Erin Venza, Head of Clinical Operations, Center for BrainHealth
How does a healthy brain support emotional, physical and social well-being? Erin Venza, Head of Clinical Operations for Center for BrainHealth, expands brain health from disease to improved brain performance through proactive care in healthy individuals. She shares daily practices that support brain health, explores monitoring brain fitness, and unlocks a vision of redesigning education and the workplace to support overall health and wellness.
Erin Venza is Head of Clinical Operations at the Center for BrainHealth (part of the University of Texas at Dallas). Many years ago, she received her Master’s in Speech Language Pathology.
Her work at the Center for BrainHealth was initially centered around optimizing function and recovery in light of a brain disease or disorder, but her scope has expanded considerably over the years.
Much of her current efforts are focused on The BrainHealth Project, a longitudinal study that aims to define and measure brain health and performance in healthy individuals.
Show Notes
Erin Venza shares her professional path to brain health. [03:18]
What’s the benefit of implementing daily, proactive brain health practices? [05:26]
What does the future of brain health look like? [07:13]
What is a healthy brain? [09:22]
How can you get out of a rut? [11:03]
How will the workplace and education be transformed? [11:55]
How can we replenish our brain power throughout the day? [13:46]
How will schools change to support and optimize brain health? [16:30]
What are daily practices we can do to promote a healthy brain? [18:03]
Why use an incremental strategy to change your brain? [22:53]
Without brain health, we don't have health. [24:57]
How can we boost dopamine? [28:31]
Transcript
Bisi Williams 0:00
Hi. I'm Bisi Williams, you're listening to Health2049.
Erin Venza 0:08
Within 10 years, the brain health project aims to have a validated tracker of brain performance. So one that's really designed to make us more proactive earlier like a Fitbit for your brain. We're not solely relying on expensive brain imaging either, but this idea that really soon, we will have access to tools at our fingertips that can at least help us start to see, visualize, quantify, and hence be more proactive in all of these areas of brain health.
Bisi Williams 1:09
Here's some facts about the brain. You have a high water content of about 80% and a fat content of about 60%. The average brain weighs around three pounds or 2% of body mass. And yet it alone consumes 25% of all energy that our body needs to run all day.
Hi, I'm Bisi Williams, welcome to Health2049. In this episode, we'll be talking with Erin Venza, a brain health expert. We'll explore the science of neuroplasticity and neuropharmacology and how we can learn to harness our brain power to transform our health and performance. Erin Venza has a master's in Speech Language Pathology, and she's the head of clinical operations at the Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her work at the Center for BrainHealth revolves around optimizing function and recovery in light of a brain disease or disorder. Recently, her efforts have expanded to focus on The BrainHealth Project, a longitudinal study that aims to define and measure brain health and performance in healthy individuals. I am pleased to welcome Erin Venza to Health2049.
Erin Venza 3:06
Thank you, Bisi.
Bisi Williams 3:09
I'm delighted to have you on the show. Tell us a bit about your professional background and the Center for BrainHealth help our listeners connect the dots.
Erin Venza 3:18
I'd be happy to. I early on was a lover actually of language, other languages and learning about how language works in the brain, and also helping other people learn. After some years of different jobs, I came to discover the field of speech pathology which really marries the science of language of the brain, within how you can help people improve their own performance. I never knew of the field. It was very mind blowing for me at the time. And when I started doing my master's, as most people maybe listening are likely to associate that field of speech pathology with helping children with language or helping individuals who have experienced a stroke or a traumatic brain injury regain function. These were definitely aspects I got experience with to see how with tools and strategies, the brain can not only rebound, get back on track and make incredible recovery.
It was during my master's I actually found out that across the street and also part of UTD was the Center for BrainHealth. Their focus not only incorporated this idea of maximizing and regaining function in the face of disease or disorder, but extending that into health. Extending this concept of how we could improve performance in our day to day and what that looks like in the brain. And that has been the mission and the focus of the Center for Brain Health under Dr. Sandra Chapman. And that's where I continue working today.
Bisi Williams 4:58
So I find it fascinating how you take your speech language pathology and turn it into helping people be better and optimize their health and their performance. Can you tell me about the difference between how you at the Center for BrainHealth approach brain studies and have the standard practice of looking at how brain health is conducted?
Erin Venza 5:26
Well, I think it's fair to say our focus initially started with how to improve function and recovery in the midst of disease or disorder. And so whether these were individuals who had sustained, really traumatic brain injury, or multiple concussions, stroke, even potentially mild cognitive impairment and really looking at targeted use of strategies that can help support brain function. We often think, I'm having trouble with memory, I really need to test my memory more. That approach can cause more stress and anxiety around it.
Whereas if we can find ways to actually think about ways to support function, that can often be the first step needed to help do just that, and really see those benefits. And so after years of multiple studies, and then which we grew to incorporate brain imaging, EEG, within those studies, as well, and seeing these consistent brain benefits across these populations. So seeing that consistently, if we can utilize healthier thinking strategies, on a day to day basis, that not only actually helps us think more clearly and make better decisions, but what is actually having a difference in the brain as well. We then extended that same lens. If there's that much to be gained there, and what could be gained in health and what could be gained if we implemented those strategies earlier in life?
Bisi Williams 7:05
I love it. So with that, please tell me what is your vision for brain health in 2049.
Erin Venza 7:13
By 2049, the brain health revolution will have happened. So people everywhere will know that they can take charge of their brain's own fitness, by adopting healthy brain habits in their daily lives. So in other words, when you say brain health, people will understand that we're not just talking about the absence of disease, or when something's going wrong, but that we're actually applying it to your ability to thrive in your personal circumstance right now.
There will be clearer, more accessible metrics around this idea of brain health, making it much more actionable to be proactive. And from the wealth of data that we'll have from the brain health project that launched back in 2020, we'll have rich data around the first longitudinal study ever really looking at holistic brain health in this way. So we'll have insights into not only cross domain risk factors, but really what's possible when provided the education and tools around brain health earlier.
Needless to say, I think education and the workplace will be transformed as well so we can better equip students to be more agile thinkers for the evolving workplace of the future. We'll rethink how our office spaces are designed, how teams collaborate, and especially how leaders are developed. And most importantly, I think ouralth care systems will be transformed. Precision brain health will be a thing, just like when you go and you get an annual checkup, you can get your annual Brain Health Index that not only gives you a holistic snapshot of your current brain fitness level, but a personal fitness plan to go forward with. And this is something insurance will cover as preventative, proactive brain health. Just like a dentist's visit is covered..
Bisi Williams 9:04
I love the idea of your brain having a dentist visit. So explain to me and our listeners, how that would be. What is the notion of brain health? How do we define it? And how can our listeners understand what it means to have a healthy brain?
Erin Venza 9:22
I think when we ask ourselves what does it mean to have a healthy brain or even this idea of brain health can feel so ambiguous and big. When really it comes down to looking at these elements you're already aware of. I mean, yes, it is part of your physical fitness. It is part of your lifestyle, and it is part of your sleep, but it's so much more.
It incorporates how you're engaging in meaningful connections. How you're approaching your day to day. Is your day busy, busy, back to back? Do you have increments of really purposeful creative engagement? Are you distracted multiple times from different devices, truly building a distracted brain and a more stressful brain? Or are you being proactive to have these moments of calm to allow that time for daydream? These are all very feasible and that is our focus. My focus, particularly as a clinician is, what can you actually be doing today to promote this? And so it really is looking at all these realms that we've thought so much of siloed realms of health, like my emotional well being, my physical health, my social health, it all comes down to brain health.
Bisi Williams 10:42
They're all kind of one in the same, so it's like how you're feeling. How you're thinking. How your body is moving. In any particular situation, or at any given time, actually, really, how you function goes back to the state of your brain health, right?
Erin Venza 11:03
Yes. And also I think when we do that self assessment, which I love. It's like, where am I in this area right now? Where am I performing in this area? And when you do notice, either you're at some place great, or maybe someplace a little bit, kind of like you're in a rut for some reason. The brain is the key to the pathway forward. Whatever that's going to be, you need to be able to have that focus deep thinking, that possibility seeking to determine what that next plan of action is.
Bisi Williams 11:35
I love that, so tell me when you said that education is going to be transformed, and the workplace and how we build teams. Tell me from your perspective, what your brain health has to do with how you learn, how you work, and how you lead, and how you just be as a person.
Erin Venza 11:55
Yeah, so in terms of learning, one big key shift is moving away from this idea of rote memorization, which of course, there is a place for that. But really incorporating the importance of this bigger picture thinking and integrating facts into bigger ideas. Integrating information into personal application, and really empowering students to take that step in deeper thinking and deeper processing. Not only does it support more robust memory, but really, it's strengthening those frontal networks that are so key going forward in life for adaptive thinking, resilience, creative decision-making.
In terms of the workplace, we're doing a lot of work right now, not only in how the space is designed, so what is a brain healthy work space physically and really valuing the importance of having the space for quiet, uninterrupted, thinking, and also better quantifying the value of those collaborative spaces as well.
Bisi Williams 13:13
Just pushing a little further on that, because I find this so fascinating. If, for example, we think more, more, more information, work harder, work longer and we recognize that the brain is a hungry beast, but it also needs to be replenished, and it also needs to be refreshed. Can you talk about the cycle of our brain as we understand it now and why it is so important to actually think about our brain as an amazing tool?
Erin Venza 13:46
Oh, yeah, I mean, we definitely have misconceptions about how we can abuse our brain. It would never occur to us to walk into a physical gym, and just hit the weights hard, never take a break, and keep going for eight hours straight. Now we know we have to stop, we have to recover, we take breaks, we go do different things. Whereas in contrast, we do think that we can rely on the brain all day long to make complex decisions to go from one thing to another, and that it should just work at the same capacity from beginning of the day to end. And that's not true. We do have limited cognitive resources. We all do.
It's so important to recognize those and recognize where we need to allocate those resources for the biggest impact in the day to day and also what are ways to help incrementally recharge, whether it is getting away from screen time, walking outside, having short periods of time throughout the day, where we are not just taking in information. I don't care if you're retired or working, we are more and more, listening to information, having the TV on, these are all sources of information that are coming in and the brain is having to process that.
So whenever we can build in these times where you're minimizing that, I know we're not talking about removing it completely, but minimizing that, it really lets the default mode network, the daydreaming network of the brain have a chance to come online have a chance to connect those underlying dots that we weren't connecting on our own, when we were intentionally working on something. The brain does incredible things. We can walk away for a little while, or we sleep on something and we wake up and we have these new insights. And so recognizing the power of those breaks, and that downtime for the brain as well.
Bisi Williams 15:51
This is an interesting shift, a big paradigm shift, because looking back to 2020, 2021, the kids that were called digital natives at that time, when you look 30 years hence, describe to me what kindergartens are going to look like if we actually looked at optimized brain health? And what will high school look like during the course of the day, if we're really going to take care of our brains and our performance?
Erin Venza 16:30
So I guess, more big picture elements that would need to be incorporated, whether it's in the kindergarten classroom or the high school classroom. Not only are there incremental periods of breaks, we've also seen, of course, that breaks can help support memory and recall, but really, deeper periods of focus. So not just this rote learning, but periods of time in which individuals are encouraged to engage in that deeper thinking, like I talked about, where they're really having to integrate information, think about the bigger picture.
Now in terms of kindergarten this would look differently. I see this more as exploration. This is exploration, this is connecting the dots, this is learning about your surroundings, about each other, about compassion for each other. All of this, again, comes down to flexibility of thinking. If I had to say I would say more incremental breaks throughout the day, more dedicated space to encourage deeper thinking and application of information, as well as recognizing the importance of that curiosity, that inspiration, and that creativity that really helps not only support, but drive learning in our brain.
Bisi Williams 17:53
I love that I want to go to kindergarten again. Why are you so confident that your vision can be achieved in 30 years?
Erin Venza 18:03
Thanks to the advances in brain imaging and other technologies, we can now visualize what for so long was not only invisible, but in many ways considered a black box, which is the brain. We first had brain imaging studies for brain injury disorder, of course. There's many studies out there showing what happens over healthy aging and age-related changes in the brain. So these have had many years to be well established. But brain health doesn't simply equate to the absence of disease or injury.
What can we do to unlock our best performance right now? This is the field of experience-driven neuroplasticity. So neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to change. It truly means that it is plastic, it's malleable and not only right in the moment, because that is one thing. You can do something new, you can eat something delicious, you can get a boost from getting a really great hug from someone or eating something delicious. And it is truly in the moment. And it's fleeting. But we can also create lasting brain change, too. So not only change, but when we look at brain blood flow, when we look at structural change in the brain as well, connectivity.
As an example, one of the studies that we did with healthy aging adults, they're 50 to 70 year olds or 55 to 75. Over 12 weeks, we were looking at the impact of incorporating different brain strategies into your day to day. So as feasible as, you sit down and you read the newspaper in the morning for 30 minutes, maybe you plow through it and you continue on with your day, pausing and at the end of one pertinent article, writing down what's the takeaway? Okay I took in all this information, what does it mean in the long term? What's one thing I'm going to take away from this that applies to me today?
Or even like I mentioned the idea of building in incremental brain breaks throughout the day. Downtime for the brain to recharge. Being more flexible in our thinking, considering different perspectives on that article, maybe reading something an opinion you don't agree with, and really recognizing, I don't have to agree with it. But I do have the cognitive capacity to think at a bigger picture level about this.
These are just a few examples of these very feasible strategies that when they are utilized over a long term, we did imaging after six weeks, and after 12 weeks, so we're looking at a three month span here. Not only do we see an increase in brain blood flow, which is a marker of neural health, but we actually see structural changes in the brain, increased white matter integrity between the frontal lobe and the hippocampus. So again, supporting this idea, if we take a different approach to how we process information, it's not a memory strategy, but of course it's going to support deeper, better memory, and within 10 years, the Brain Health Project aims to have a validated tracker of brain performance. So one that's really designed to make us more proactive earlier, like a Fitbit for your brain.
I mean, we're not solely relying on expensive brain imaging either, but this idea that really soon, we will have access to tools at our fingertips that can at least help us start to more visualize, quantify, and hence, be more proactive in all of these areas of brain health. There's so much work going on in that space of wearables and technology, but it's in lifestyle, emotional well-being and what's going to happen in the next 30 years is that we're going to transition from those siloed views of how to be proactive into this umbrella of brain health.
Bisi Williams 22:23
Let me just get this straight, so what you're saying is, let's say I read the paper every day, but let's say I pick a source that's not my favorite, that's probably telling stories that aren't my favorite. But if I actually spend time listening to other points of view, or reading other points of view, and contemplating it, that I can actually grow my brain, is that what you're saying?
Erin Venza 22:53
I'm saying that that is one incremental strategy to help support that. That's exactly right, we very much can get stuck in one lane of thinking, and we have research to show what happens to the brain as we age, if we just keep doing what we're doing. We know what that picture looks like. The picture that has yet to be defined is that upward trajectory of what happens when we do on a long term basis incorporate different thinking strategies on a daily basis. And it does come down to those very feasible incremental ways of how we are processing an article, reacting to a difficult co-worker, or family member or approaching a usual date night that maybe has become the same old, same old. It does come down to very feasible techniques.
In the study, it tracked people over three months, so again, it's this idea of the importance of tracking people over a longer period of time. Looking at this whole idea of if we add this missing puzzle piece, this idea of what if we think about how we use our brain in that bigger picture of yes, lifestyle, healthy sleep, healthy emotional well-being, we bring these all together and then to see how that plays out over the long term. That's the focus of the Brain Health Project.
Bisi Williams 24:27
I think what you're talking about is incredibly fascinating. You just touched on a notion of how, when you have a healthy brain, when you can train your brain for performance and health, you can make the world a better place. So tell me more about that. Paint a bigger picture of what that would look like if everyone could grow and maintain and sustain a healthy brain?
Erin Venza 24:57
We frequently say without brain health, we don't have health. Think about right now how the pandemic has just magnified a number of health problems that were present beforehand, from stress, depression, social isolation. I recently saw, and I'm sorry I won't be able to reference this, but it was a graph showing symptoms of stress, anxiety and stress, depression, but looking at it six months pre pandemic, six months into pandemic, and then 12 months into pandemic. And you see this stepwise ladder to where 1, 2, 3, and that's only a year into the pandemic were those initial symptoms, some of them are threefold what they were initially. When I saw that, I can only imagine and this is me extrapolating, but that same visual of amplification of problems could be applied to many other domains, and problems that we're facing, whether it is feeling loneliness, stress, and mental health. Mental health, but brain health as well in this foggy thinking.
So with that, I think it's the same problems at a new level, more people are paying attention to those, especially in the space of brain health, and what's so impactful here is because these are tools to help mitigate that now. These are feasible tools to help open a doorway forward. If we each realize that every day is an opportunity to design your own brain, and your own life, and to shift that focus to this idea of proactive incremental change, it feels very granular. I know we want a big solution to a big problem, but our focus and our research is really about the incremental impact over time.
To your point, these are the discoveries we can better quantify and put a number on by 2049 because the Brain Health Project will have completed and we will have all that data. We are collecting that ongoing. But I think in the meantime, just consider those feasible ways we could make those changes each day, whether it is, where can you minimize that scattered thinking, and build in quiet time? Where can you recognize you're on autopilot in a meaningful relationship in your life and bring some more purposeful connection into it? And where could you get out of that busy, busy and bring in something curious, something purposeful, something fulfilling, in small ways today and continue them?
Bisi Williams 27:54
Well, what you're saying is that, I mean, we have the power within us today, we have the tools within us today, we have a heavy research, but not overly expensive, not overly difficult. So, I'm at work, and I have a busy day, and I'm back to back zoom calls, etc. What can I do within an hour of time to mitigate the fuzzy thinking to get myself centered and connected without being weird while I'm at work? What could I do?
Erin Venza 28:31
Oh, yeah, I would say first thing you get in, take one of those five minute brain breaks, have quiet time. Rather than walking through the door jumping into email, take a moment before you turn on the computer. Don't look at your phone, and give your brain a few minutes to even have that transition and quiet time before you do a deep dive.
Then for up to 45 minutes, you're going to carve out undistracted time to focus and work on something that really requires deeper thinking. Something that you will accomplish within 45 minutes that requires deeper thinking. Not only in that 45 minutes will you be engaging and exercising those frontal networks, but when you finish that task, a sense of accomplishment comes with those neurotransmitters, as well as dopamine. It also, more importantly, is going to give you increased motivation to move on in a more motivated way to the next task. And I would say even at the end of that, if you can give yourself another brain break before you dive into that next 45 minute chunk of deep focused thinking time.
Bisi Williams 29:40
I think that's a gift. Thank you so much, Erin, thank you for your wisdom and your very positive, healthy brain future.
Erin Venza 29:49
Thank you.
Bisi Williams 29:51
And that was Erin Venza's vision for Health2049. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe, rate, review and tell one friend about us. Thank you for listening. I'm your host Bisi Williams. Take care and be well.
