Neuroscience

We now know that the brain’s capacity to learn, to adapt, to change in response to experience is so fundamental that it strikes the wrong note to say that an activity (like meditation) ‘changes the brain’ as if such change is special or unusual. In fact, everything we do changes the brain on some level. Or rather, the brain is constantly changing,... See more

Research has shown a staggering number of health benefits associated with dispositional optimism, from improvements in cardiovascular health, to how quickly wounds heal, to slower disease progression.

Rather, in our brain’s pursuit to plan, survive, and achieve our goals, it has learned how to guess what the world is actually like based on incoming sensory data. Those predictions are always uncertain, at least to a degree, which is why the goal of predictive processing is often described as minimizing that uncertainty.

But an optimal relationship... See more

Memories are not a true or false picture of the past; they are a Monet lily pond.

So here is the take-home lesson. We have to seek novelty, because this is what lays down new memories in the brain.