Facundo Manes, neurologist and neuroscientist
46 years. From Buenos Aires, where I created two institutes, international reference in neuroscience. Rector of Favaloro University and professor in universities in the USA. UU. We Argentines are obsessed with the past and should be with the future. I believe in God and I pray
Impeccable brain
In the country of psychoanalysis, he fills auditoriums talking about the brain (at his last conference 9, 000 people attended, 6, 000 were left out). He created and directs the Institute of Cognitive Neurology (Ineco) and the Institute of Neurosciences of the Favaloro Foundation, both in Buenos Aires and leaders in original scientific publications in cognitive neuroscience. I triumphed on Argentine TV with The Brain Enigmas. It is so reasonable, charming and perfect that I cannot help wondering what its dark side will be. He has just published an informative book, Using the Brain (Paid s). Argentine society wants to know, he says humbly to justify his successes.
You have seen the brain of Cristina Fern ndez.
I had the honor of being selected to lead the team that made the diagnosis and the operation.
A dark character?
With me she was an easy patient. When he entered our institute I was in a small town in the Pampas.
And what was he doing there?
Give a lecture: for me it is very important that society debate the findings of the brain, since we do everything with it; but in this case I had to go out and leave them all planted.
Are you from a good family?
I am the son of a surgeon from a rural town. Nothing was never missing or left over, but I always felt nostalgia for the world. However, the change to Buenos Aires, when I went to study the medical degree, was harder than the change to Boston.
But he triumphed in the United States.
I arrived as a research neurologist knowing very little English, but after two years, thanks to a discovery, I was given the prize to the young researcher of the American Neuropsychiatry Association, and that led me to Cambridge.
So what has been the hard part?
Return to Argentina I wanted to investigate the human mind; Four walls were enough for me with bright people inside, but society and the medical environment looked at me suspiciously. Although I was so excited that I did not experience it as a difficulty, and you already know that the brain creates reality.
Is that statement scientific?
Of course. The way we think is the way we feel. If I think you are disappointed with me, I will feel bad; if I think she is pleasantly surprised, I will feel good; but in reality I don't know what you think, my brain is going to make it.
I get it.
Knowing this has changed me. Toxic thoughts can be eliminated, and that seems very interesting to me.
Have you managed to correct attitudes?
Part of the day I destined to take care of my brain: rest, I do meditation (not for a matter of beliefs, but mental health) and I exercise daily, and not to have a good body, but a good mind.
Does physical exercise feed the brain?
The exercise generates thousands of new neural connections and reinforces creative thinking. The hippocampus is key to memory, and after 65 years wears one percent per year, but we can slow it down with exercise, it is proven.
How else does your brain take care?
When I am in a low psychological form, contact with people because I know that social contact releases endorphins. I also try to sleep well because I know that sleep helps modulate the immune system, the hormonal system and strengthens memory. Although memory is not so important.
...
Oblivion is an essential part of memory. We are emotional beings, emotion guides behavior: we remember what excites us. And I'm very interested in the study of creativity.
What do we know?
There is an incubation stage in which one thinks obsessively about a subject. In fact, creativity is associated more with obsessive thoughts than with intelligence. Then the eureka appears when we are relaxed, when we don't think about it, but always after having thought obsessively.
It implies, then, a certain imbalance.
Being a little crazy, risking and not fearing error favors creativity, but society and education stigmatize the error. Knowing it allows me to lead creative groups.
Give me more tips to have a healthy brain.
Everything that is good for the heart is good for the brain: take care of blood pressure, eye with sugar, avoid being overweight, eat fruit, vegetables and fish rich in omega 3. And start as soon as possible, because Alzheimer's symptoms are manifest decades after brain changes.
I see that you have to start getting bored.
Optimism is an important brain protection factor, and also intellectual challenges: do not do more of the same. When we retire from what we like, what we are passionate about, brain deterioration increases. Until the last day of our life the brain is plastic and is reorganized.
And where does God place in the middle of this brain wiring?
The fundamental question is whether the brain creates God or if it has antennas to capture God. Millions of pounds are being invested in the Oxford Center for Religion and Neuroscience to answer this question.
What research impacts you?
The possibility of detecting thoughts by placing electrodes in the human brain is no longer science fiction. They connected the brain of several pilots to a computer and these, thinking what steps they had to follow, made a plane land in a simulator.
Source: http://www.lavanguardia.com/
Interview with Facundo Manes: Optimism is a brain protection factor
