Kissing the partner strengthens brain networks. Emotions synchronize brains. Dancing improves resistance to pain. Changing your posture can help mental health. Worry accelerates the aging of the brain.
They are surprising findings of neuroscience that passionately explains Nazareth Castellanos, an essential voice in this field. Graduated in Theoretical Physics and Doctor of Medicine, she is the research director of the Nirakara laboratory, and Extraordinary Chair of Mindfulness and Cognitive Sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid. She has been studying the relationship between the body and the brain for years, and has published Neuroscience of the body (Kairós).
What does neuroscience say right now about the relationship between the brain and the body? At what point are we?
It’s been about two years that it’s been accepted that the organism influences the brain, interoception. Now there is a shower of articles to explore this that has just been discovered in the scientific field. What is most studied is the influence of the organs on the brain, and specifically the intestine, breathing (lungs) and the heart. In the last year the influence of posture and body on the brain has boomed.
Posture influences mood or emotions! What exactly has been discovered?
In November 2022, Nature magazine published an article by neuroscience giants, in which they explain that a brain structure has been found that records the entire posture. This had not been located yet, the fusion between body and mind! It has been proven that body posture is interpreted in the brain. If I’m sad, the posture reflects it, but also vice versa. Therefore, the posture can be a complement in therapy, correcting it throughout the day allows us to try to change emotional states.
What postures are associated with one state of mind or another?
Shrugging or stooping is one of the postures that the brain most associates with a low mood. Also the facial expression, the gesture of one’s own face, which is what gives the brain the most importance. Consciously pacifying the gesture of the face helps to change the mood.
The gut-brain relationship is already more than proven. To what extent does the microbiota influence the brain?
The microbiota, which mainly inhabits the gut, has been found to influence the immune, endocrine, and nervous systems. The gut-brain axis acts in learning mechanisms, in neuronal growth. The information about what happens in the microbiota, through the vagus nerve, which is a nerve that runs through the body and sends information to the brain, allows the brain to promote its growth. Therefore, diet, which has an impact on the microbiota, influences neurodevelopment, not only in children, but in adults throughout life and also in old age.
In addition to diet, other factors influence the microbiota, such as exercise…
Regular physical exercise influences the microbiota. Sedentary people have a more impoverished microbiota, active people (from 120 minutes a week) favor microbial activity. This relates to physical and mental health. Exercise and diet are the main factors of protection of the microbiota. The most favored diet is the Mediterranean.
You say that “pooping is an art”. What does it mean?
Yes, it is an art. It is a taboo subject, or one that is funny, but the importance of defecating for the body is evident in all fields, we do not pay attention to it. If you ask patients about the shape of their stool (according to the Bristol ladder), they are amazed: “I don’t look at it! I’m not a pig!” Well, now we know that the shape of the stool tells us about intestinal health, it is a way of seeing how the nervous or endocrine system is doing, it is a great biomarker of health. Feces provide great clinical information.
There is a study to create a smart toilet bowl…
Yes, to examine the stool and tell us how our health is, it is part of preventive medicine. It performs very advanced analytics to analyze the microbiota and find out if there is dysbiosis, an imbalance between bacterial populations. It will be possible to determine how to monitor these imbalances, associated with mental health disorders. Anxiety or depressive episodes can be treated with many therapies but also through the intestine to carry out the treatment.
To what extent are diet and the microbiota related to mental health?
Last year the new field of nutritional psychiatry was approved. It has been promoted by a professor from Melbourne, Felice Jacka, who has spent a long time researching the influence of diet on mental health disorders. Nutrition must be part of psychiatry. We must use everything that influences mental health to solve this problem. This does not mean that the diet and the microbiota are the panacea, they influence everything, but they cannot solve everything, rather they are one more ingredient of health.
He says that breathing influences the brain, emotions, memory… How?
It is especially important because we can access it directly: right now you can change your breathing pattern voluntarily. It has been seen that changing how we breathe can change our mood and cognitive state. Researchers from the University of New York have seen that we have more memory when we breathe in through the nose, but if it is very fast, we do not have enough resources. If we breathe very quickly according to the consensus of all scientific literature. Six to ten breaths per minute would be optimal for cognition and emotions.
Why do we breathe so fast?
Because we live with a feeling of tiredness and in a hurry, even if we are sitting, and the body tries to adapt because we receive many inputs. It is also necessary to breathe through the nose. We have published a study in PlosOne in which we have analyzed people with chronic pain. With two groups, they were taught to breathe slowly for 30 minutes a day. We wanted to test the hypothesis that slow breathing had an analgesic role. We have seen levels of inflammation and psychological factors of lifestyle, and it has been seen that the level of stress in blood and saliva decreases, and the perception of pain. That is, we can use our breath to face difficult situations.
From what you have verified, meditation also changes the brain… In what way?
Research on the subject began in 1973 at Harvard, and when I proposed it 10 or 12 years ago it was seen as esoteric. Meditation has been shown to strengthen areas of the brain that are critical to both cognition and emotions. The practice of regular meditation, about 30 minutes a day, five days a week, in less than two months anatomically changes the amygdala, reduces it, which means less stress. In addition, among other things, the frontal cortex, key to attention and memory, is reduced. Harvard has seen that people who control their breathing, who spend time watching how they breathe, promote neuroplasticity.
The heart is the organ that influences the brain the most. As?
We have seen that in people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s the heart and brain tend to disconnect. In Paris researchers have seen that if the heart and brain are too connected, we have a narcissistic vision of the world. The balance between the two is the best. If I have little heart-brain connection, I have an identity deficit, but if I have too much, I have an identity excess. The balance between heart and brain can be fostered with meditation, which reduces communication between both organs and this is associated with a decrease in narcissistic and self-referential perception.
Kissing the couple reinforces the brain networks… How?
Depending on the person we see or look at, our brain networks change. If I look at my daughter, I have some neurons activated, if I look at my partner or a friend, they don’t activate with other people. Let’s look at people from different selves, children and the couple are privileged in our brain. If you kiss the partner, the brain connections become stronger, and the communication between the two brains is much more reinforced.
