 So my name is Rabia like Lilliana just said I'm a medical doctor and specializing to become a neurologist Yeah, so I'm specializing to become a neurologist So in the next 15 minutes, I will tell you how your brain will change in response to the changing demands of the job Today and what you can do to influence that change This is a picture of me and my friends in 2015 this was the day of our final exam in medical school after months of hard work and studying this day came and We thought that finally it's over. We will not have to study so much anymore We will not have to learn so much anymore We could not have been more wrong because what happened they're not very long after this looks very much like this We have to learn new things new skills and new information every day And we have to learn we have to learn to keep us up and updated about the new findings in medical science We have to learn about new treatment methods We have to learn an enormous amount of patient information and we have to do this fast and efficient So as you can see in the picture, this is not easy This was not easy and I'm sure that all of you in some way can relate to this picture because most jobs today Require us to learn at a constant rate In fact jobs today look very much different than jobs in the past when we look back in the starting from the 18th century starting from the Industrial Revolution 12th 19th century and much of much of the 20th century jobs were mostly of manual nature most people were required to do the same thing over and over again on a daily basis so towards the end of the 20th century with the digital revolution and Changes in technology with the internet jobs started to become more of more of Met jobs require acquired us to use our minds more use our brains So we just today require us to be innovative. They require us to be created They require us to keep learning at a constant rate. So with that said what will jobs in the future look like? so best-selling author and historian you well know a harari in his book Homo Dios a history of the future Tells that jobs in the future will require human beings to be even more flexible to be even more versatile to be even to be able to learn even morning things To hear is a small part of his interview to hear it from the author himself. Okay, so Can we turn this turn it out? balance Okay, you can summarize it. Okay, so I will give you a summary of what he said. So he said and what You want to hurry says is that jobs? Say even 2050 will knows what jobs in 2050 will look like but thing with things such as artificial intelligence and automation It may be that jobs look completely different And what he says that our best chance as humans to stay in the game is to be able to learn and relearn things new skills and new information and to reinvent ourselves throughout our lives even at the age of 50 so So with that said biologically is it possible for the human brain to be to be Capturing all that information to be able to learn and change and reinvent themselves over and over This is yes, and it is explained by a very simple term called neuroplasticity so neuroplasticity is a term which refers to the ability of the human brain to change the human brain can Rearrange itself and form new neural connection throughout its entire life An excellent example of neuroplasticity is the way children learn children learn at an Tremendous pace they learn to walk in a year. They learn to talk within months. This is neuroplasticity at a very high level So neuroplasticity this doesn't mean that neuroplasticity is over in adults Neuroplasticity is still presenting adults at a much smaller scale than in children an example of neuroplasticity in adults is the way that patients recover after stroke When musicians learn one piece of music they when they practice it over and over over and over They get eventually better at it and when they learn the next piece of music They can learn it with much more ease and that is neuroplasticity at work So biologically speaking neuroplasticity I Will just try to explain it in a simple way. This is these are two neurons So neurons are basically nerve cells you can imagine them to contain a head and a tail So they they connect with each other they send information from one to the other from the head via the tail and you can imagine these small structures called dendrites to be sort of elongations of the heads and Information is travels from the head to the tail and to the dendrites of the new next neuron from the tail to the dendrites of the next Neuron, so what happens in neuroplasticity broadly speaking there are two different types of neuroplasticity structural and functional neuroplasticity when we talk about structural neuroplasticity it refers to the structural changes in neurons It refers to the ways dendrites grow more more connections between neurons are formed so more dendrites are created and the and the chemical structures which facilitate the travel of information from one nerve to the next will be produced at a greater rate will be easily more easily produced when we talk about Functional neuroplasticity it refers to the way that Neurons it becomes much more easier for our nerves to connect to each other by forming by strengthening of synaptic connections, which is the connection between two neurons, so that's basically the way it works biologically, so Is there anything we can do that will that will help us to improve our neuroplasticity? There have been many studies which show that there are connections between lifestyle habits and the way that neurons Change over time how the way our brains change over time in the following I will give you three quick tips on how you can actually improve your neuroplasticity Study the results of one study which basically show that when we exercise Neuroplasticity becomes much more strengthened and that happens via starting chemical and structural changes in the brain and the results of this study show that two groups who Did exercise this is a study which was done on 120 people and the group who did regular aerobics exercise? Had a growth in a part of their brain, which is relating to memory a part of the brain called the hippocampus which relates to memory formation and and overall brain function so this shows that that part of the brain actually Grows over time when we exercise and this is the region of the brain which also shrinks in size as people age and it's also related to Declined in memory such as dementia the The the next point I want to tell is an excellent way to to To support your neuroplasticity is to continuously learn new skills. So as we learn new skills Our brains actually change in structure This is a study which was done in London in 2000 Researchers studied a group of London taxi cab drivers So in London to become a licensed taxi cab driver you have to go through a period of rigorous training and During this training you have to study the map of the really complex map of London by heart. You have to memorize it so after After going through this rigorous period of memorizing and learning the map these group of taxi drivers and their brains were compared to the brains of Regular people people who did not go through that Period of rigorous training. So what they found is that tractor in the brain, which is involved in spatial memory and Navigation through space this structure was much much bigger and much better developed in the taxi cab drivers who learned the map by heart so So this could also was this that some the taxi drivers who could learn it by heart. They already had a Bigger vision in that brain. So to to eliminate that that possibility There were follow-up examinations So it was found the number of time the number of months they spent studying the map Correlated to the volume of that area of the brain. So this shows that learning actually does change our brain structurally The the next point I want to talk about is something which is very obvious that Healthy eating habits are very much Related to your brain function, but this is very difficult in human studies to show because every individual has different lifestyle Everyone of us has different eating habits. Some of us work out more. Some of us work out less. So Human studies are very much prone to errors. So for the lack of Valid data on human studies, I want to show you one study which shows the relationship between Diet and neuroplasticity in mice, which is we can assume it is representative of pretty much what happens also in humans. So in this study A pairs of mice were put in a swimming pool called the Morris water Maze or whatever, right? So this is a maze and and the amount of the amount of minutes of the mice take to figure out a hidden platform by figuring out the maze Is Relating to the how quickly they are learning. So this is a study which goes over five days so every day we train the mice to find out this maze and There are there are four groups of mice one of the mice is fed regular diet like normal diet Which is the blue line line shows represents the group of mice that were fed a particular kind of omega-3 fatty acid called DHA and The orange line shows are the exercise regular diet and only exercise and the blue line shows the group of mice who were Doing regular exercise and taking the omega-3 Based a fatty acid supplement So this graph clearly shows that the time to find the platform was much much less for the group of mice Who were taking the omega-3 diet and also? exercising this shows that and they they learned much quickly and they took much less time to figure out the Maze So with that said I'm pretty much at the end of the talk and To sum it up. I think neuroplasticity is a wonderful way to explain how our brains can change in response to the changing demands of jobs today and of the jobs that are to come in the future and There are many ways that we can facilitate neuroplasticity in our own brains And I think that eating healthy exercising and keeping on learning new skills are wonderful ways to do that And if you have questions, I will be very happy to answer them. You can also ask questions I have a since I'm an aspiring neurologist I'm always happy to answer questions and I have a Facebook page Which is called ask a neurologist, which is basically there to answer your Neurology-related questions or anything brain-related. I will be very happy if any of you come to us and ask Technical difficulties are our fault. Not Ramya's fault. I think she did a wonderful job If you have any questions, please, this is the time to ask No questions, I guess. Oh, no, we have one Okay, so keeping in mind the future of labor markets How do we introduce these three factors into early childhood development so that we are helping them focus instead more on how do we develop for More active learning or open learning because you said the work environment is required to do that more often So how do we prepare people to go into this work environment given these three factors? You mean how we prepare our children, right? Yes, so how do you create the environment in school that prepares them for a new working environment based on this? Right, that's a really really good question. One that becomes very relevant also for our for the future generations I think Neuroplasticity is in children anyway. It's very much at work So it's needless to say that exercising in children good diet and learning teaching them new skills Is our wonderful ways to support their neuroplasticity? I think our education system needs to Support the idea that we will need to continue learning and to To prime our children to the idea that it's not learning one particular skill That's important rather being being a versatile and being able to always keep changing and keeping on learning. That's more important And the other question we still have time There's a person there There is In science or I don't know maybe it's popular They dissect the famous scientists. Let's say they are brain. They see some Some changes, say for example, they say they have good analytical skills. It was seen in their brain Is it a result of their exposure through time or is it like given from nature or something? That's also a really good question. I think it's both because some Like genetics always plays a role Partial role in how brains develop and how personalities how people develop It's also exposure and that's the very idea of neuroplasticity because the more you expose yourself to a particular problem to a particular skill Those are regions of the brain will develop, right? That's the idea And we have time for one final question. Go ahead The music plays a role in neuroplasticity Because for example, I have heard that babies it's good to Classical music Yeah, right. There have been many studies done on classical music and how classical music can Actually support learning and cognition I can't name any right now But there have been a lot of evidence that music supports learning and I can imagine also neuroplasticity Unfortunately, we don't have any more time for questions But at the end of this event you can always come to our speakers and ask them whatever you want. Okay? So, thank you, Rabia