“Love Your Brain: The 7 Habits Of Brain Health To Recharge & Surge”

Chico ophthalmologist David Woods faced many losses. His Paradise ophthalmology practice was destroyed in the Camp Fire. Rebuilt, the new office “sat nearly empty for months” due to Covid-19. Then, in 2021, “my world shifted in a way I had never really had preparation. My beloved and wonderful mother, Sharron, passed away. I felt as if the ground beneath me crumbled.” 

Though the practice began to thrive, and his family offered support, Woods struggled through “the fog of grief.” He started to research the brain and its response to loss. “I began to see, especially after the age of 40, how our lifestyle choices … have a monumental impact on the health and vitality of our brain cells.”

Teaming with Chico State grad Rory Ferguson, who will be pursuing her PhD in cognitive neuroscience at Lehigh University, Woods provides an encouraging guide for how to “Love Your Brain: The 7 Habits Of Brain Health To Recharge & Surge” ($12.15 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle).

The book begins with charts for a 15-week “transformation plan” and a weekly “brain health check-in” on the seven habits: good diet; optimal sleep; cardio and exercise; “connecting and caring”; “the power of supplements for brain nutrition”; “meditation, faith, spirituality”; and “the power of learning” (“You want a brain that’s always growing? Then learn something every day. Creation and imagination are the seeds of success, and they begin with a curious mind.”)

Woods markets supplements under the names Nutrua and the trademark Brain Health 360, but he is careful to note that it’s important not to “overlook interactions between supplements and medications, which can lead to unintended side effects.” An appendix provides research on each ingredient; there’s also a section on how seasonal allergies affect brain health.

We need to be honest with ourselves, he writes, and develop healthy rituals that move the brain away from constant “survival mode” (doomscrolling, anyone?). One key is journaling. “Whatever challenge you face in your life of stress, you will unlock ideas and personal change when you write, clarify, and put words on the issues in your mind. You will zoom!” 

"Your Faithful Brain: Designed For So Much More!"

"Joy," writes Christian counselor Leonard Matheson, "is the designated state of a faithful brain, fully integrated with God, within itself and with others. Joy erupts as we're fully engaged in the moment."

After retiring from Washington University in St. Louis, and teaching graduate students in counseling at Covenant Theological Seminary, Matheson and his wife Mary moved to Chico where he is now in private practice, the founding director of Chico-based EPIC Neurorehabilitation & Psychology Services.

Drawing on his work in occupational therapy and neurology, Matheson views Christian spirituality through the lens of brain science. Published in 2014, "Your Faithful Brain: Designed For So Much More!" ($19.95 in paperback from WestBowPress; also for Amazon Kindle), by Leonard Matheson, PhD, is a popular (and very personal) exploration of his findings.

Chapters explore characteristics of the faithful brain (grace-blessed, loving, truth-guided) and include summaries and discussion questions. 

Though Matheson had pushed faith away, he writes that "God was placing in my life people who eventually would draw me back to Jesus, including Danny Munday" whom he met in "Rancho Los Amigos Hospital on the first day of my career, February 3, 1970." 

Shrunken with spinal muscular atrophy (he would die at 15), Danny was totally dependent on others to remove the mucous from his lungs before he choked to death. Yet Danny was joyful; his goal in life was to kiss Jane Fonda (and it actually happened). Matheson learned of "the potential for joy up close to death."

Though people make decisions, not brains, a key insight into more faithful decision-making is the neuroplasticity of the brain; it can change and adapt. "As we practice following Jesus," Matheson writes, "our values begin as ideas we can consider and then test. ... As this process repeats, neuroplasticity gradually creates neural patterns of values that permeate the brain," developing "our character to gradually reflect the character of Jesus."

Such alignment is never perfect; we can't fathom all the possible neural combinations, Matheson says, since there are a "Godzillion" of them. But he is convinced that our brains can be rehabilitated and that we can live a life of joy, even up close to death.

Ray Kurzweil's mind coming to Chico State University

Scientist, inventor, author, futurist, and now Director of Engineering at Google, Ray Kurzweil is scheduled to appear at Chico State University's Laxson Auditorium this Friday as part of the President's Lecture Series. His multimedia presentation, followed by a book signing, begins at 7:30 p.m. on the topic "The Acceleration of Technology in the 21st Century: The Impact on Business, the Economy, and Society and How to Retain Our Humanity Through It.”

Premium tickets are $32, adult $27, Senior $25, Student/Child $18; contact the University Box Office at (530) 898-6333 or visit chicoperformances.com for more information.

Kurzweil's newest book is "How To Create A Mind: The Secret Of Human Thought Revealed" ($27.95 in hardcover from Viking; also available in Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook e-book formats). A pioneering inventor of text-to-speech and speech-to-text technologies, Kurzweil argues that the brain, specifically the neocortex (which is "responsible for perception, memory, and critical thinking") functions by pattern recognition.

Not only perception but thought itself are a hierarchy of simple patterns repeated again and again, just as a simple equation can produce infinitely varying fractals. Complex patterns can be reverse-engineered and duplicated in human-made computers. You don't need to copy the interactions of billions of neurons; all you need do is "identify readily understandable (and re-creatable) patterns in those cells and connections."

At the same time, information technologies are predictably evolving exponentially, so that by 2029 machines will be developed that "appear to be conscious. ... They will exhibit the full range of subtle, familiar emotional cues; they will make us laugh and cry; and they will get mad at us if we say they we don't believe that they are conscious." What Kurzweil calls his "leap of faith" is that such machines "will indeed constitute conscious persons."

That's because "consciousness is an emergent property of the overall pattern of an entity, not the substrate it runs on." We will never able to determine scientifically whether a nonbiological being knows what it's like to experience the color red; this is a philosophical question with "profound meaning to humans," what Kurzweil calls "spiritual." Thus, technological "evolution can then be viewed as a spiritual process in that it creates spiritual beings, that is, entities that are conscious." See the pattern?