply this
that a person’s mental activities are
entirely due to the behavior of the
nerve cells glial cells and the atoms
and then ions and the molecules that
make them up that’s it that’s all you
are
that’s all yourself really is now I’m
really not talking about I’m gonna leave
aside the soul of this spirit for now
for two reasons mainly one because even
within one traditional worldview there’s
a lot of disagreement about what
constitutes a soul or a spirit and also
now everything about you your entire
personality is really being explained in
terms of physics chemistry and biology
it’s very reductionistic and that’s a
little bit of a problem as I’ll explain
now I’m gonna put a question mark on
this because the jury’s still out
one view of materialism is actually
called cognitivism or computationalism
and this is where the brain maybe you’ve
heard of this has been likened to
a computer and the mind is a software
program running on that computer Marvin
Minsky one of the founders of artificial
intelligence actually said minds are
simply what brains do notice there’s no
mention of movement and there’s no
mention of the body and they’re missing
maybe if this is true actually something
like the matrix will one day be possible
and we can download our consciousness
and from our brains and then upload them
in something called mind uploading into
a computer achieving some sort of
computational immortality that would be
really cool the problem with this is the
brain simply isn’t digital one for many
reasons one reason is that from neural
plasticity the brain can change itself
and add and change its structure and
function based on something called as I
mentioned before neuroplasticity so the
latest sexiest view in cognitive science
and fields like neural philosophy is
something called embodied mind or
embodied cognition and I’m going to let
Alvin Noah explain this here because
he’s a pioneer in the field
he explains us so eloquently we’ve been
looking for consciousness in the wrong
place we’ve been looking for it inside
of us for me that’s a that’s a sort of
profound mistake a little bit like
trying to find the dancing and the
musculature of the dancer or trying to
find the value of money in the chemical
composition of the dollar bill so wrong
it’s the wrong kind of place to look
idea that I’ve had in my work is that
instead of of thinking about
consciousness is something that happens
in us in our brains or anywhere else why
don’t we try to think of consciousness
as something that we do or an act or
perform in our dynamic involvement with
the world around us so what he’s really
saying is that we can’t give an account
of the mind anymore without giving an
account of the body and how it moves so
all those processes at the beginning
that I was mentioning like decision
making the ability to do the right or
wrong thing perception attention
language memory emotion all those
cognitive processes have a lot to do we
now know with how you treat and how you
move your body that’s really one of the
punch lines here the fact that you have
a body enables and
changes your mind how you use your bike
your body might actually change the way
you think let me give you some empirical
examples of this locally here in South
Florida FIU there was a study showing
that good handwriting or fine penmanship
was actually a good predictor of better
grades later on
likewise poor penmanship predicted worse
grades even playing a guitar or piano or
musical instrument has been known now
well studied to affect the brain and the
nervous system and the cognitive
processes that the brain produces
posture we now know that how you stand
and how you sit and you’re how you hold
your body actually can affect your
perception of the external world
another study just came out showing that
the rhythm of your breathing can
actually affect fear and anxiety in
places like the hippocampus in the brain
and the amygdala this is a lot to do
with something called the vagus nerve
the vagus nerve is the tenth vagal the
tenth nerve
since cranial nerve that connects the
brain and the gut in there the brain
axis and has a lot to do with something
called vagal tone we now know that the
vagal tone actually people with higher
legal tone have decreased levels of
anxiety and stress because the vagus
nerve up regulates the parasympathetic
nervous system the rest and digest it’s
involved in calming the mind yoga and
all kinds of exercise different movement
patterns can actually affect and
increase your vagal tone those are now
becoming a very well studied phenomena
here’s something funny giving the middle
finger this is Stephen Colbert giving
the middle finger just funny this study
actually came out showing how extending
your middle finger affects your
perception of other people not only how
they perceive you but how you perceive
them one final example is called the
rubber hand illusion this is a well
fascinating phenomena where a rubber
hand is placed looks like you’re coming
from your body and your real hand is
here hidden from your view so it looks
like you have the you’re seeing the
rubber hand coming from your body and
the rubber hand and the real hand is
stroked simultaneously the brain starts
to adopt the rubber hand as its own so
much so that as you could see here the
person gets the rubber hand gets struck
by hammer and the
actually feels pain this has even been
extended to the whole entire body using
things like virtual reality where you
can feel like you have another body
likewise there’s also a disorder called
somatic para frenita where or alien hand
syndrome where the person actually feels
like their body parts don’t actually
belong to them
so James Gibson famous American
psychologist interested in perception
and vision actually said we must
perceive in order to move but we must
also move in order to perceive so that’s
how I want you to think of the mind as a
process as an embodied process as a flow
so you’re not a brain but your brain
that exists in a body and that body
moves around and performs actions in an
external world in an environment which
then affect perception which then affect
your cognitive processes in this cycle
and what’s called the action perception
cycle I’ll give you some quotes this
this is as you can see this is a cycle
this is a flow as I said William James
one of the founders of American
psychology and founder of American
philosophy called pragmatism invented
the term the stream of consciousness you
may have heard of that consciousness
then does not appear self chopped up
into bits it is nothing jointed it flows
Francisco Varela who wrote a book called
the embodied mind said cognition depends
upon the kinds of experiences that come
from having a body with various sensory
motor capacities and one of my favorites
Plato said lack of activity destroys the
good condition of every human being
while movement and methodical physical
exercise save it and preserve it
movement is important for your
well-being and we now know that because
we’re measuring that in the brain so now
that we have this idea of embodied mind
and you understand this idea of embodied
cognition we have this an idea of
embodied mind in hand
pun intended it’s my contention that the
there’s a similar paradigm shift going
on in the fitness industry which has
moved away from those days of like
bodybuilding and Arnold Schwarzenegger
and lifting weights and moved more
toward functional movements how the body
actually moves around
the external world focusing on strength
and flexibility and mobility in a very
very different way what I’m calling
embodied Fitness let me give you several
examples of this and five examples
actually one is IDO portal he’s become
very very famous now I’m very well known
all around the world he goes all around
the world teaching this movement kind of
pattern all of these have actually been
branded forms of movement and they’re
selling quite frankly they’re selling
and they’re becoming very very popular
he created something called the movement
culture also something called
animal flow which was created down here
in South Florida actually in Miami by
Mike Fitch and I think this encapsulates
or I should say it captures the idea of
embody Fitness and a body mind very very
well and it has the word flow in it it’s
called animal flow and it’s a workout
program it’s a very difficult workout
program that takes a long time to learn
and develop
rathe kelly created something called
evolve move play this is based on
movement from an evolutionary
perspective how the body adapted to move
in its environment bodyweight exercises
have been pioneered by a gentleman named
by Frank Medrano who’s an expert in in
using the body in different ways much
like gymnastics or something like that
so these are different patterns of
movement which I’m calling embody
fitness now we’re measuring how these
different movement patterns affect the
brain and let me just give you six
examples running is the first example
looking into how running shapes the
central nervous summon affects the brain
in many different ways one is it
increases the functional connectivity in
this part of the brain the prefrontal
cortex which has evolved in
goal-directed actions and thinking about
the future and making plans running
actually also increases BDNF
brain-derived neurotrophic factors which
have been like it to fertilizer for the
brain stimulates the growth of new
neurons in the brain and to connect the
connectivity between already existing
neurons maybe some of you will remember
aerobics and the fad that was big in the
compositions they had back in the 80s
remember this
hilarious is these funny competitions
that they had right but seriously
actually a study this is funny but a
study just showed and many studies have
come out but in 2015 I think a study
showed in frontiers of human
neuroscience that an intervention of
aerobic activity I think it was spinning
precisely actually affected and improved
creativity improved the divergent and
convergent pathways in the brain that
are highly involved in creativity
strength training we do know that
strength training has an effect and
improved effect on brain function and
cognition in people over 55 and also has
also decreased lesions in the white
matter tracts and elderly women Yoga is
another example we now know that Yoga
does many many things for the brain
including increase the amount of gray
matter in areas of the brain involved in
learning and memory and compassion and
decreases the amount of gray matter in
neurons and the areas of brain involved
with fear and anxiety like the amygdala
yoga as I said has also been shown to
increase your vagal tone Tai Chi this is
an intercept –iv contemplative pattern
of movement this is fascinating a study
just came out showing that advanced
practitioners of Tai Chi were less
susceptible to the rubber hand illusion
that I showed you a few slides ago
fascinating and also high intensity
interval training or hit or the tabata
method or something like that bees have
been shown to actually increase
cerebrovascular function or blood flow
in very specific areas of the brain so
I’ll end the talk with showing you this
which you’ve seen before
this is Rodin’s the thinker the symbol
of philosophy the symbol of man’s
ability to figure out the external world
around him the thinker the this the
familiar phrase Homo sapiens which means
the knowing man or the wise man but I
think it’s interesting if you look
closely that Rodin sculpted the thinker
to be fit if you look at him he’s very
built and maybe as a bodybuilder he’s
huge he’s very fit he’s fit in God
he’s fit in mind and I think that sends
a very very powerful message perhaps we
shouldn’t be called Homo sapiens but
homo movin ‘he’s the moving man
something more fundamental
so my take-home message is clear and
that is who you are has a lot to do with
the fact that you have a body and how
you move that body healthy bodies make
for healthy minds and I’ll end the Ted
they’d like to end with a call to action
so I’ll end with a literal call to
action move move your body and your body
will move you thank you
[Applause]
entire personality your character your
hopes and dreams your memories and
emotions your creativity your
personality everything about you your
political beliefs your beliefs your
religious beliefs
there’s even studies looking into the
neural correlate of religious belief
everything about you that makes up you
it’s all here in this organ the most
complex system of which we know but is
this you is this everything
many people think yes many nur the
history of neuroscience has actually
shown that yes I mean even studies now
are showing that if you change this
right you change scientists have may
have just found a way to remove junk
food cravings from the brain for example
so if you do something to this you
change your mind your self changes my
answer to this is this all you are is
going to be a resounding no you are a
brain yourself but more than that your
brain that exists in a body and that
body moves around it’s capable of motion
and it moves around in an external world
and interacts with that environment
movement it turns out may be essential
for the mind it may be necessary for the
mind and movement actually affects the
mind and affects yourself that’s a view
called
embodied cognition and we’re now
beginning to study that I’ll begin by
talking about the brain and movement at
the level of the brain from the
perspective of that I study the brain
which is called complex systems next
I’ll talk about the human mind and
notice here I just typed in Google the
human mind and I typed in images and
what came up pictures of the head or the
brain not pictures of the foot or the
hand or the elbow or a fingernail
pictures of the head or the brain
because normally we think that’s where
the mind that’s where you are that’s
where you exist the minds here if it
exists anywhere at all and finally at
the end I’ll talk about I’ll tie all
this together with functional movement
fitness and exercise now let me give you
one of the punch lines of this talk
right up front the brain is a dynamical
system and the mind is an emergent
self-organizing Prem
process that happens because of movement
that’s what the mind is now perhaps one
of the most striking examples that
movement that brains may have evolved
for movement in the in the first place
for the organism is something called the
sea squirt this is a baby sea squirt is
a tadpole and it swims around as a brain
of 300 neurons
some of these neurons take in sensory
information and some neurons produce
motor outputs and it swims around until
the sea squirt looks like this and it
attaches itself to a coral reef and
what’s the first thing that it does
after attaches itself is it digests and
eats its own central nervous system it
eats its own brain because it never
needs to move again now our brains are
much more complex our brains are called
a complex system and we study the brain
through these properties called
self-organization emergence pattern
formation and coordinate coordination
dynamics this is the glass brain from
Adam gazzola’s lab and this is a person
playing a video game in real-time and
you can see the brain functions by
sending electrochemical signals across
these axonal pathways in what are called
large-scale brain networks so we used to
think this part of the brain does this
and this part of the brain does that but
now we know that cognitive processes
like attention and language and
creativity and perception actually
happen through large-scale brain
networks and you could see these red
parts of the brain lighting up for
fractions of a second they’re
coordinating in very dynamic ways these
are local nodes producing global
properties Scott Kelso the founder of
the Centre for complex systems and brain
sciences where I study actually
metaphorically likens this to a good
old-fashioned square dance
these red parts are dancing with each
other for a second and then one part
dances with another part then it lets
that go and then dances with another
part and lets that go and they
synchronize and they D synchronize and
it’s this ability to synchronize and D
synchronize like a jazz quartet for
example that cognition happens that your
mind happens so what does it mean to be
a complex system a complex system is a
system composed of many many many
different part
it’s all interacting and they’re highly
coupled so our brains are actually
eighty billion neurons and each one of
those neurons is connected to thousands
of other neurons totaling 100 trillion
about about connections and each one of
those neurons is following local rules
then they’re all following local rules
and they produce global properties this
is what it means to be the whole is
greater than the sum of the parts that’s
what that phrase really means no these
neurons are following local rules for
example do I fire or excite the next
neuron or do I and not fire or inhibit
the next neuron and each one of them
following local rules produces these
self-organized properties so it’s our a
great example these ants are all
following local rules and they can
self-organize to produce global things
like a bridge across a gap there’s no
one ant that’s a civil engineer or has a
concept of a bridge and okay guys that’s
time to build a bridge the bridge is a
spatial pattern that just happens that
emerges another example of these is this
starlings these starlings are producing
this phenomena called murmuration each
Starling is following local rules don’t
fly so close to me I won’t fly so close
to you you flap your wings this way and
I’ll flap mine this way for example I
make you produce these beautiful you see
a wave here going from one side to the
other life is movement these beautiful
patterns that can actually send a signal
of danger from one side to the other
and just these starlings this this swarm
if you will is constantly changing shape
your brain is also constantly changing
shape because of the movements of
neurons and a phenomenon called
neuroplasticity another great example
that we’ve all been part of in a Sports
Arena is the wave this is a well thought
a fascinating phenomena the wave doesn’t
exist in any one person it’s a pattern
when the mood and the timing is right
that spontaneously self-organizes
there’s no one person organizing the
wave it just happens and notice that
when it comes around it sort of enslaves
you and makes you a part of it so we
study these patterns of movement and
something called coordination dynamics
which you looks at the coordinated
movements in between living things this
is a scientific field of study and one
of the central models here is called the
hawk and Kelso boo
model this is a mathematical model that
it’s a simple model but it describes and
explains very well and makes predictions
about the real world and the movement
between things one example is the
finger-wagging experiment where you can
do this for yourself if you go like this
and then you increase the speed you’ll
see that they switch from anti phase to
in phase and there’s nothing you could
do about it it’s involuntary and there’s
a phase transition that happens this
model explains the movement between your
fingers but also between movements of
the more complicated movements between
limbs of a ballet dancer or they put
sensors on the ballet dancer and studied
them very impactful and emotional
movements not only between fingers and
between limbs but also between people
and between brains the social
coordination or the the coordinated
dynamics between people and economies
for example has been studied so I want
you to think about the mind as a pattern
of movement an embodied pattern of
movement classically this the
historically one view is called
materialism this is a view was
championed by actually Francis Crick one
of the co discoverers of DNA who wrote a
book called the astonishing hypothesis
and mastani a hypothesis is simply this
that a person’s mental activities are
entirely due to the behavior of the
nerve cells glial cells and the atoms
and then ions and the molecules that
make them up that’s it that’s all you
are
that’s all yourself really is now I’m
really not talking about I’m gonna leave
aside the soul of this spirit for now
for two reasons mainly one because even
within one traditional worldview there’s
a lot of disagreement about what
constitutes a soul or a spirit and also
now everything about you your entire
personality is really being explained in
terms of physics chemistry and biology
it’s very reductionistic and that’s a
little bit of a problem as I’ll explain
now I’m gonna put a question mark on
this because the jury’s still out
one view of materialism is actually
called cognitivism or computationalism
and this is where the brain maybe you’ve
heard of this has been likened to
a computer and the mind is a software
program running on that computer Marvin
Minsky one of the founders of artificial
intelligence actually said minds are
simply what brains do notice there’s no
mention of movement and there’s no
mention of the body and they’re missing
maybe if this is true actually something
like the matrix will one day be possible
and we can download our consciousness
and from our brains and then upload them
in something called mind uploading into
a computer achieving some sort of
computational immortality that would be
really cool the problem with this is the
brain simply isn’t digital one for many
reasons one reason is that from neural
plasticity the brain can change itself
and add and change its structure and
function based on something called as I
mentioned before neuroplasticity so the
latest sexiest view in cognitive science
and fields like neural philosophy is
something called embodied mind or
embodied cognition and I’m going to let
Alvin Noah explain this here because
he’s a pioneer in the field
he explains us so eloquently we’ve been
looking for consciousness in the wrong
place we’ve been looking for it inside
of us for me that’s a that’s a sort of
profound mistake a little bit like
trying to find the dancing and the
musculature of the dancer or trying to
find the value of money in the chemical
composition of the dollar bill so wrong
it’s the wrong kind of place to look
idea that I’ve had in my work is that
instead of of thinking about
consciousness is something that happens
in us in our brains or anywhere else why
don’t we try to think of consciousness
as something that we do or an act or
perform in our dynamic involvement with
the world around us so what he’s really
saying is that we can’t give an account
of the mind anymore without giving an
account of the body and how it moves so
all those processes at the beginning
that I was mentioning like decision
making the ability to do the right or
wrong thing perception attention
language memory emotion all those
cognitive processes have a lot to do we
now know with how you treat and how you
move your body that’s really one of the
punch lines here the fact that you have
a body enables and
changes your mind how you use your bike
your body might actually change the way
you think let me give you some empirical
examples of this locally here in South
Florida FIU there was a study showing
that good handwriting or fine penmanship
was actually a good predictor of better
grades later on
likewise poor penmanship predicted worse
grades even playing a guitar or piano or
musical instrument has been known now
well studied to affect the brain and the
nervous system and the cognitive
processes that the brain produces
posture we now know that how you stand
and how you sit and you’re how you hold
your body actually can affect your
perception of the external world
another study just came out showing that
the rhythm of your breathing can
actually affect fear and anxiety in
places like the hippocampus in the brain
and the amygdala this is a lot to do
with something called the vagus nerve
the vagus nerve is the tenth vagal the
tenth nerve
since cranial nerve that connects the
brain and the gut in there the brain
axis and has a lot to do with something
called vagal tone we now know that the
vagal tone actually people with higher
legal tone have decreased levels of
anxiety and stress because the vagus
nerve up regulates the parasympathetic
nervous system the rest and digest it’s
involved in calming the mind yoga and
all kinds of exercise different movement
patterns can actually affect and
increase your vagal tone those are now
becoming a very well studied phenomena
here’s something funny giving the middle
finger this is Stephen Colbert giving
the middle finger just funny this study
actually came out showing how extending
your middle finger affects your
perception of other people not only how
they perceive you but how you perceive
them one final example is called the
rubber hand illusion this is a well
fascinating phenomena where a rubber
hand is placed looks like you’re coming
from your body and your real hand is
here hidden from your view so it looks
like you have the you’re seeing the
rubber hand coming from your body and
the rubber hand and the real hand is
stroked simultaneously the brain starts
to adopt the rubber hand as its own so
much so that as you could see here the
person gets the rubber hand gets struck
by hammer and the
actually feels pain this has even been
extended to the whole entire body using
things like virtual reality where you
can feel like you have another body
likewise there’s also a disorder called
somatic para frenita where or alien hand
syndrome where the person actually feels
like their body parts don’t actually
belong to them
so James Gibson famous American
psychologist interested in perception
and vision actually said we must
perceive in order to move but we must
also move in order to perceive so that’s
how I want you to think of the mind as a
process as an embodied process as a flow
so you’re not a brain but your brain
that exists in a body and that body
moves around and performs actions in an
external world in an environment which
then affect perception which then affect
your cognitive processes in this cycle
and what’s called the action perception
cycle I’ll give you some quotes this
this is as you can see this is a cycle
this is a flow as I said William James
one of the founders of American
psychology and founder of American
philosophy called pragmatism invented
the term the stream of consciousness you
may have heard of that consciousness
then does not appear self chopped up
into bits it is nothing jointed it flows
Francisco Varela who wrote a book called
the embodied mind said cognition depends
upon the kinds of experiences that come
from having a body with various sensory
motor capacities and one of my favorites
Plato said lack of activity destroys the
good condition of every human being
while movement and methodical physical
exercise save it and preserve it
movement is important for your
well-being and we now know that because
we’re measuring that in the brain so now
that we have this idea of embodied mind
and you understand this idea of embodied
cognition we have this an idea of
embodied mind in hand
pun intended it’s my contention that the
there’s a similar paradigm shift going
on in the fitness industry which has
moved away from those days of like
bodybuilding and Arnold Schwarzenegger
and lifting weights and moved more
toward functional movements how the body
actually moves around
the external world focusing on strength
and flexibility and mobility in a very
very different way what I’m calling
embodied Fitness let me give you several
examples of this and five examples
actually one is IDO portal he’s become
very very famous now I’m very well known
all around the world he goes all around
the world teaching this movement kind of
pattern all of these have actually been
branded forms of movement and they’re
selling quite frankly they’re selling
and they’re becoming very very popular
he created something called the movement
culture also something called
animal flow which was created down here
in South Florida actually in Miami by
Mike Fitch and I think this encapsulates
or I should say it captures the idea of
embody Fitness and a body mind very very
well and it has the word flow in it it’s
called animal flow and it’s a workout
program it’s a very difficult workout
program that takes a long time to learn
and develop
rathe kelly created something called
evolve move play this is based on
movement from an evolutionary
perspective how the body adapted to move
in its environment bodyweight exercises
have been pioneered by a gentleman named
by Frank Medrano who’s an expert in in
using the body in different ways much
like gymnastics or something like that
so these are different patterns of
movement which I’m calling embody
fitness now we’re measuring how these
different movement patterns affect the
brain and let me just give you six
examples running is the first example
looking into how running shapes the
central nervous summon affects the brain
in many different ways one is it
increases the functional connectivity in
this part of the brain the prefrontal
cortex which has evolved in
goal-directed actions and thinking about
the future and making plans running
actually also increases BDNF
brain-derived neurotrophic factors which
have been like it to fertilizer for the
brain stimulates the growth of new
neurons in the brain and to connect the
connectivity between already existing
neurons maybe some of you will remember
aerobics and the fad that was big in the
compositions they had back in the 80s
remember this
hilarious is these funny competitions
that they had right but seriously
actually a study this is funny but a
study just showed and many studies have
come out but in 2015 I think a study
showed in frontiers of human
neuroscience that an intervention of
aerobic activity I think it was spinning
precisely actually affected and improved
creativity improved the divergent and
convergent pathways in the brain that
are highly involved in creativity
strength training we do know that
strength training has an effect and
improved effect on brain function and
cognition in people over 55 and also has
also decreased lesions in the white
matter tracts and elderly women Yoga is
another example we now know that Yoga
does many many things for the brain
including increase the amount of gray
matter in areas of the brain involved in
learning and memory and compassion and
decreases the amount of gray matter in
neurons and the areas of brain involved
with fear and anxiety like the amygdala
yoga as I said has also been shown to
increase your vagal tone Tai Chi this is
an intercept –iv contemplative pattern
of movement this is fascinating a study
just came out showing that advanced
practitioners of Tai Chi were less
susceptible to the rubber hand illusion
that I showed you a few slides ago
fascinating and also high intensity
interval training or hit or the tabata
method or something like that bees have
been shown to actually increase
cerebrovascular function or blood flow
in very specific areas of the brain so
I’ll end the talk with showing you this
which you’ve seen before
this is Rodin’s the thinker the symbol
of philosophy the symbol of man’s
ability to figure out the external world
around him the thinker the this the
familiar phrase Homo sapiens which means
the knowing man or the wise man but I
think it’s interesting if you look
closely that Rodin sculpted the thinker
to be fit if you look at him he’s very
built and maybe as a bodybuilder he’s
huge he’s very fit he’s fit in God
he’s fit in mind and I think that sends
a very very powerful message perhaps we
shouldn’t be called Homo sapiens but
homo movin ‘he’s the moving man
something more fundamental
so my take-home message is clear and
that is who you are has a lot to do with
the fact that you have a body and how
you move that body healthy bodies make
for healthy minds and I’ll end the Ted
they’d like to end with a call to action
so I’ll end with a literal call to
action move move your body and your body
will move you thank you
[Applause]
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