“Mmm! This smoothie is so good, so refreshing, so … so cold! Aah!” If it tastes so good one minute, how can it feel like someone is prying my cranium apart? This horribly agonizing experience is commonly referred to as a brain freeze, or frozen brain syndrome. Nutritionists say at least a third of the planet fall prey to the brain freeze, usually as they try to scarf down a frosty snack on a hot day. Only lasting half a minute or so (thank God) is the brain freeze’s mind bending misery, perhaps close in comparison to the malady of a migraine.

What Causes Brain Freeze?

But do we even know how the brain freeze happens? Studies have shown that it can happen as a result of the body is stimulated by intense cold, nerve-ending in the roof of the mouth freeze up, and warm blood rapidly circulates to the brain. Too much coffee colatta or Popsicle consumption in a hurry can make things much worse. Your palate meeting the tasty frozen snack is actually the culprit that put your brain freeze into action.

Is Your Brain Really Frozen?

The hard palate (which is just to say the roof of your mouth) took on the massive amount of super cold slushy when you gulped it in. There’s a cluster of nerves just behind that plate that helps protect your brain from certain temperature changes. The primary nerve in this bundle is known as the sphenopalatine nerve, and it is able to detect and adapt to heat and cold. So, that means if you eat ice cream or any other cold food, then your sphenopalatine nerve will send out shockwaves to warn other nerves in its cluster. Your nerves have basically just told the rest of your brain to get ready for a major freeze.

When you get a brain freeze, your brain doesn’t actually freeze, but your sphenopalatine nerve can’t recognize the difference between extreme cold temperatures, and eating a spoonful of ice cream. It’s actually the shrinking of the blood vessels around the brain in reaction to the cold stimuli that cause you problems. This nerve shrinkage is behind your eyes (e.g. your nasal area) is what gives you the pounding headache that brain freezes are known for. Although, the pain isn’t necessarily caused by your blood vessels shrinking, more than the flow of blood that forces them to open up again.

Why You Feel “Brain Freeze”

In all the hullabaloo of shrinking and reopening blood vessels, your nerves are also causing you some pain. Pain receptors that are positioned closely to your sphenopalatine nerve will sense that the palate has encountered something frozen, but the pain it causes will be sent into an area deeper inside your skull. That’s why you think your brain is freezing instead of the top of your mouth and jaw area.

The fastest way to stop a brain freeze, or shorten it, is to stick your warm tongue to the roof of your mouth - it’ll warm your palate back up again. And once your palate’s all warmed up, your nerve clusters will call off the hounds, and your brain freeze will come to an end. You may also want to consider taking sips of warm water while you eat your frozen treats, and don’t allow them to come in contact with the top of your mouth; this should help you minimize the “brain frozen” feeling that you may have otherwise had to deal with.

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Neurogenesis - “The birth of new neurons in the brain; also referred to as the process in which neurons are created.”The growth of new brain cells occurs in the region of the brain called the “hippocampus.” The ‘hippocampus’ is an area involved with memory, learning, and other cognitive functions. In order to live and become part of our brain, new neurons formed in the hippocampus-region need support from surrounding nutrients from blood and glial cells.

Most importantly, they need support from other surrounding neurons - otherwise these new brain cells will die. Though thousands of new brain cells are formed and produced via the hippocampus each and every day, many die quickly after birth. When we can keep them alive for this crucial period after birth, we are able to effectively boost the power of the human brain by adding new brain cells to the bank of existing cells.

Though neurogenesis is most active during prenatal development, there is growing evidence that certain activities also induce the growth of new brain cells [neurons] in the brain. Provided below are 7 researched and proven ways to grow new brain cells and provide a safe haven for effective neurogenesis.

1. An Exercise Regimen

Everybody knows that exercise is good for your overall health and heart, but in recent findings, powerful evidence has proven that exercise is great for your brain. Scientific experiments have discovered that mice consistently using running wheels had around 2x the amount of hippocampal neurons (brain cells) as the mice that didn’t exercise.

Another study at Colombia University found that humans who had a exercise training program were able to grow and maintain new brain cells and nerve cells in the hippocampus region of the brain. The specific area called the “dentate gyrus” is responsible for helping produce neurogeneis. Even more studies have discovered that those who exercised had 2 - 3x increases in the birth-rate of new neurons!

2. Eating Blueberries

Eating blueberries can trigger the growth of new brain cells? That’s right! 19-month-old rats that were put on a blueberry enriched diet [equal to about 1 cup per day for humans] were more skilled at navigating through mazes than rats who weren’t fed blueberries. Scientists know for a fact that blueberries promote the growth of new neurons. In order to track the growth of neurons, researchers injected dye into rats.

They saw that in the hippocampus region, new brain cells were generated. Scientists figure that “anthocyanin dye” - the dark bluish-dye found in blueberries caused the neurogenesis. The anthocyanin-dye contains chemicals that can cross the blood-brain barrier and produce the growth of neurons. There is growing evidence that the “anthocyanin dye” has the same effect on the brains of humans!

Related: For more information on brain foods, read the article Brain Foods: 50 Good Brain Foods.

3. Taking Time for Meditation

Meditation has always thought to have been beneficial for the brain. Recent compelling evidence from scientific researchers at Yale, Harvard, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology revealed that meditation can allow us to “grow bigger brains.” Though this isn’t the same thing as neurogenesis, meditation could very well be an activity that boosts the birth rate of neurons.

Researchers also discovered that meditators literally had an altered-physical brain structure compared to non-meditators. Brain scanning technology [i.e. MRIs] showed that meditation boosted thickness of brain structure dealing with attention, sensory input, and memory functions. The thickening was found to be more noticeable in adults than younger individuals. It’s interesting because the same sections of our cortex that meditation thickens, tend to get thinner as we age.

Meditation is known to boost brain activity, coherency of brain waves, strengthen neural connections, and thicken gray matter. Though scientists haven’t confirmed the effects of meditation and its ability to aid neurogenesis [due to complexity issues], there is a likely possibility that it helps.

4. Antidepressant Drugs

Scientific research by the National Institute of Mental Health has proven that antidepressants work by allowing our brains to grow new brain cells (neurons). In a 2003 study, scientists discovered that when they blocked the formation of new neurons in the hippocampus brain region, behavioral effects of the antidepressant Prozac [Fluoxetine] were diminished.

Research has already understood that depression, stress, and anxiety disorders can cause death of neurons in the brain. More studies have demonstrated that most other antidepressants on the market can and will trigger the growth of new neurons. Even more interesting is the fact that besides humans, adult animals grow new neurons when given antidepressant drugs.

Though there are many other interactions in the brain with antidepressants, their primary beneficial effect from them is derived from their ability to produce neurogenesis. Now if scientists can only figure out a way to induce the amount of neurogenesis that antidepressant medication does without creating a new drug!

5. An Enriched Environment

Science has long known that living in a mentally stimulating environment vs. an impoverished environment is far better for brain development. Research has found that exposure to an enriched environment enhances neurogenesis functioning and is able to regulate emotionality.

Scientists have found that memory-based tasks were far improved in the hippocampus region of the brain when human beings are raised in a healthy, enriched environment. One study found that mice put in stimulating environments actually had larger hippocampus regions than did those living in “standard” or “poor” laboratory conditions. They discovered a direct correlation between an enriched environment and the amount of neurons produced in the brains of mice. This had a significant effect on neurogenesis!

6. The Act of “Learning”

Though scientists have long known that new brain cells are able “enhance learning” - they never thought that “learning” could actually cause the birth of new brain cells… that is, until recently. In recent animal studies, researchers have found that there was a direct relationship between “learning” and the survival rate of newly-birthed brain cells.

When researchers taught certain rodents a wide-variety of cognitive tasks which involved a wide-range of brain areas - scientists found that the more the animal “learned” - the more new neurons were able to survive in the hippocampus. Scientists have made it clear that “learning” can increase the presence of new neurons in the brain.

Brain cells that are born in the hippocampus, which normally die off, are literally “rescued” by “learning” experiences. There is still plenty of research being conducted in this area and not all sources agree. However, your best bet is to keep your brain power boosted and your mind sharp. Always try to learn something new!

7. Restricting Caloric Intake

The phenomena of calorie restriction has continued to puzzle researchers. They have found that eating less food can lead to significant increases in longevity. Even when starting calorie restriction in middle age, it is able to produce around a ten to twenty percent increase in life-span. It has also been associated with hundreds of biological changes and can harbor our ability to produce new brain cells.

Restricting calorie intake has been associated with increases in neurogenesis and a better overall neuroprotective effect in the brain. Scientists have found that calorie-restricted animals nearly always stay active and healthy up until the end of their lives’. This phenomena has also been associated with a significantly lowered likelihood of developing a degenerative brain disease and can even produce new nerve cells!

*8. Infared Light Helmets

Though the use of infared light helmets is relatively new, researchers believe that they may help patients with Alzheimer’s disease by helping them grow new brain cells. Developer of this infared light helmet, Dr. Gordon Dougal, (also the director of medical research at medical research company Virulite) believes the helmet will hit the market about 1 year from now. It works by aiming low levels of infared light at the wearer’s brain. Next, it stimulates neurogenesis in the brain, suggests research.

More on how this works according to its inventor [Dr. Gordon Dougal]: “How we hope it’s going to work is that the infrared light will be facing inside the helmet onto the actual person, onto their skin, onto their brain, and actually goes on the frontal part of the bones, so it goes onto the actual front part of the brain and the side of the brain.”

“The side of the head and their skull are relatively thin, so the light will penetrate the skull and treat the underlying brain tissue. And the top of the head is also quite thin, and the light will penetrate the brain tissue at that point.”

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For more information, view the sources:

LE Magazine: June 2002 - Calorie Restriction, Exercise, Hormone Replacement, and Phytonutrients Fight Aging - Age Conference - Madison, Wisconsin

Harvard University - Meditation found to increase brain size - Mental calisthenics bulk up some layers By William J. Cromie - Harvard News Office http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/daily/2006/01/23-meditation.html

Antidepressants Grow New Brain Cells - About.com; http://mentalhealth.about.com/cs/psychopharmacology/a/neurogenesis.htm

Sci STKE. 2003 Aug; (195):318. Antidepressants and Hippocampal Neurogenesis. Santarelli L, Saxe M, Gross A, Surget A, Battaglia F, Dulawa S, Weisstaub N, Lee J, Duman R, Arancio O, Belzung, Hen R.

The Journal of Neuroscience. 2007 Mar; 27(13): 3252-3259. Experience-Specific Functional Modification of the Dentate Gyrus through Adult Neurogenesis: A Critical Period during an Immature Stage. Tashiro A, Makino H, Gage FH.

Stanford University Research In Progress: HD & Lifestyle http://www.stanford.edu/group/hopes/rltdsci/inprogress/ae2.html

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Introduction

Ever wonder how you’re brain is able to control the perception of time? At times it seems as if life is flying by - especially when we are involved in a fun activity or event. At other times, though, when we are stressed out or witness a scary event, time seems to stop or even freeze in our brains. Our perception of time is different from person to person, and definitely has a deep biological-rooted influence from within our brains.

Though we have things like watches and clocks to help us keep track of time, our brain is involved in the perception of how fast time passes. Like I’ve already mentioned, some people feel that one hour of listening to country music may go by extremely quick, while for others [that maybe aren't interested in this genre] feel as if one hour was actually 3 or 4 hours. Being able to keep track of time is a skill that our brains’ have that allows us to determine what is happening in our surroundings and when to respond to that event.

Simple functions that we take for granted such as: hearing speech are even involved in our brain’s perception of time. As an example: we need to tell where a voice is coming from, how long the sound of it takes to reach our ears, etc. Also, when we respond to voices through the act of “talking,” we need to be timely with our responses.

Animals and studies of “time perception”

Researchers have found that telling time is even widely utilized by animals. University of Edinburgh researchers were able to study hummingbirds to determine how they told time. Researchers used fake flowers with sugar inside. They found that after hummingbirds drank the sweet nectar contained within real flowers, it took time for the flowers to replenish their nectar supply. The fake flowers were refilled every 10 minutes , while the real flowers were filled every 20 minutes. The hummingbirds were able to catch on to the time period it took for the nectar came back into both the real and the fake flowers.

Many other animals are also great time-tellers. Research on rats at the University of Georgia showed that rats do a phenomenal job at telling time. Rats can be taught to wait over 2 days after a meal to poke their noses through a trough and be given fresh food. Psychologists have hypothesized [for over 40 years] that both animals and human beings kept track of time with a biological version of a “stopwatch.” They strongly believed that within our brains, we had a “series of pulses” that were being generated. They thought that when our brains needed to “time an event,” a gate opened and those electrical pulsations turned into a “counting device.

The flawed brain-clock model of “time perception”

There was definitely good reasoning behind the brain-clock model of time perception. You’re time perception always will speed up when you are caught up in a pleasurable or fun event, while your brain will naturally slow down time perception when you are in a place you dislike or feel stressed out. These good and bad experiences were believed by psychologists to trigger the “pulsation generator” within our brains - thus speeding or slowing time depending on the given situation.

With that said, the biological roots within the brain don’t work like “clocks” that we understand. Neurons in our brain are able to produce steady pulses, however, our brain doesn’t have what it takes to count accurate pulses for even a few seconds. How we tell time is definitely far from the way a clock tells time. This is why scientists had to dismiss the brain-clock theory mentioned above.

Had our brains been built to work like that, we’d definitely be able to do a great job at estimating long periods of time better than short ones. Any individual or single pulses from the hypothetical clock within would be either a bit too slow, or a bit too fast. In short periods of time, the brain would begin to retain just a few short pulses, leaving plenty of room for error. The extra pulses that our brain would naturally error, would cancel themselves out [i.e. errors of telling time would be canceled out by the brain]. Though it sounds like it could be true, it’s not. Whenever we estimate longer periods of time, our errors don’t cancel themselves out - they keep accumulating.

What does our brain use to tell time?

At this day in age, tons of new breakthroughs and experiments are surfacing to help scientists better understand time within the brain. Things such as: studying genetically engineered mice, computer simulations in combination with E.E.G.’s, are being used to help scientists. The results of their studies prove that our brain doesn’t use any form of a “stopwatch.”

Our brains do not work like clocks or stopwatches that come to mind when we think of elapsed time. Instead, our brains utilize several other methods in order to tell time. Neuroscientist Dean Buonomano from U.C.L.A. believes that our brains tell time like they were observing “ripples in a pond.” He continues to argue that they perceive time in “fractions of seconds.” Let’s say you are listening to the sound of a summer cricket. The criket’s chirps are split by just one-tenth of a second. The cricket’s very first chirp immediately perks up our auditory neurons.

Sound signals are sensed by the neurons for less than half a second - same time as it takes ripples from a skimming a rock across the river to disappear. When the second cricket chirp is heard, the auditory neurons are still perked up. Therefore, the second chirp creates a different signal pattern. Dean Buonomano believes that our brains are able to compare the first pattern to the second patter in order to determine how much time has elapsed. Basically, the brain doesn’t contain an internal clock, because the telling of time is fixed in our neuronal behavior.

Dean Buonomano Theory vs. Warren Meck Theory

Should the U.C.L.A. researcher’s [Dean Buonomano] theory turn out to be correct, he will have explained only the “fast time telling” within the brain. Why? Because after half-of-a-second, the ripples in our brain clear out. On a bigger scale, which would range from a few seconds to a few hours, there must be a different way to study the brain’s time control processing.

That’s where Duke University’s Warren Meck comes into play. He has a different theory stating that: the brain measures long periods of time by producing pulses. However, he also believes that the brain doesn’t count the pulses like the way a “clock does.” He strongly believes that the brain listens to the pulses in the same way that our ears listen to music.

Warren Meck started developing his first “musical model” of time processing when he was studying the time perception of rodents; more specifically, the time perception of rats. All that Meck needed to do in order to kill their time processing was to destroy certain neuronal clusters within their brains. After taking a closer look at the situation, Meck found that some of these neurons differed from the rest of the neurons in the brain.

Each neuron was linked to a at least 20,000 other neurons in the brain. The “linked neurons” were able to be seen throughout the cortex. Many even linked to the outer parts of the brain which handle “sophisticated information processing.” While other neurons were linked to “controlling vision,” and even others worked to bind other areas into our perception. Because these neurons received many signals from “all over the brain,” he believes that these medium spiny neurons provide us with an accurate perception of time.

Picture yourself listening to a 30 second constant sound. At the beginning of listening to the constant sound, your neurons [found within your cortex] will reset themselves in order to fire in synchronized fashion. Some of the neurons fire faster than others, while others remain inactive. In between one split second and the next, the medium spiny neurons are able to read a unique pattern of signals from the many [20,000 +] interconnected neurons.

The pattern changes similar to pitch changes in between various notes of music. When the 30 seconds of the beat are up, the medium spiny neurons are able to “listen” to the “pitch changes” to determine the amount of elapsed time. Warren Meck has been able to provide evidence supporting his theory. How? Warren has recorded neuronal electrical activity and analyzed them deeply and has studied individuals with a “skewed sense of time.”

Healthy brains vs. Drugged brains & time perception

There are also specific neurotransmitters like dopamine which control the pulsing of neurons. Crystal meth and cocaine are examples of drugs that control the pulsing rate of neuron groups. They do this by overpowering the brain with abnormally high levels of dopamine. Several studies have proven the increased dopamine to have a profound effect on changing the perception of time.

In 2007, U.C.L.A. also ran an experiment. In the experiment, scientists rang a bell after 53 seconds of pure silence. Healthy individuals were told to guess how much time had passed. Most guessed an average of 67 seconds of time had elapsed. People on stimulants [which boost the amount of dopamine in the brain] guessed that an average of 91 seconds had passed. Many other drugs have the exact opposite effect on the amount of dopamine in the brain - thus compressing the subjective experience of time.

In even the most healthy brains, the processing of time varies. Staring at a scary face for 5 seconds feels significantly longer than staring at a neutral or happy one. It may not even be coincidence that pulse-generating neurons are embedded within regions of the brain that process emotionally-charged sounds and sights. Recently, researcher Amelia Hunt from Harvard University addressed the idea that every time we move our eyes, we may in fact be “pushing back our mental time.”

Amelia Hunt’s research at Harvard University

Even more recently, Amelia Hunt conducted an experiment where she had individuals stare “straight ahead” with a ticking clock off to one side of their gazes. Hunt then asked the individuals to move their eyes in order to see the clock. She told them to attempt to remember the time each time they had looked at the clock. On average, participants reported seeing the clock about four one-hundreths of a second before their eyes actually arrived at the clock.

The act of “pushing back” time may actually be a good thing, believes Hunt. It may allow us to cope with our slightly imperfect nervous systems. Every person has a highly-dense patch of light-sensitive cells in our retinas. These cells have been dubbed the name: fovea. We must move and jerk our eyes around several times in order for our fovea to generate an accurate, detailed image of our environment and surroundings; this gives the fovea enough time for scaling the features of our surroundings. The stream of signals from our eyes creates a series of jumps or bumps on the road. The human brain naturally will then allude us to believe that we are experiencing one complete “flow of reality.” When our brain realizes that it is still editing the “signaling jumps,” we may have errors in time perception.

Embedding time in our memories

However, the most shocking reworking of time may be the way it gets embedded in our memories. We usually always recall memories that include both: what happened, and when it happened. We understand how much time has passed since a certain past event by drumming up an event of the old memory. People who have brain damage as a result from injury or surgery - which depleted a certain part of the brain - gives researchers clues as to the way the brain embeds time within memories.

In 2007, scientists from France studied a group of individuals that were suffering from left-temporal lobe brain damage. The study participants then watched a film in which a familiar object appeared on the screen and reappeared a few minutes later [8 minutes later]. The study participants were then told to guess how much time had passed since first seeing the familiar object and seeing it for a second time. On average, the brain-damaged participants thought 8 minutes was really around 13 minutes. Healthy brain subjects were only off in guessing by roughly only one minute.

These type of experiments are great progress for researchers and scientists. They are slowly bridging the gap and honing in more on the regions of the brain which store memories of time. What is still unknown, is how these brain regions are able to record and understand time. Listening in on the brain’s signaling for a few minutes is one thing, but it is completely different [and much more complex] to understand how the brain’s neural networks of memories are able to deposit and withdraw [for later recollection] elapsed time during certain events.

Compressing memories of time [Berlin research]

It is interesting though, because scientists have by no means given up on understanding time-control in the brain. Researchers in Berlin, Germany have been working to build an accurate model of how memories may embed time. When neurons produce a normal generation of signals, some signals are received sooner - while others, a little later. These Berlin researchers believe that as the neurons communicate with one another, they pass the signals. While they are passing the signals, they can create slight adjustments ["wobbles"] - some bigger, some smaller. With these tiny “wobbles,” the brain is able to embed memories of time by compressing them. The brain is able to compress memories of several seconds down to “several hundreths” of a second. This allows the brain to save it’s space and easily have enough room to store many memories.

When your brain stores time in its memories, the brain is able to alter it in another significant way. Your brain could record the time such that we recall the events in a “backwards order.” M.I.T. researchers found that the brain was able to form reverse memories. They ran an experiment which included rats running down a track and stopping to eat food at the end of the track. When rats become more familiar with their environment, individual neurons became more active when they reached familiar spots.

Researchers discovered what are called “place cells.” These “place cells” fired off signals when rats moved to different places along the track. When the rats took a break and stopped to eat, researchers checked their brain activity again. They realized that the “place cells” fired again - due to the fact that memories of the track became stronger within their brains. However, the “place neurons” at the end of the track signaled first. The ones at the beginning of the track fired last. It is definitely possible, though, that we can reverse time processing in our memories in order to focus on our brains’ on something rewarding or a goal. Though we are not free from time, we are able to maintain some control over it. Our brains can bend it and twist it to properly fit our needs and reality.

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