Professor Selena Bartlett On Unlocking The Brain's Potential Using Incidental Kindness And Societal Collaboration

Professor Selena Bartlett is a brain health and fitness leader. As a leader of neuroscience and neuroplasticity, and after studying the brain for more than 30 years, it is clear “to understand the brain as a muscle that needs daily training changes how you view people’s behaviour”.

Professor Bartlett is the host of the Thriving minds podcast, has written over 100 scientific research articles, recently launched three books to raise awareness about the brain health and is passionate about making neuroscience & neuroplasticity actionable. Professor Bartlett gives lectures to organisations, governments, Universities and schools to raise awareness of the importance of brain health fitness to be resilient, happy, healthy and strong.

Selena discusses How people can support their own brain health through embracing new experiences, why technology is changing the neuroscience landscape and what will become possible if people actively support each other.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Sarah Ripper] - To start off, could you please share a little bit about your background and what led you to where you are now?

[Professor Selena Bartlett] - My journey started in 1989, but before I was a mathematician and pharmacist. My sister got a mental illness and was locked up in a ward in the North part of Brisbane. During that time, I didn't like how she was treated. It seemed we didn't know how the brain works after seeing what was happening to her in that situation. I stopped being a pharmacist, retrained and did my PhD in neuropharmacology. My first post doctorate was at the Australian National University in the neuroscience department, and then I moved to America for almost 20 years to run a research lab and learn better techniques for studying the brain. Since returning to Australia in 2010-11, I’ve completely changed my understanding and incorporated everything I'd learned up until that point. I was being a medically trained pharmacist and working with drug companies to realise a lot of what we understood up until then needed upgrading and updating to include neuroplasticity and the latest technology, meaning neuroimaging and genomics. We understand a lot more about the brain that's not in textbooks and absent from most medical and scientific training manuals. I would say this, we do understand a lot more about the brain and why people do what they do, but still the focus remains on what people's behaviour is and I think that's got to change. I hope that will change in the next decade, so we can start treating people as the human beings they are and the experiences that they've encountered which led to them doing what they do.

As a leading researcher, author and educator on neuroscience and neuroplasticity, what are some of your key learnings?

I have a new book called Being Seen. That's a distillation of 30 years of my work, but also interviewing lots of people on my podcast and continuing this journey, because science changes all the time. Being seen is the number one thing people don't receive, and that happens very young in our early life experiences. It's because parents who have children over many generations have never been taught how to see their children. This leads to a lot of adversity which impacts the brain, mental illness later in life, and dysfunctions we like to label, whether it's addiction, obesity, anxiety, or depression. It took me probably 20 years to understand this completely, but if I hadn't done my other work, I wouldn't be able to say it as simply as that. It's more than that of course, but that's the concept and why I titled the book Being Seen. Within that, there are three barriers preventing us from becoming the people we could be, and one of them is adverse childhood experiences and how it affects the way our brain works at a very young age. We now know these facts through social science, but also brain imaging technology and many other factors. Until you fully understand that nothing can change, it must be understood at an educational level. The second big thing is the brain's plastic and can change across your entire lifetime. You need a coach, a mentor and lots of support around you to help guide you; that's a big one which I hope to change in 2024, and it's why my book's focused on parenting in the digital age, because online technology is affecting the way children's brains work. Lastly, how do we do it? The big change coming in the mental health game space is how to have the daily support to drive that. The brain is like a muscle, and it needs to be treated like you treat your body. You need to now go for a walk, be out in nature, go to the gym, drink water, and have healthy food. You understand most people do this anyway. It's hard to do, and the reason it's hard to do and keep up with is because no one's targeting the brain first. The brain is the first thing that was born, so it requires a lot of training. If you have experienced a lot of adversity in your life, especially between the ages of 0 and 14, then the amount of training, help and support that's required is significantly greater than someone who didn't have that same experience.

I would like to see that be the conversation we're having in society. Instead of looking at all the problems, let’s look at some of the solutions to those problems and how we must start wrapping around support to help people achieve those goals.

The key is people think they must suck it up, that if only they got their life together things would be better. Why can't they just stop smoking? Why can they not just stop gambling? Why can't they just get a job? Why can't they buy that house? Why can't they just pay their rent? Why can't they just put that healthy food in their grocery cart? There are lots of reasons we don't want to look at the reasons, because it involves all of us and we would need societal responsibility to see that it's all our problem. I understand the barriers, but there are so many opportunities once we dig deeper into this together as a society. I put it at the societal level, not just at the individual level.

What systemic challenges exist in our current society and what are the possibilities you see for the future as a leader in this space?

I wouldn't be here talking to you unless I saw a huge change. AI is transforming jobs; this understanding will transform people's ability to cope in our new era. I think the biggest barrier right now is people don't understand we're in a massive transformative phase of the world, people want it to go back, but it can't. It's like when they invented the wheel, typewriters, or the computer. It’s like how the hypodermic syringe changed medicine. We must accept we're in a transformative era, and as soon as we start to accept and adapt to that, we will then start to bring those parts into our life. Instead of thinking everything's bad, you will start to see specifically in Australia, we are the luckiest country in the world at some level. There are a lot of problems, don't get me wrong, but compared to any other country (almost), we have a healthcare system, education, and money for people that don't have a job. Yes, there are homeless people, yes there are a lot of problems, but I think Australia must also understand we're an island, and if you don't know what you don't know in terms of what other people are experiencing right now, then you'll always be dancing in the icing sugar of life and thinking there's a problem. It's a unique time in Australia in that sense, where we're so wealthy, there's a lot of inequality, but there's also a lot we have that many other people in the world would love to have. Sometimes having that perspective and not focusing on all our problems also matters if we want to become a better society. That's at on philosophical level, as a leader in neuroscience, neuroplasticity and working across all areas, one big change is that mental health is going to become a basic human right. It's not something that's an add on, it's something like shelter, food, and water.

When you start to frame a conversation making mental health a basic human right, we can understand what impacts our ability to have good mental health, such as adverse childhood experiences with drug addiction, incarceration, and domestic violence.

Now we know children are facing an online onslaught of pornographic material being extorted online. This is also affecting our children's brains. Kids are getting phones and technology at 18 months old and younger. Some people are on their phones when they're breastfeeding and don't think it has an impact. People are being given phones in restaurants to be kept quiet. We now have an Australian five year old on pornographic websites. We now have seven-year-olds reporting anorexia and violently self-harming because they're being shown how to do it through social media. They're the new things happening to our young people because of being very wealthy, whereas people who aren't so wealthy don't have Wi Fi access like we do or the technology. Their children are thriving more substantially than our own. There are many things happening, but I see a big change coming. This comes from framing mental health as a basic human right, but also giving people free tools and access to ways they can promote their brain health daily and reduce the impact of adverse childhood experiences across their lifespan.

Through this knowledge and education, it's so important for people to have these facts and not shy away from them. People must know that generational trauma or adversity is stored in our brain cells, body and is remembered across our lifespan.

One of the great people I've interviewed and worked with (who is in my new book) is Beth Tyson, a trauma consultant and expert. She has a brilliant quote that went viral on LinkedIn saying, "stop believing the lie that what happens in young children's lives doesn't impact them.” In previous generations (and it's not their fault, it's just how it was), children were meant to be seen and not heard. It was thought they would never remember anything that happened to them because how could they remember something before three years old? It's not that they remember these experiences, they store them in different ways we then label as problems later in life, but because it's so disconnected in time, and this is the work of many people. Andrew and Feletti established aces, but also Gabor Marte's and The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk talks about this. It can maybe be a bit extreme at times, but the fact of the matter is we do now have the evidence and scientific facts to support the idea and show that early life experiences impact our ability to thrive across our lifespan. That's my life's work, and even though my sister took her life in 2006 because I didn't understand any of this (and most people still don't), I could have done more if I had this new knowledge, but I didn't have it then. I just want to say one last thing on this subject. I think the most impactful podcast of mine, and what I think would have the biggest impact for others was the podcast I did recently on people with lived experience of being diagnosed schizophrenia, bipolar, and depression. People came on my podcast who are starting their own podcasts, have lived experience, but have also recovered.

One lady is in her 70s, and she started an organisation called Your Blue Phoenix. We're now helping create a podcast, and these people are thriving. They're in their 70s, and I know people in their 70s that can't even use email, so we need to start changing the narrative. As we change the narrative of the conversation, we will start treating people as the human beings they are. We will have a big change in our society; it won't be them and us, it will be all of us together as a community and social species. That's the game changer I would hope to see starting through this scientific breakthrough we've had in the last 20 years.

It would be a real shift in paradigms and the lenses of possibility and inclusion.

One thing I like to recommend is participating in incidental kindness, meaning if you pass someone in a supermarket, just give them a smile and eye contact, because you're showing them that they're human and they're being seen.

That's free, you don't need to buy a gift or find money. Being seen by somebody, it doesn't matter if it's someone that knows you, can be a game changer for someone over this period where they feel very lonely and afraid to ask. Dropping off flowers or just reaching out through a text or email is priceless. Something you can do is when you're out shopping and people are busy, just say hello or good morning. When you’re out on your walk notice people. I'm just giving the feedback people have told me which has allowed them the opportunity to think they matter or the opportunity to recover and get through a period by being noticed as a human. That's such a big thing we can all do, even though it feels scary at the time, but the more you practice it, the easier it gets. Even at the checkout, say thank you, because they're struggling too. With living expenses, even though we are very lucky in Australia, it's still a struggle. I'm not denying that because of the inequality that exists. Recognise that one in three Australians right now (2023) are lonely, and last year (2022) it was one in four, so it's increased substantially. You can't just blame it on the pandemic, it's a change in our society causing a major rift. These podcasts and incidental kindness can help narrow the rift, and I think that would be a great service to our country.

Fostering those micro interactions is crucial, who knows what that's going to lead to or what that's going to mean to someone on the receiving end. It costs nothing and our systems register that as human contact.

I've seen and heard the outcome from so many people, especially people struggling with mental illness and disorders. This is a big deal because they're already isolated in addition. If you're feeling lonely, have a job and other things happening, it's so hard for you to understand just how lonely it is for people that don't have any of that. That’s what they talk about a lot, these things were taken away from them because of their illness so they have the extra layer. If you have the capacity (which you do if you have a job, family, or a friend), it will make you feel a hundred times better because of the way the brain works to give other people a smile and truly see them. It'll make you feel better than any gift you'll ever open. I'm telling you the brain loves it, so in terms of a brain health piece, I can't think of anything better. This year, I'm going to be putting out a lot of new research in this field I’m calling the Neuroscience of Two. We always like to think about ourselves, and we get stuck in our brain because that's what we've studied for a long time because we could, but there's new research I'm going to start distributing on my podcast called the Neuroscience of Two. This amazing woman at Yale has worked out how to study and measure inter brain synchrony to show we get an elevation in a certain part of our brain when we're together. This is not just over Zoom, but face to face specifically you get an even bigger boost.

We're not just talking about something abstract here, you're building someone else's brain health as well as your own by doing these small acts of kindness we often discount because our society now (especially in big cities) doesn't want to take the time.

This is because we are afraid of getting involved and don’t know what will happen. They might ask you for more, but in general, that's not what happens. People are just so grateful to receive acknowledgement of their humanness.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently creating a positive social change?

First, females need to get more into the podcasting space, which is now becoming dominated by male voices. This is frustrating to me because this happens always. We need to have more females getting their voices heard and listened to, because the whole of science is absent. Female voices, bodies, philosophers, and physicists aren’t present, and this leads to a massive problem in terms of what people listen to and believe. That's a big one; I want to keep promoting people like us because I've got as much experience as a neuroscientist, but people tend to because of the way we've been trained believe a male voice over a female voice, and that’s led to a lot of problems.

That's a big project I want to continue pushing, as we have more females coming into science, but we need to make sure they don’t get lost as the male voices dominate podcasting.

That's a big deal, and most people are now listening to podcasts. Secondly, 2024 is dedicated to my new book Being Seen: Master Parenting and the Digital Age, because Australia is a leading country for our children being exploited online. We need to put in a stopgap, and that includes research we're doing in the lab. The solution involves getting out into community spaces and activating the parental network, because parents are the only safe place right now to safeguard children online, because it can't happen anywhere else as it's happening in bedrooms and bathrooms at home. I welcome anyone to Google search and get into that. That's a massive problem for our country right now. Lastly, because we are a social species in terms of neuroscience and neuroplasticity, you're not going to get the bang for the buck by doing it on your own. There's been this burgeoning space of self help and pop psychology which has been wonderful don't get me wrong. We have looked at accessing 40 percent more; Wim Hof, David Goggin’s and all these great techniques including cold exposure and digging deeper into our brain. But what I think is going to be a game changer is the neuroscience of two, meaning we're going to show we need to be together helping each other in accessing cold exposure and all these things. Usually, it’s very much an idea of pull up your bootstraps yourself, but it's going to be about pulling up the bootstraps of others where the big bang for the buck's going to come from a different brain region activated by doing that. It's not just about helping each other, but in terms of scientific progress what’s going to happen is we've never understood inter brain synchrony. We've never been able to measure the activity happening between, what am I transmitting to you, what you are transmitting to me and how we measure that. I think that's going to be a massive breakthrough in terms of understanding the brain we didn't have before. I look forward to seeing all the progress on that side. There are many things happening because this is a game changing field.We didn't have this technology before in terms of understanding the brain.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?

I don't know where to start, I have a whole list of them, I don't want to promote my own books, my new one is the best I've written, but I would recommend reading Eve. It looks at evolution from a female body perspective and how it changes science. I'd also recommend Winter Swimming by Susanna Soberg, who's an amazing female scientist in Denmark. She’s written this beautiful book which gives you a female perspective on cold exposure, and I do love all of Wim Hof's work. I've interviewed these people on my podcast as well. I'd recommend if you're not into reading right now, because a lot of people tend to be on social media, listening to some of these podcasts to inspire you to start doing new things, because the brain across its lifespan needs a lot of novelty and newness.

That's what we stop doing as we get older; we lose the ability to access these new ways of thinking and being because we get stuck in the old brain. We've got to break free, because we're all traumatised, have had different amounts of adversity, and we've got to break free from that.

Break free, access neuroplasticity, access these people who have the knowledge. Step into this space, don't be afraid, and find us. There's lots of us out there, we're trying to encourage you. Whoever's listening, access the 40 percent of the brain that's waiting for you to find it.