June 17, 2025 • 27 mins
Betsy Wurzel, host of Chatting with Betsy, welcomes Dr. Henry Mahncke, neuroscientist and CEO of Brain HQ, for an eye-opening conversation on how Brain HQ brain health tools can support caregivers. In this episode, Dr. Mahncke shares practical insights into brain training, cognitive resilience, and the benefits of improving brain health through neuroplasticity.
Dr. Mahncke is also the developer behind Posit Science and has worked closely with Dr. Michael Merzenich, a renowned expert in brain science. Together, they’ve developed Brain HQ based on decades of research into how the brain changes and adapts—what’s known as neuroplasticity.During the interview, Betsy and Dr. Mahncke discussed compelling studies comparing caregivers who used Brain HQ exercises with those who didn’t. The results were striking: those who engaged in the training showed noticeable improvements in memory, focus, and emotional well-being. Brain HQ brain health strategies are especially useful for caregivers dealing with chronic stress, depression, or sleep deprivation—conditions that can take a heavy toll on cognitive function.Dr. Mahncke explained how these exercises help rewire the brain, making it more adaptive and resilient. Starting brain training early—even at the first signs of dementia—can offer significant benefits.
Betsy was particularly impressed to learn that even elite athletes like football legend Tom Brady have used Brain HQ to enhance their performance.This inspiring interview provides hope and practical tools for anyone looking to maintain or improve their brain health as they age. Betsy encourages listeners to explore the Brain HQ website, where they’ll find a variety of training programs, pricing information, and a free trial offer to try the exercises firsthand.🎵 Listen to the audio concerning Brain Health exercises that would especiallly helpful for caregivers dealing with chronic stress: 📌 Click here to Listen-Please share the Blog. Very much appreciate it.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, if you want, this is Betsi Worzel. You're a
host of Chatting with Betsy. I'm Patrick will Talk Radio Network,
a subsidiary of Global Media Network LLC. Our mantras to educate, enlighten,
and entertain. The views of the guest may not represent
those of the post or the station. Folks, I am
(00:22):
so grateful to do what I do to be able
to provide you with resources that I wish I knew
about when I was caregiving to make my life easier,
and I want to make your life easier. And as
we're coming upon June and another week or two, June
(00:43):
is Alzheimer's and Brain Awareness months, and not that we
need a monthly because those of us who have survived caregiving,
we'll never forget our journey. And if you have any
concerns about your mental health, about your brain health, please
consult your primary care physician.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Well.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
As you know, I am so passionate about providing you
with experts and resources. And with me today is an
expert doctor Henry Marca Hope, I'm prodouncing your neck correctly.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Who's Oh Good, Who's a neuroscientist and CEO of Brain
HQ and he's going to talk about what.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
His expertise is. So Henry is all yours. How did
you come up with brain HQ? I love the name
of that.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
By the way, Oh, thank you. Thank you. First of all, Hey,
thanks for having me on the show. It's really a
delight with chat with you. And Hey, I have been
a caregiver myself over my life, particularly for my dad,
and you know, the work that you're doing to get
news and science and information out to people's incredibly important.
So thank you for hosting this podcast. You know my
(02:00):
way of introduction to me, Uh, I'm a I'm a neuroscientist.
Like you said, I did a PhD in neuroscience at
the University of California, San Francisco, back when dinosaurs walked
the Earth. It's been a little while and I had
the great opportunity to do the do my PhD research
on the topic of brain plasticity. I was working in
(02:21):
the lab of a researcher named doctor Michael Murznek. And
you know what he had discovered over the course of
his illustrious scientific career was that, Hey, the adult brain
is capable of rewiring and changing itself through learning and
experience and training and uh, and that that's really been
a breakthrough in terms of how we think about the brain.
(02:43):
You know, when I when I started my graduate work,
you know, what I was taught was that the brain
is kind of like a computer chip when you're an adult. Right,
It's hardwired, you know, and it has electricity and it
processes information just like a computer chip. But everyone thought that, hey,
once that wiring was laid down, you know, maybe it
was laid down when you were a baby, that once
you were grown up, your brain wiring could not be changed.
(03:06):
And what that meant for a lot of people is that, hey,
as we get older, we might just expect that computer
chip to wear out. Right, We've all had computers stopped
working after a while, right, And everyone thought the brain
kind of worked that way, it just kind of wore
out over time. And what my lab, under leadership with
doctor Mursnick, figured out was, hey, none of that's true.
(03:26):
We really shouldn't think about the brain like a computer
chip with fixed wiring. The brain is in fact always
constantly reorganizing and rewiring and rebuilding itself in response to
what we ask our brain to do. And you know, hey,
that means our brains can change when we're little kids,
and our brains can change when we're young adults. But
best news of all, our brains can actually change as
(03:47):
we're older adults as well. And that fundamental breakthrough in
brain science led mic and to start brain HQ, and
then I was the first employee here. And the idea
of what we're doing here is we are building brain
training exercises that just about anyone can do on their computer,
on a phone, or on a tablet, that are based
(04:08):
on this incredible breakthrough science of brain plasticity, of brain rewiring,
so that just about anyone can do these exercises to
help build a healthier brain, help sharpen their cognitive function,
help build their brain reserve so they have a stronger
and more resilient brain. And that's what we've been doing.
Over the past years, we've been building out this program.
(04:29):
We have been doing lots and lots of science and
clinical trials to show that it works and taking it
out into the world to help people use it. And
so that that's the journey I've been on. It's been
incredibly fun and incredibly exciting.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Well, I just love that and I thank you Henry
for what you all do of their brain HQ, and
it has been a big breakthrough. When I started my
caregiving journey with my husband who early onset, there was
fifteen years ago and there really was not the science
(05:06):
the education that there is now. And when I received
your press release and it says why are cudgivers more
at risk for congnas's decline? I perfectly understood that. Because
we don't have to sleep, we are under a lot
(05:29):
of stress. And then when your person dies, you go
into the Greef brain and Henry, I thought after my
husband died that I was afraid of that. I was
having old timers because I go into a room and
sometimes I forget, like going to a room for but
(05:50):
I was just forgetting where I was putting things. And
I talked to my neurologists about it, and you said, Betsy,
you just we're under a lot of stress. Are caregivers
at risk for gone to decline?
Speaker 2 (06:03):
They really are? And that's kind of an eye open
observation for a lot of people because there you are,
and you know you're doing that work that you just
talked about to take care of someone that you love
who's explicitly in the middle of cognitive decline. But it
turns out that all that work that we have to
do as caregivers has effect on our own brains as well.
And scientists have looked at this pretty carefully and two
(06:26):
big things come up. One of them, exactly is interrupted sleep.
Like you mentioned, I don't think there's many caregiver in
America or the world who is reliably getting a good
night's sleep every night. And we know from hundreds of
studies on brain health that sleep is incredibly important for
brain health. You know, sometimes we think we're sleep, our
brain's doing nothing, we're just resting, and nothing could be
(06:47):
further from the truth, Betsy. When we are sleeping, our
brain is actually actively rewiring and rebuilding itself, and if
you interrupt that sleep, you are directly damaging brain health.
So we already know that people who get poor sleep
are at a high higher risk for going on to dementia,
and of course that means the caregivers who get poor
sleep have that risk factor. The second thing that happens
with caregivers, of course, is stress and depression. Right. It's
(07:11):
a very challenging thing to do, and it causes that
stress because there's so much to do and there's so
many things to balance, and you feel like if you
get anything wrong right, someone that you love is going
to be in trouble, and that causes stress, and that
causes depression. Well, we now know that stress and depression
themselves are brain health risks. We know that as well
as those being very real psychological phenomena, we know that
(07:32):
those are very real brain health issues. We can measure
structures in the brain that shrink and change their size
because of stress and depression, and we know that as
a result of stress and depression, people have cognitive issues.
We know that people who have stress and depression have
poorer speed for example, you know, literally we can measure
that cognitive slowing when people feel like I'm just kind
(07:53):
of muddy today or I'm kind of foggy today, I'm
under all this spress and I've been stressed, and I've
been down about my my you know, the work I've
been doing with my husband or my wife. That's a
very real brain health phenomenon. Your brain speed is lower,
your working memory can be impaired, your intention attention can
be worse than it used to be. So those cognitive
issues are all there and all themselves create additional risk
(08:15):
factors for folks who are caregivers. But what's exciting is
because you know, we have all of this new science
of brain plasticity, we've started to and then that's what
this new scientific study was about to show that, Hey,
you can use the power of brain plasticity, you can
use the power of brain training to improve your own
brain resilience and improve your cognitive function and in that sense,
(08:38):
help keep yourself healthy so you can keep doing the
work that you need to do for caregiving. And that's
that's I think some really really positive views for how
we think about this work that we do.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Oh, I could just hug you for that.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I'll give a hug over the phone. See how's that happens?
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Because it is so important. I say, that's all the
time for caregivers to take care of themselves. And I
know that's hard.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
It is hard because of course, caregiving for someone can
take all your time and attention. But as everyone also
knows in the caregiving community, you do have to also
take care of yourself. Whether that means eating healthy, whether
that means getting some exercise, whether that means staying in
touch with friends. All of those things are important for
our caregiver psychological health and their brain health. And so
(09:36):
so let me tell you about this cool new study
that came out. Yes, so you know, we had built
these brain training exercises which are called called brain HQ.
Anyone can come learn about them at www dot brainhq
dot Tom we had built them and Betsy. When we
built these exercises, first we thought, well, hey, these brain
training exercises are going to be useful for people who
(09:56):
you know, want to maintain or even improve their cognitive function.
They goes older, we thought well, hey, everyone, on the average,
as we get older, you know, we start to sow
down a little bit. Maybe our memory is not quite
what it used to be. And these brain training exercises
are going to help a person who's at risk stay healthy.
And I got to tell you if I see, the
science has come in tremendously on that front. There have
actually been more than three hundred scientific papers that have
(10:18):
now been published using the brain HQ training exercises, knowing
that they helped people think faster and focus better and
remember more so they improve these direct cogniti abilities. And
brain imaging studies have shown over and over again that
these brain HQ brain training exercises. You know, they help
thicken the insulation in the brain and they help brain
regions be better connected to each other, so we could
(10:40):
see that brain rewiring and people who do this added
But what's new about this study is that, for the
first time, a group of really clever researchers at the
University of Rochester decided to ask the question, well, hey,
this brain training seems very helpful for people who are
at risk cognitive decline. How about for their caregivers who
(11:03):
themselves are at risk for cognitive decline? For all the
reasons we just talked about, should we think about it
as more than something for a person who wants to
Should we think about it more broadly in that way?
And I think that was just a really innovative way
to think about this. Should we think about improving the
brain health. That's not just people who are themselves perhaps
declining brain health, but people who are take care Should
(11:24):
we take care of the brains that are taking care
of the brains of someone who's declining so to speak?
Speaker 1 (11:29):
And yes, I'll go ahead, Oh, well, it's that's really important.
That's so important?
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Is it really is? And they did a very challenging
and important study. They actually recruited one hundred and ninety
five caregivers, which is a lot. That's actually a pretty
big brain training study. I've been involved in a lot
of brain training studies. I'm going to tell you, I
was pretty impressed when I heard about this. And these
are people who are of course already busy and stressed, right,
These are people who are undergo you know, involved in
(11:59):
acting caregiving, usually of someone for dementia that they love
in their family. And with these one hundred and ninety
five people, they split them into two groups, and half
of them did the brain HQ brain training exercises designed
to improve their brain health, and the other half do
what you would call a control activity. You know, in
a research study, we always have to have something we're trying,
and we have to have a control group. So the
(12:20):
half that was the control group, they basically watched educational
videos online which were engaging, in pleasant and distracting, but
obviously not designed to improve your brain health. And what
they saw was pretty remarkable. So they only did eight
weeks of brain training. That did about twelve hours of
brain training over the course of those eight weeks, and
that's in a way a lot, right, These are very
(12:40):
busy people for all the reasons you and I both know, right,
they had to carve for that time out of their
commitments already, but they did it because they wanted to
do this study. And then they measured their visual they
measured their cognitive speed, they measured their working memory, but
they also measured aspects related to their caregiving and what
they saw was pretty remarkd. So right after the training
(13:01):
was done, the folks who had done the brain training
exercises had improved visual speed right off the bat, which
makes sense, that's exactly what we were training. And then
six months later, with no more brain training, the working
memory effects kicked in. So the folks who had done
the brain training exercises six months after they were done
now showed better working memory than the folks who were
(13:22):
in the controlled group, so improving their speed right off
the bat. And then that turned in over time to
improved working memory in these caregivers. And then when they
measured them for the last time at the end of
a twelve month period, they found that the emotional reactivity
of these caregivers to caregiving stress. They have a questionnaire
where they literally asked the caregiver, Hey, which of the
following things are happening in your caregiving situation that are
(13:45):
causing you stress and the emotional disturbance. And they found
that the folks who'd been through the brain training exercises
showed an improved score on this very real world of
measure of caregiving stress and caregiving burden. And so what
that tells us for the first time is that, hey,
we can improve the brain health of caregivers with these
brain training exercises, and they show benefits and speed and
(14:06):
actual cognitive ability like working memory, and then it helps
them with that negative emotional reactivity to the challenges of
being a caregiver. And it really just wraps this up
with this notion that, hey, caregiving is a burden on
the brain, but we can help brains better able to
carry that burden. And that's exciting.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Ah, that is exciting. I'm so excited. I just love this.
And from someone who went through ten years of giving
with my husband, five with my mother in law, steen
years together.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
The break in between.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
You don't sleep, you sleep with one ear, one eye open,
and you're not getting proper rest. This is so important.
How what kind of exercises are there, and can the
caregiver do it alongside their loved one who has well
that is the kind of dementia or is that two
different exercises.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
No, that's a really really smart question. So let me
say what doing theseus is like, because hey, these are
different than what a lot of people think of. These
aren't like doing crossword puzzles or playing wordle if you
play wordle or things that. These are exercises that are
designed to make your brain faster and more accurate. So,
for example, you might do an exercise that's focused on
(15:27):
visual speed and attention. And in this exercise, you might
be looking at your computer screen and what you see
is that in the center of your field of vision,
like where your eyes are looking, you know, a little
target pops up and it might be like a car
or a truck, for example, and you have to really
pay attention to say what you saw there, because the
car in the truck look kind of similar. But at
the same time you're doing that in the center of
(15:48):
your your attention, you also have to notice out of
the corner of your eye, hey, where does this road
sign appear? Right? Did it appear at the one o'clock
position or the five o'clock position, or you know where
off in the corner of your eye. Well, if you
have all day to look at that, you'll get it
right every touch, I promise. But what we do is
we make that pretty fast, so you don't have all
(16:09):
day to look at it. It happens in just a
split second. And this is actually a really sensitive brain
training measure because it turns out that this kind of
visual speed and attention, this actually kind of declines in
most people as we get older. And so the way
this exercise works is, you know, you see it for
a first time, and if you get it right, well
we make it a little bit faster, and if you
get it right again, well we make it a little
(16:30):
bit faster again. But then if you get it wrong,
no problem, we make it a little bit slower. So
it's adaptive and it finds exactly the right level of
challenge for your brain. Now, you're never going to get
them all right, because we got them all right, you
wouldn't be training your brain with you. You're always going
to get a few of them wrong. And in that sense,
it pushes your brain and it drives that brain rewiring
(16:50):
and then improvement in brain health. So that's how these
exercises work. And there's a bunch of them that work,
you know, in similar ways, but they're different exercises. There's
ones that target it, you know, more like attention and
your ability to track multiple objects. And there's other speed
ones and so forth and so on, and you know,
you can do them on a laptop, you can do
them on your phone, you can do them on a tablet,
whatever's convenient for you. But you asked a great question, Hey,
(17:13):
is this something that you can do with the person
that you're caregiving for? And in many cases yes, you know,
depending on the stage of the person that you're caring for.
You know, we've had many, many situations with people who
have you know, early stages of dementia where hey, we
do need to take care of them. But folks with
early stage dementia, if you're capable of you know, holding
(17:34):
a tablet and then working with a little bit, you know,
they can sit and do sort of their own brain exercises.
Will you do yours? And that's that might be a
nice way to spend a little bit of time together.
Of course, it's going to adapt so that your brain
training exercises might be a little more complicated than their
brain training exercises because the system adapts to each person.
But that's that's a lovely idea. And then the brain
(17:57):
training exercises themselves are kind of interesting to watch, right.
They're very visually complicated, they're full of rich visual stimuli.
They're engaging, and so you know, you might be able
to sit the two of you together, so to speak,
and you're actually doing them, but you might be able
to be talking about them with the person you're caregiving for,
and they might you know, engage their attention and their interest,
and it could be something you do you do together
(18:18):
in that way. That is a lovely lot of thought.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yes, that is that's great activity to do together. And
someone like me who is sixty seven, not cure giving
for eOne with to mention, still a curegiver for my
son and I could.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Do these exercises.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Also, it would better sit nate yes, to do the exercise.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
And that's and you know, what we've learned about these
exercises is that actually, you know, frankly, just about anyone
can benefit from just about anyone can build a better
healthier brain. You know, like I said, when we started
a company, we were focused on what I would call
normal aging, where all of us lose a little bit
of memory or a little bit of speed over time.
And again the science came in very strongly on that front.
(19:02):
But over the past years we've learned two things in
addition to that, one of which is many many academic
scientists have come to us with grant funded studies and said, hey,
I want to try those brain training exercises in various
kinds of brain health issues. Right. I work with patients
who have multiple sclerosis. They have cognitive slowing, right, can
brain training help improve their cognitive slowing? I work with
(19:24):
patients who've had concussion. I work with patients who have schizophrenia.
I work with patients who have major depressive disorder, bipolar disease,
HIV associated neurocognitive disorder, a chemo brain, and women who
are surviving best cancer. And it was really mind expanding
for me as a neuroscientist because study after study got
done using these brain training exercises in all of these
(19:45):
different populations. And you know, most of those studies came
back pretty positive saying, hey, you know what, here's a
brain health condition and we can improve cognitive function with
brain training. So even folks who are is that brains
that are kind of in trouble, if I may put
it that way, you know, can improve their brain health
and their cognitive performance. And on the other side of
this passion, we've worked well go ahead.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
That just throws me, Henry, that is it's I'm ready
to get emotional here because this is so close to
my heart. Do you have no idea? Thank you?
Speaker 2 (20:19):
It was really an important message of hope. And on
the other side of the equation, we over the past
years have done more and more work with people who
actually are have really sharp and high performing brains, want
to make them even sharper and more high performing. We've
done work with all kinds of professional athletes. Tom Brady,
actually the Carter quarterback, is probably our most famous user.
(20:42):
He was really interested in winning more Super Bowls and
he recognized he needed to train his brain to go
for the like ninety fifth level of performance to the
ninety ninth level of performance. And we're doing more and
more work with the US military helping people in various
dangerous jobs, you know, again take very good cognitive performance
and making into superb coct and perform elements. And so
it really is a message of hope. I think, Betsy,
(21:03):
in the sense that I think we're learning about this
kind of brain science is came to matter where we are,
we can get better. And it's the same kind of
message around physical exercise. Right. Just about everyone benefits from
physical exercise, right, And we all have physical exercise in
our life, right. Some people walk a little, some people
take the stairs, some people go to the gym and
lift weights, you know, one way or the other. We
(21:25):
all do things that are designed to help maintain and
improve our physical health. And I think what we're learning
about brain health is we should think about it exactly
the same way. We don't need to be passive about
our brain health and just accept that, Hey, whatever is
in our genetics or whatever our risk factors are, hey
that's the brain I get right. We can now realize
that because the power of this idea of brain plasticity,
(21:46):
we can change our brain health, and in that sense
we can have really positive effects on our life and
our future and all kinds of things like that. So
it's a really exciting time to be a brain scientist
in this way. I hope it's a really exciting message
for a lot of people who are thinking about brains
and brain health.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Oh, it definitely is. And I just have to say
from a personal point of view that I wish this
was available for my husband in his early stages. And
I would recommend to anyone, you know, get going with
(22:22):
the brain exercise. If your lud one does have a
problem with you, yourself are at risk, and even if
you're not, we need to take care of our brains.
This is so exciting and it is a message of hope,
and I'm just so thankful for people like you, Henry,
who are doing this. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Well, it's a very gratifying time to be able to
do this kind of work. And we're at a pretty
special time in the history of what we learned about
the brain and a pretty special time around, you know,
being able to use modern technology to get this out
into the world. So it's it's exciting and I really
do think we're just a changing our ways that we
think about brains and brain health over time, which is
exciting for me.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
I know that I get sometimes I get worried if
I forget a word, forget how to spell a word
and not to google it, or I see an actor actress,
I think what's their name? What's their name? And so I,
you know, talked to my neurologists. I said, well, once
do you get concerned? He said, when you put your
keys in a freezer, I forget, Yeah, but your key
(23:26):
is for.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
That's exactly right. And that is a big distinction, right,
because you know, on the average, most of us are
going to have that kind of you know, very mild
level of issue. Right, Like you say, you know, forgetting
the name of an actress and it comes to you
ten minutes later, right or right, I think we've all
gotten to the grocery store and thought, oh, I was
supposed to get milk, and I forgot to get milk. Correct,
(23:48):
And like Inroal just said, hey, that's that's that's a
normal altho not required, but that's a that's a common
thing that happens. And you know, a person doesn't need
to worry about they if they have Alzheimer's or dementia.
You know, dementia is of course a much more significant disorder.
You know, like a neurologist says, you put the keys
in the freezer because your brain really starts to get
mixed up about these very basic issues of memory and
(24:11):
attention or objects and what they're for. But that being said,
you know, before you get Alzheimer's, the rest of your
cognition kind of gets worse and a step by step way,
And so I think that means that, hey, we don't
want to ignore brain health until the day we get Alzheimer's,
because it's it's kind of late. Do enough about it.
(24:34):
We want to think about maintaining our brain health, about
exercising our brain, about we want to think about building
brain reserve and brain resilience. You know, way before we
are entering the sage where a doctor might be wondering
if we have Alzheimer's. And in that sense, you know, hey,
if you forgot something at the grocery store, or you know,
you had that tip of the tongue of omen where
you saw that actress in the new show and you're like,
(24:56):
where have I seen here before? You know, maybe that's
a good moment to think about, Hey, maybe there's some
things I can do to work on my brain health.
And there are so many things right and you know,
we know that exercise improves brain health. We know that
good sleep improves brain health. We know that taking care
of you know, your diet and eating good, good nutritive
meals takes care of your brain health. And of course
we know from the study and many many others that
(25:17):
the right kind of brain training improves your brain health
as well. So when you notice those things, I agree
you shouldn't say, oh my gosh, I have dementia, but
you probably should think, hmm, maybe this is a reminder
that I need to be taking care of my brain
health and think about engaging in some more brain healthy,
brain healthy activities like picking up a brain training program.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Absolutely, somebody wants to start it. My phone's going to whacky.
Are you still there, Henry?
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Yes, I sure, am okay.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
The phones go wack. I just lost my trained thought
A guess I know it's gonna say. How does someone
go about taking the brain train? And the CEO of
brain HQ and so delightful to speak with you all
the information about doctor Henry Will be in the black.
(26:15):
The Genie White who's the station manager, writes and produces
the show. And I want to thank everyone for listening.
And when I think Loland called well, CEO of Pasture
Will Talk Radio makes it all possible. Thank you for listening.
Please subscribe to Chatting with Betsy just for free on
Spot by Spreaker, Amazon Music. And you know we need
(26:36):
to take care of our brains and brain health. It's
so important. I can't stress that enough. And as I
always say at the end of my show and the
world where you could be anything, please be kind and
shine your life.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
This is Betsy Worzel. You're a host of Chatting with
Betsy Not Passion Rule Talk Radio Network. Bye bye now
Hello, if you want, this is Betsi Worzel. You're a
host of Chatting with Betsy. I'm Patrick will Talk Radio Network,
a subsidiary of Global Media Network LLC. Our mantras to educate, enlighten,
and entertain. The views of the guest may not represent
those of the post or the station. Folks, I am
(00:22):
so grateful to do what I do to be able
to provide you with resources that I wish I knew
about when I was caregiving to make my life easier,
and I want to make your life easier. And as
we're coming upon June and another week or two, June
(00:43):
is Alzheimer's and Brain Awareness months, and not that we
need a monthly because those of us who have survived caregiving,
we'll never forget our journey. And if you have any
concerns about your mental health, about your brain health, please
consult your primary care physician.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Well.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
As you know, I am so passionate about providing you
with experts and resources. And with me today is an
expert doctor Henry Marca Hope, I'm prodouncing your neck correctly.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Who's Oh Good, Who's a neuroscientist and CEO of Brain
HQ and he's going to talk about what.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
His expertise is. So Henry is all yours. How did
you come up with brain HQ? I love the name
of that.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
By the way, Oh, thank you. Thank you. First of all, Hey,
thanks for having me on the show. It's really a
delight with chat with you. And Hey, I have been
a caregiver myself over my life, particularly for my dad,
and you know, the work that you're doing to get
news and science and information out to people's incredibly important.
So thank you for hosting this podcast. You know my
(02:00):
way of introduction to me, Uh, I'm a I'm a neuroscientist.
Like you said, I did a PhD in neuroscience at
the University of California, San Francisco, back when dinosaurs walked
the Earth. It's been a little while and I had
the great opportunity to do the do my PhD research
on the topic of brain plasticity. I was working in
(02:21):
the lab of a researcher named doctor Michael Murznek. And
you know what he had discovered over the course of
his illustrious scientific career was that, Hey, the adult brain
is capable of rewiring and changing itself through learning and
experience and training and uh, and that that's really been
a breakthrough in terms of how we think about the brain.
(02:43):
You know, when I when I started my graduate work,
you know, what I was taught was that the brain
is kind of like a computer chip when you're an adult. Right,
It's hardwired, you know, and it has electricity and it
processes information just like a computer chip. But everyone thought that, hey,
once that wiring was laid down, you know, maybe it
was laid down when you were a baby, that once
you were grown up, your brain wiring could not be changed.
(03:06):
And what that meant for a lot of people is that, hey,
as we get older, we might just expect that computer
chip to wear out. Right, We've all had computers stopped
working after a while, right, And everyone thought the brain
kind of worked that way, it just kind of wore
out over time. And what my lab, under leadership with
doctor Mursnick, figured out was, hey, none of that's true.
(03:26):
We really shouldn't think about the brain like a computer
chip with fixed wiring. The brain is in fact always
constantly reorganizing and rewiring and rebuilding itself in response to
what we ask our brain to do. And you know, hey,
that means our brains can change when we're little kids,
and our brains can change when we're young adults. But
best news of all, our brains can actually change as
(03:47):
we're older adults as well. And that fundamental breakthrough in
brain science led mic and to start brain HQ, and
then I was the first employee here. And the idea
of what we're doing here is we are building brain
training exercises that just about anyone can do on their computer,
on a phone, or on a tablet, that are based
(04:08):
on this incredible breakthrough science of brain plasticity, of brain rewiring,
so that just about anyone can do these exercises to
help build a healthier brain, help sharpen their cognitive function,
help build their brain reserve so they have a stronger
and more resilient brain. And that's what we've been doing.
Over the past years, we've been building out this program.
(04:29):
We have been doing lots and lots of science and
clinical trials to show that it works and taking it
out into the world to help people use it. And
so that that's the journey I've been on. It's been
incredibly fun and incredibly exciting.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Well, I just love that and I thank you Henry
for what you all do of their brain HQ, and
it has been a big breakthrough. When I started my
caregiving journey with my husband who early onset, there was
fifteen years ago and there really was not the science
(05:06):
the education that there is now. And when I received
your press release and it says why are cudgivers more
at risk for congnas's decline? I perfectly understood that. Because
we don't have to sleep, we are under a lot
(05:29):
of stress. And then when your person dies, you go
into the Greef brain and Henry, I thought after my
husband died that I was afraid of that. I was
having old timers because I go into a room and
sometimes I forget, like going to a room for but
(05:50):
I was just forgetting where I was putting things. And
I talked to my neurologists about it, and you said, Betsy,
you just we're under a lot of stress. Are caregivers
at risk for gone to decline?
Speaker 2 (06:03):
They really are? And that's kind of an eye open
observation for a lot of people because there you are,
and you know you're doing that work that you just
talked about to take care of someone that you love
who's explicitly in the middle of cognitive decline. But it
turns out that all that work that we have to
do as caregivers has effect on our own brains as well.
And scientists have looked at this pretty carefully and two
(06:26):
big things come up. One of them, exactly is interrupted sleep.
Like you mentioned, I don't think there's many caregiver in
America or the world who is reliably getting a good
night's sleep every night. And we know from hundreds of
studies on brain health that sleep is incredibly important for
brain health. You know, sometimes we think we're sleep, our
brain's doing nothing, we're just resting, and nothing could be
(06:47):
further from the truth, Betsy. When we are sleeping, our
brain is actually actively rewiring and rebuilding itself, and if
you interrupt that sleep, you are directly damaging brain health.
So we already know that people who get poor sleep
are at a high higher risk for going on to dementia,
and of course that means the caregivers who get poor
sleep have that risk factor. The second thing that happens
with caregivers, of course, is stress and depression. Right. It's
(07:11):
a very challenging thing to do, and it causes that
stress because there's so much to do and there's so
many things to balance, and you feel like if you
get anything wrong right, someone that you love is going
to be in trouble, and that causes stress, and that
causes depression. Well, we now know that stress and depression
themselves are brain health risks. We know that as well
as those being very real psychological phenomena, we know that
(07:32):
those are very real brain health issues. We can measure
structures in the brain that shrink and change their size
because of stress and depression, and we know that as
a result of stress and depression, people have cognitive issues.
We know that people who have stress and depression have
poorer speed for example, you know, literally we can measure
that cognitive slowing when people feel like I'm just kind
(07:53):
of muddy today or I'm kind of foggy today, I'm
under all this spress and I've been stressed, and I've
been down about my my you know, the work I've
been doing with my husband or my wife. That's a
very real brain health phenomenon. Your brain speed is lower,
your working memory can be impaired, your intention attention can
be worse than it used to be. So those cognitive
issues are all there and all themselves create additional risk
(08:15):
factors for folks who are caregivers. But what's exciting is
because you know, we have all of this new science
of brain plasticity, we've started to and then that's what
this new scientific study was about to show that, Hey,
you can use the power of brain plasticity, you can
use the power of brain training to improve your own
brain resilience and improve your cognitive function and in that sense,
(08:38):
help keep yourself healthy so you can keep doing the
work that you need to do for caregiving. And that's
that's I think some really really positive views for how
we think about this work that we do.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Oh, I could just hug you for that.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I'll give a hug over the phone. See how's that happens?
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Because it is so important. I say, that's all the
time for caregivers to take care of themselves. And I
know that's hard.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
It is hard because of course, caregiving for someone can
take all your time and attention. But as everyone also
knows in the caregiving community, you do have to also
take care of yourself. Whether that means eating healthy, whether
that means getting some exercise, whether that means staying in
touch with friends. All of those things are important for
our caregiver psychological health and their brain health. And so
(09:36):
so let me tell you about this cool new study
that came out. Yes, so you know, we had built
these brain training exercises which are called called brain HQ.
Anyone can come learn about them at www dot brainhq
dot Tom we had built them and Betsy. When we
built these exercises, first we thought, well, hey, these brain
training exercises are going to be useful for people who
(09:56):
you know, want to maintain or even improve their cognitive function.
They goes older, we thought well, hey, everyone, on the average,
as we get older, you know, we start to sow
down a little bit. Maybe our memory is not quite
what it used to be. And these brain training exercises
are going to help a person who's at risk stay healthy.
And I got to tell you if I see, the
science has come in tremendously on that front. There have
actually been more than three hundred scientific papers that have
(10:18):
now been published using the brain HQ training exercises, knowing
that they helped people think faster and focus better and
remember more so they improve these direct cogniti abilities. And
brain imaging studies have shown over and over again that
these brain HQ brain training exercises. You know, they help
thicken the insulation in the brain and they help brain
regions be better connected to each other, so we could
(10:40):
see that brain rewiring and people who do this added
But what's new about this study is that, for the
first time, a group of really clever researchers at the
University of Rochester decided to ask the question, well, hey,
this brain training seems very helpful for people who are
at risk cognitive decline. How about for their caregivers who
(11:03):
themselves are at risk for cognitive decline? For all the
reasons we just talked about, should we think about it
as more than something for a person who wants to
Should we think about it more broadly in that way?
And I think that was just a really innovative way
to think about this. Should we think about improving the
brain health. That's not just people who are themselves perhaps
declining brain health, but people who are take care Should
(11:24):
we take care of the brains that are taking care
of the brains of someone who's declining so to speak?
Speaker 1 (11:29):
And yes, I'll go ahead, Oh, well, it's that's really important.
That's so important?
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Is it really is? And they did a very challenging
and important study. They actually recruited one hundred and ninety
five caregivers, which is a lot. That's actually a pretty
big brain training study. I've been involved in a lot
of brain training studies. I'm going to tell you, I
was pretty impressed when I heard about this. And these
are people who are of course already busy and stressed, right,
These are people who are undergo you know, involved in
(11:59):
acting caregiving, usually of someone for dementia that they love
in their family. And with these one hundred and ninety
five people, they split them into two groups, and half
of them did the brain HQ brain training exercises designed
to improve their brain health, and the other half do
what you would call a control activity. You know, in
a research study, we always have to have something we're trying,
and we have to have a control group. So the
(12:20):
half that was the control group, they basically watched educational
videos online which were engaging, in pleasant and distracting, but
obviously not designed to improve your brain health. And what
they saw was pretty remarkable. So they only did eight
weeks of brain training. That did about twelve hours of
brain training over the course of those eight weeks, and
that's in a way a lot, right, These are very
(12:40):
busy people for all the reasons you and I both know, right,
they had to carve for that time out of their
commitments already, but they did it because they wanted to
do this study. And then they measured their visual they
measured their cognitive speed, they measured their working memory, but
they also measured aspects related to their caregiving and what
they saw was pretty remarkd. So right after the training
(13:01):
was done, the folks who had done the brain training
exercises had improved visual speed right off the bat, which
makes sense, that's exactly what we were training. And then
six months later, with no more brain training, the working
memory effects kicked in. So the folks who had done
the brain training exercises six months after they were done
now showed better working memory than the folks who were
(13:22):
in the controlled group, so improving their speed right off
the bat. And then that turned in over time to
improved working memory in these caregivers. And then when they
measured them for the last time at the end of
a twelve month period, they found that the emotional reactivity
of these caregivers to caregiving stress. They have a questionnaire
where they literally asked the caregiver, Hey, which of the
following things are happening in your caregiving situation that are
(13:45):
causing you stress and the emotional disturbance. And they found
that the folks who'd been through the brain training exercises
showed an improved score on this very real world of
measure of caregiving stress and caregiving burden. And so what
that tells us for the first time is that, hey,
we can improve the brain health of caregivers with these
brain training exercises, and they show benefits and speed and
(14:06):
actual cognitive ability like working memory, and then it helps
them with that negative emotional reactivity to the challenges of
being a caregiver. And it really just wraps this up
with this notion that, hey, caregiving is a burden on
the brain, but we can help brains better able to
carry that burden. And that's exciting.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Ah, that is exciting. I'm so excited. I just love this.
And from someone who went through ten years of giving
with my husband, five with my mother in law, steen
years together.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
The break in between.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
You don't sleep, you sleep with one ear, one eye open,
and you're not getting proper rest. This is so important.
How what kind of exercises are there, and can the
caregiver do it alongside their loved one who has well
that is the kind of dementia or is that two
different exercises.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
No, that's a really really smart question. So let me
say what doing theseus is like, because hey, these are
different than what a lot of people think of. These
aren't like doing crossword puzzles or playing wordle if you
play wordle or things that. These are exercises that are
designed to make your brain faster and more accurate. So,
for example, you might do an exercise that's focused on
(15:27):
visual speed and attention. And in this exercise, you might
be looking at your computer screen and what you see
is that in the center of your field of vision,
like where your eyes are looking, you know, a little
target pops up and it might be like a car
or a truck, for example, and you have to really
pay attention to say what you saw there, because the
car in the truck look kind of similar. But at
the same time you're doing that in the center of
(15:48):
your your attention, you also have to notice out of
the corner of your eye, hey, where does this road
sign appear? Right? Did it appear at the one o'clock
position or the five o'clock position, or you know where
off in the corner of your eye. Well, if you
have all day to look at that, you'll get it
right every touch, I promise. But what we do is
we make that pretty fast, so you don't have all
(16:09):
day to look at it. It happens in just a
split second. And this is actually a really sensitive brain
training measure because it turns out that this kind of
visual speed and attention, this actually kind of declines in
most people as we get older. And so the way
this exercise works is, you know, you see it for
a first time, and if you get it right, well
we make it a little bit faster, and if you
get it right again, well we make it a little
(16:30):
bit faster again. But then if you get it wrong,
no problem, we make it a little bit slower. So
it's adaptive and it finds exactly the right level of
challenge for your brain. Now, you're never going to get
them all right, because we got them all right, you
wouldn't be training your brain with you. You're always going
to get a few of them wrong. And in that sense,
it pushes your brain and it drives that brain rewiring
(16:50):
and then improvement in brain health. So that's how these
exercises work. And there's a bunch of them that work,
you know, in similar ways, but they're different exercises. There's
ones that target it, you know, more like attention and
your ability to track multiple objects. And there's other speed
ones and so forth and so on, and you know,
you can do them on a laptop, you can do
them on your phone, you can do them on a tablet,
whatever's convenient for you. But you asked a great question, Hey,
(17:13):
is this something that you can do with the person
that you're caregiving for? And in many cases yes, you know,
depending on the stage of the person that you're caring for.
You know, we've had many, many situations with people who
have you know, early stages of dementia where hey, we
do need to take care of them. But folks with
early stage dementia, if you're capable of you know, holding
(17:34):
a tablet and then working with a little bit, you know,
they can sit and do sort of their own brain exercises.
Will you do yours? And that's that might be a
nice way to spend a little bit of time together.
Of course, it's going to adapt so that your brain
training exercises might be a little more complicated than their
brain training exercises because the system adapts to each person.
But that's that's a lovely idea. And then the brain
(17:57):
training exercises themselves are kind of interesting to watch, right.
They're very visually complicated, they're full of rich visual stimuli.
They're engaging, and so you know, you might be able
to sit the two of you together, so to speak,
and you're actually doing them, but you might be able
to be talking about them with the person you're caregiving for,
and they might you know, engage their attention and their interest,
and it could be something you do you do together
(18:18):
in that way. That is a lovely lot of thought.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yes, that is that's great activity to do together. And
someone like me who is sixty seven, not cure giving
for eOne with to mention, still a curegiver for my
son and I could.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Do these exercises.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Also, it would better sit nate yes, to do the exercise.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
And that's and you know, what we've learned about these
exercises is that actually, you know, frankly, just about anyone
can benefit from just about anyone can build a better
healthier brain. You know, like I said, when we started
a company, we were focused on what I would call
normal aging, where all of us lose a little bit
of memory or a little bit of speed over time.
And again the science came in very strongly on that front.
(19:02):
But over the past years we've learned two things in
addition to that, one of which is many many academic
scientists have come to us with grant funded studies and said, hey,
I want to try those brain training exercises in various
kinds of brain health issues. Right. I work with patients
who have multiple sclerosis. They have cognitive slowing, right, can
brain training help improve their cognitive slowing? I work with
(19:24):
patients who've had concussion. I work with patients who have schizophrenia.
I work with patients who have major depressive disorder, bipolar disease,
HIV associated neurocognitive disorder, a chemo brain, and women who
are surviving best cancer. And it was really mind expanding
for me as a neuroscientist because study after study got
done using these brain training exercises in all of these
(19:45):
different populations. And you know, most of those studies came
back pretty positive saying, hey, you know what, here's a
brain health condition and we can improve cognitive function with
brain training. So even folks who are is that brains
that are kind of in trouble, if I may put
it that way, you know, can improve their brain health
and their cognitive performance. And on the other side of
this passion, we've worked well go ahead.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
That just throws me, Henry, that is it's I'm ready
to get emotional here because this is so close to
my heart. Do you have no idea? Thank you?
Speaker 2 (20:19):
It was really an important message of hope. And on
the other side of the equation, we over the past
years have done more and more work with people who
actually are have really sharp and high performing brains, want
to make them even sharper and more high performing. We've
done work with all kinds of professional athletes. Tom Brady,
actually the Carter quarterback, is probably our most famous user.
(20:42):
He was really interested in winning more Super Bowls and
he recognized he needed to train his brain to go
for the like ninety fifth level of performance to the
ninety ninth level of performance. And we're doing more and
more work with the US military helping people in various
dangerous jobs, you know, again take very good cognitive performance
and making into superb coct and perform elements. And so
it really is a message of hope. I think, Betsy,
(21:03):
in the sense that I think we're learning about this
kind of brain science is came to matter where we are,
we can get better. And it's the same kind of
message around physical exercise. Right. Just about everyone benefits from
physical exercise, right, And we all have physical exercise in
our life, right. Some people walk a little, some people
take the stairs, some people go to the gym and
lift weights, you know, one way or the other. We
(21:25):
all do things that are designed to help maintain and
improve our physical health. And I think what we're learning
about brain health is we should think about it exactly
the same way. We don't need to be passive about
our brain health and just accept that, Hey, whatever is
in our genetics or whatever our risk factors are, hey
that's the brain I get right. We can now realize
that because the power of this idea of brain plasticity,
(21:46):
we can change our brain health, and in that sense
we can have really positive effects on our life and
our future and all kinds of things like that. So
it's a really exciting time to be a brain scientist
in this way. I hope it's a really exciting message
for a lot of people who are thinking about brains
and brain health.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Oh, it definitely is. And I just have to say
from a personal point of view that I wish this
was available for my husband in his early stages. And
I would recommend to anyone, you know, get going with
(22:22):
the brain exercise. If your lud one does have a
problem with you, yourself are at risk, and even if
you're not, we need to take care of our brains.
This is so exciting and it is a message of hope,
and I'm just so thankful for people like you, Henry,
who are doing this. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Well, it's a very gratifying time to be able to
do this kind of work. And we're at a pretty
special time in the history of what we learned about
the brain and a pretty special time around, you know,
being able to use modern technology to get this out
into the world. So it's it's exciting and I really
do think we're just a changing our ways that we
think about brains and brain health over time, which is
exciting for me.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
I know that I get sometimes I get worried if
I forget a word, forget how to spell a word
and not to google it, or I see an actor actress,
I think what's their name? What's their name? And so I,
you know, talked to my neurologists. I said, well, once
do you get concerned? He said, when you put your
keys in a freezer, I forget, Yeah, but your key
(23:26):
is for.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
That's exactly right. And that is a big distinction, right,
because you know, on the average, most of us are
going to have that kind of you know, very mild
level of issue. Right, Like you say, you know, forgetting
the name of an actress and it comes to you
ten minutes later, right or right, I think we've all
gotten to the grocery store and thought, oh, I was
supposed to get milk, and I forgot to get milk. Correct,
(23:48):
And like Inroal just said, hey, that's that's that's a
normal altho not required, but that's a that's a common
thing that happens. And you know, a person doesn't need
to worry about they if they have Alzheimer's or dementia.
You know, dementia is of course a much more significant disorder.
You know, like a neurologist says, you put the keys
in the freezer because your brain really starts to get
mixed up about these very basic issues of memory and
(24:11):
attention or objects and what they're for. But that being said,
you know, before you get Alzheimer's, the rest of your
cognition kind of gets worse and a step by step way,
And so I think that means that, hey, we don't
want to ignore brain health until the day we get Alzheimer's,
because it's it's kind of late. Do enough about it.
(24:34):
We want to think about maintaining our brain health, about
exercising our brain, about we want to think about building
brain reserve and brain resilience. You know, way before we
are entering the sage where a doctor might be wondering
if we have Alzheimer's. And in that sense, you know, hey,
if you forgot something at the grocery store, or you know,
you had that tip of the tongue of omen where
you saw that actress in the new show and you're like,
(24:56):
where have I seen here before? You know, maybe that's
a good moment to think about, Hey, maybe there's some
things I can do to work on my brain health.
And there are so many things right and you know,
we know that exercise improves brain health. We know that
good sleep improves brain health. We know that taking care
of you know, your diet and eating good, good nutritive
meals takes care of your brain health. And of course
we know from the study and many many others that
(25:17):
the right kind of brain training improves your brain health
as well. So when you notice those things, I agree
you shouldn't say, oh my gosh, I have dementia, but
you probably should think, hmm, maybe this is a reminder
that I need to be taking care of my brain
health and think about engaging in some more brain healthy,
brain healthy activities like picking up a brain training program.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Absolutely, somebody wants to start it. My phone's going to whacky.
Are you still there, Henry?
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Yes, I sure, am okay.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
The phones go wack. I just lost my trained thought
A guess I know it's gonna say. How does someone
go about taking the brain train? And the CEO of
brain HQ and so delightful to speak with you all
the information about doctor Henry Will be in the black.
(26:15):
The Genie White who's the station manager, writes and produces
the show. And I want to thank everyone for listening.
And when I think Loland called well, CEO of Pasture
Will Talk Radio makes it all possible. Thank you for listening.
Please subscribe to Chatting with Betsy just for free on
Spot by Spreaker, Amazon Music. And you know we need
(26:36):
to take care of our brains and brain health. It's
so important. I can't stress that enough. And as I
always say at the end of my show and the
world where you could be anything, please be kind and
shine your life.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
This is Betsy Worzel. You're a host of Chatting with
Betsy Not Passion Rule Talk Radio Network. Bye bye now
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