The “Holy Grail”: How to drive behavior change by harnessing neuroplasticity and emotions

—

CWRU nurs­ing school award­ed $2.35 mil­lion to study the link between the brain and health behav­ior change (press release):

“A five-year, $2.35 mil­lion grant from the Nation­al Insti­tute of Nurs­ing Research will allow researchers from the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nurs­ing, Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences and the School of Med­i­cine at Case West­ern Reserve Uni­ver­si­ty to study how brain activ­i­ty moti­vates the chron­i­cal­ly ill to man­age their ill­ness­es…

“Find­ing a way to change brain activ­i­ty and its influ­ence on healthy behav­ior would be like find­ing the Holy Grail”…The stud­ies will use brain imag­ing to dis­cov­er the brain-behav­ior con­nec­tions that influ­ence a person’s deci­sions to set goals, mon­i­tor activ­i­ties, reflect on their behav­ior and take con­trol of their illness…

The grant fund­ing comes at a time when major break­throughs in the brain’s plas­tic­i­ty and imag­ing allow researchers to under­stand what areas of the brain are acti­vat­ed in emo­tions and deci­sion-mak­ing, Moore said. Researchers also hope to bet­ter under­stand how spe­cif­ic health self-man­age­ment activ­i­ties, like infor­ma­tion, med­i­ta­tion, mind­ful­ness and yoga, “rewire” the brain and moti­vate peo­ple to be healthier.”

Learn more:

• Six tips to build resilience and pre­vent brain-dam­ag­ing stress
• How learn­ing changes your brain