Speaking and Communicating Podcast

A study we published just recently, parents reporting their child before and after program. And they saw a large to very large effect size in changes with their children's emotional regulations. So, huge differences in how they handle themselves and it wasn't from a behavior tactic or teaching them how to handle a frustration or upset - it was nurturing the brain!

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Robert Ndlela.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

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Now, let's get communicating.

And let's get communicating with Dr. Rebecca Jackson, who is in North Carolina.

She is here to talk to us about brain balance.

She is a brain health expert who was a chief program officer for more than 15 years.

And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show.

Hi, Roberta.

Please call me Rebecca.

Thank you for having me.

Welcome to the show, Rebecca.

Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

So as you mentioned, I'm a chief programs officer for a company called Brain Balance, which is a company that I've been with for 15 years.

And our focus is understanding how the brain grows and develops and functions.

So we know what we can do to help people improve their brain, to improve their outcomes.

So we work with both kids and adults that struggle with aspects of attention, cognition, learning, behavior, and even social, emotional, and well-being pieces, like anxiety and how we're able to regulate our mood and emotions.

But it all comes back to the brain.

How effectively our brain is functioning impacts how we feel, it impacts our ability to formulate thoughts, and the topic of the podcast to communicate.

Right, especially communicating with ourselves.

So first, let's talk about the kids part.

I'm 47, so we didn't have video games, internet, none of that.

In fact, I think TV used to start around 6 p.m.

until midnight, and that's the end of TV.

So we used to play in the street with neighborhood kids.

Does today's dynamic of kids being more in tech, does it affect their brain function compared to how our brains are programmed because of how we grew up?

It does, and I think it's important to keep in mind the balance of things, the good and the complications.

There are so many good things that come from technology, and we live in a technology-based world.

So our kids do need to grow up familiar and comfortable and being able to navigate the world of technology.

It's not going to go away.

But one of my concerns when it comes to kids and development is what we understand and know about the brain and development is that physical movement and sensory input are two of the biggest drivers of brain growth and development.

Our sensory input is how we orient ourselves to the world.

It's how we interact.

So if you think about the conversation that we're having right now, even though we're on the computer, you and I are making eye contact through the computer.

We're watching each other to say, okay, is what I'm saying making sense to you?

So I'm using visual input and auditory input while I'm sitting in my chair.

So all of our sensory input is how we interact with the world.

It's how I hear you and respond to you.

And it's what gives us comfort.

Individuals with anxiety often have aspects of sensory disruption, so they're not able to trust the information the brain is providing them as accurately, which can cause disruptions and dysregulation.

And so when kids are having limited physical movement and limited variety in sensory exposure, we're limiting some of the avenues that are driving growth and development.

And we saw this during the pandemic, which is actually a huge reason of why I wrote the book Back on Track, A Practical Value to Help Kids of All Ages Thrive, is what we saw during the pandemic when activities halted, kids were staying home and doing school virtually from home, and technology usage for kids went absolutely through the roof.

It more than doubled, with it not being unusual for teens to be having nine or more hours per day on technology.

And we saw the impact very directly in development.

We saw an increase in challenges with attention, increase in anxiety, increase in depression.

In infants as young as six months of age, neuroimaging showed structural changes, structural differences in their brain.

So we know, we want to learn from that time, we know the importance of movement and a variety of sensory exposure on brain development.

So we've got to find that balance for our kids of using technology, enjoying it, but keeping it in balance with time still barefoot, playing outside, running around, exploring.

That's what's going to grow and drive and develop the brain, even more so than all of the learning that we do just through technology.

So the balance, you can be a little bit on social media for an hour and then go play outside with the neighborhood kids.

Or be on TV for an hour, watch your favorite show and then switch it off.

Because the other thing is also we have all this streaming, as I was saying, our TV time was limited, but now you can binge, you can just sit all day watching TV or movie marathons.

So all that attention, what does that do to the brain when you are just passively, just even for grownups, sitting on the couch and just watching movies all day because it's the pandemic or you don't go to work?

Or it's Saturday and you just need a day in your life.

Right.

You know, it's almost counterintuitive, but an entire day of binging a show or the child that's watching hours of something is actually really fatiguing to the brain.

And we need to know and understand that a tired brain is a negative brain always, when it comes to our kids and ourselves as adults.

So one of the things that happens is when we're sedentary, when we're not moving, there's a system in our brain called the reticular activating system that's essentially the gating mechanism for our sensory input.

And so when we're not moving, it tells our brain we're going to shut things down a little bit so that the brain's not having to process as much information.

This system is what allows us to go to sleep at night.

When we lay down and we're not engaging our muscles, it tells our brain, okay, it's time to shut down and go to sleep.

So when we spend all day sitting around not engaging our muscles, our brain is going to be slow and sluggish because we haven't woken up the alerting mechanisms to say, wake up, pay attention, engage.

But then at the same time, we are engaged in what we're hearing and seeing on the television.

And when we're doing that for hours, it is still draining resources.

And so we fatigue our brain by burning through the resources that we need to think and make decisions and have conversations.

And we put our body and our brain in a really sluggish state.

So one of the things that we talk about in my house all the time, and my kids are 13 and 15, and you can just picture their eye roll as I say this, but we say all the time we need to use our muscles to turn on our brain.

And so it's okay to have times of sitting around and reading a book or sitting around and watching a show, but we need to use our muscles to turn on our brain.

So if I'm about to have an important meeting at work, or I'm needing to do something that is engaging my brain or my kids are about to sit down and do homework, teaching that mentality of let's do a little bit of movement first, and it doesn't have to be go for a 45-minute run every time.

It could be something as simple as walk to the mailbox and back or do some squat jumps or run up and down the stairs.

Just a little bit of standing up, engaging your core muscles.

You could do a quick spike heart rate, but using your muscles is signaling to your brain, wake up, be alert, pay attention.

And so again, with kids and adults, it's finding that balance.

We all need downtime, but then when we need our brain sharp and engaged and focused, using your muscles cues the brain that it's time to cue in and pay attention.

Using your muscles.

So it's not just the fact that the reason you sleep well is because you exercised and your body got physically tired, but it's the muscles, like you said, that actually activate the brain the way you just explained.

It's why one of the first things that we do when we wake up in the morning is we stretch.

When you stretch, you're firing a muscle that's firing input into the brain to start to clear the cobwebs and wake you up and get you moving for the day.

So our muscles helps to control, essentially, that gating mechanism and that level of alertness with the brain.

Right.

And then the attention part.

In the world we live in now, how do we then deal with this attention deficit disorder?

Because it's not just kids.

Even us grownups, our attention.

I think TikTok is literally reducing my attention span, too.

Maybe I could be wrong.

But I feel like it does.

All these things that are split-second pieces of information.

My brain is going in all these directions.

There's something there.

I'm not the same before TikTok was invented.

You're pretty clear of TikTok.

I think for those very reasons.

So I understand and don't at the same time.

But you're not wrong in what you're saying.

We have to understand that when it comes to the brain, even though our brain is not a muscle, we need to think of it like a muscle, and you strengthen what you use.

Our attention systems, the type of attention that you and I are using right now to have this conversation, is very different than the type of attention you use while on TikTok or while playing a video game.

The type of attention that we're using when you're playing a video game or scrolling social media is a type of heightened attention.

You're really hyper-focused on something, and there's a reward that happens that triggers feelings of happiness in the brain.

It triggers a dopamine release.

So if you're playing a video game and you earn some points, or you're watching a, you know, for me, what would pull me in would be a funny dog video.

I like animal videos.

I love the food videos.

I love those who show me how to make a cheesecake, yes.

Yeah, that's your dopamine trigger.

That's your dopamine release.

So then our brain is wired to seek those dopamine release pieces.

And so when you're doing an attentional task that's delivering a reward, then your brain wants to keep doing that.

You're gonna continue to pay attention to get that next reward.

So that type of attention is a very small microburst of attention.

A lot of times in video games, the rewards are often spaced at increments at about seven seconds.

So it's a seven second microburst of attention with a reward so that it triggers you to pay attention again for the next reward.

People in the gaming industries, they know neurology.

They know what our brain wants to continue to do it.

And when we're in that hyper focused, hyper alert state, we lose sense of time.

We're not aware of our environment and surroundings.

Our awareness of time shuts off, which is why when we grab our phone at night and we start scrolling before bed, before you know it, it's been an hour and you're still on your phone when you wanted to go to sleep.

So needing to understand that hyper burst of attention of that heightened focus is really fatiguing on the brain.

That requires high levels of resources for our brain to be able to do that, high levels of energy to support that, which means the end result is if we've got a child that just spent two hours gaming or two hours on TikTok, and now they come off, they stop, they just fatigue their brain.

And again, a tired brain is a negative brain.

So now we're going to have more in the way of negative behavior, pushback, lack of cooperation, harder time regulating mood and emotions.

And same thing applies to us as adults.

So it's understanding how these activities impact us so that again, there's a reason to find that balance.

So it's not bad to be on TikTok, but we don't want to be on TikTok for two hours.

And if you're going to be on TikTok, set a timer so something catches your attention.

There's an alert to say, okay, you've been on for 40 minutes, and then use your muscles to reengage your brain, to refocus it so that you're not as drained, sluggish, tired, and get a snack.

Eat a healthy fuel to help reenergize and refuel your resources.

Another question, something I've always wondered is, speaking of the phone, on social media, you have notifications.

I usually switch them off, because I always say to myself, I don't want the sound to control me.

Now, I must quickly grab my phone, because if there's a notification that says somebody liked my picture or something like that.

Have you noticed that there are people who are actually controlled by that sound of ping on the phone, something happened on Facebook, and then they grab the phone?

Our brain, we talk about multitasking all the time, and I feel like we live in a culture that really celebrates multitasking.

The reality is our brain isn't good at multitasking.

We do one thing at a time, but then we're just quickly doing task switching, quickly switching from one task to another.

So let's say I've got my laptop with me in the kitchen, and I'm answering some emails while making dinner.

I'm not actually multitasking.

I'm not actually doing cooking and email at the same time.

I'm just switching back and forth between the two tasks.

And that is a very draining load on our brain.

I always think of our attention resources like money.

So if you woke up every morning, and you were given $100, and you had $100 to spend throughout the day, that's your attentional resources for the day.

Task switching is going to quickly spend dollars.

So it would be less of a load on your brain to do all of your email all at once, be done with it, and then switch over and make dinner.

Or ignore the alert on your phone so you're only doing email, because every time you hear the alert, even if you're not checking it, it is halting your thing that you're working on because it's disrupting that thought.

And so every time there's an alert or a ding, that pulls your attention, it's a task switch that just spent some of your potential resources.

So if you wake up in the day, and you start the day with $100, and then you begin your day with an hour on TikTok, you just burn through 30 bucks.

Now you've got $70 to make it through the rest of the day.

Then you have a cup of coffee, sit down at your computer to start your workday, and you check a couple alerts while you're logging into your email.

Again, you just spent a couple more dollars that could have been saved for a more important task at the end of the day.

So learning to single task focus is something that I have to continually remind myself to do.

But even while I'm sitting here talking with you, my phone is nearby, but I have it silenced, I have it face down, and so anytime I'm working on something, I try to minimize the distractions as much as possible so that we're not beholden to the ding, because it's always going to disrupt our attention, even if we don't check to see what it was.

Certainly.

And then would you say that besides exercise, one of the solutions would be then to find a task, let's say cooking.

You have teenage kids.

If the trick is okay, no more video games, let's cook.

And they actually start the recipe from scratch, and they mix everything and just focus on that and the phones are away.

Would that be one of the things that helps us bring the brain back to attention abundance, so to speak, to just focus on that one thing, whether it's gardening outside, whether mowing the lawn, whatever it is, but something that will take quite a long time instead of, like you said, multitasking, which as you've mentioned is not a real thing.

You're hitting on something that's so important and so perfect is you mentioned that since spending more time on TikTok, you feel like you've got a shorter attention span.

You've been strengthening your reward-driven attention, the attention that wants that constant dopamine reward.

Instead, we want to really work on strengthening the networks and pathways in our brain that support sustained attention, the ability to pay attention for a long period of time without a reward.

That's what we need to do to be able to cook a meal, to have a conversation, to do our job at work.

I don't get rewards every seven days, let alone every seven seconds.

Wouldn't that be nice?

So it's a balance.

There's many different types of attentional systems, and we need them at different points of time.

So our heightened alert attention reward system is important, it's necessary, but we are finding ways to practice and strengthen that all the time.

We need to be more intentional in ourselves and our kids in making sure that they're strengthening the sustained attention networks and pathways.

You know, when it comes to attention, everyone, whether or not you have ADHD, has times when we have a harder time focusing, when we forget what we're working on, when we have a harder time making decisions or getting started.

And the more tired we are, the more stressed we are, the more you're going to experience those thoughts bouncing all over the place or struggling to get started.

But when an individual is struggling with ADHD, it's like their brain is functioning the way another brain would function when they're exhausted.

You know, when you're so tired, that moment when you're hangry, where you're so hungry that you can't even make a decision about what you're going to eat and you're irritable.

For the ADHD brain, it's like they're starting each day fatigued, where it's just a larger uphill battle to maintain the attention and focus, to task switch, to regulate mood and emotions, to get started on a task.

It's an even steeper uphill battle.

So then for the individual with ADHD, when they're tired, when they're experiencing stress, then that's going to make that challenge even steeper.

So we absolutely want to find the balance in how we're exercising our different attentional systems.

But then also, and this is what I love about what we do at Brain Balance, the brain can change.

We can target and exercise the networks and pathways that lead to those things, just like we can target different muscles in the body to improve balance or coordination or strength.

We're able to exercise and strengthen the brain so that we see a reduction in the struggles with destructibility, inattention, hyperactivity.

I had a guest previously who works with children.

She's an art teacher in California, and she said the reason she's on a mission to retain art programs because some schools say, oh, we don't have enough budgets for both the art and the tech, so get rid of the art.

She says the coloring helps with all the stuff you talked about earlier, the coordination, the motor skills.

Would you also say that adult coloring books, because I've had a friend of mine suggest to me that I get some, would they also help with calming down and resting basically?

You know, I'm such a fan of doing things that are creative, doing things that are different than what you do day in and day out, and absolutely doing something that's causing you to focus, but with low mental load, mental engagement, that can be actually really relaxing.

And there's sensory input involved with doing something different.

When you think about crayons have a smell, and so the smell of a crayon and how hard you push if you're shading lightly or shading hard, even the feel of that construction paper page versus a regular typing page, there's a different sensory experience compared to us sitting at our computer all day long, taking some time to color.

So anything that we can do for our brain that provides new and different or varied sensory exposure, I can't stress enough how powerful it is.

A study recently took a look, and this was a study done in mice.

But what was seen was that strengthening the three primary sensory pathways of sight, touch, and sound led to the maturation, the maturity of their emotional circuitry.

And so sensory input contributes to how we are able to regulate our mood and emotions.

So sensory input is key for our ability to pay attention, to regulate stress and anxiety.

So absolutely coloring could be a great way to calm and give you something to focus on that isn't a draining load on the brain.

Right.

Now, please tell us more about the work that you do with the emotional part.

I love this part, and it's different.

So it's hard for people to understand where so often, if a child is struggling with tantrums or meltdowns, it's where they're getting upset more frequently, and their upsets are bigger and more dramatic and lasting longer.

We tend to, as a society, look at the symptom and then try to treat or address the symptom.

And so it's easy to jump to, you know, what's my discipline strategy, you know, how am I handling motivation and behavior at home?

And all of the counseling and therapy strategies are so important and so necessary.

But what we know is if the brain is immature, the brain has a harder time applying those strategies.

And if we go back to an individual with ADHD, what we know about ADHD is that individuals with ADHD have aspects of brain development that are about 30% immature.

So when we're talking about a child, I can have a 10-year-old that in a lot of ways, developmentally, is going to be like a 7-year-old.

So their ability to pay attention, how they handle themselves when they're frustrated or upset, might look like a 7-year-old in a 10-year-old body.

And that can be hard.

It can be hard interacting with friends on the playground when most 10-year-olds aren't going to be crying on the playground when they're upset.

But if that 10-year-old is really 7 developmentally in some aspects, how they interact with their peers, their ability to stay on task for longer, is going to be harder.

So our focus at Brain Balance is to understand what aspects of the brain are on track and what aspects of the brain are immature or need to be strengthened.

Because a brain that is immature has to work harder to accomplish the same thing.

So it's easy to understand this in a child.

For an adult, if I told you, your brain is 3 years younger than your age, I'm 47 as well.

I'd be thrilled if my brain was younger.

So with adults, it's the same concept, though, of strengthening the areas of the brain that aren't as fast, efficient, or have as much endurance that makes things harder for us.

And it's not about practicing what you're deficient in.

It's about going back and strengthening the foundation.

So at Brain Balance, we see, the study that we published just recently was parents reporting changes in their child before and after program, and they saw a large to very large effect size and changes with their children's emotional regulation.

So huge differences in how they handle themselves, and it wasn't from a behavior tactic or teaching them how to handle a frustration or upset.

It was going back and maturing the brain.

It's doing physical activity, sensory input, coordination, and processing multiple things all at the same time.

So it's going back to the basics of development and building a stronger foundation to mature the brain so the brain is more age appropriate in all areas.

And when we do that, we see improvement in attention and focus, in memory and cognition.

So there's an impact on learning, on how a child handles themselves when they're frustrated and upset, on their attention, on their behaviors.

You surely see a whole child impact, which is...

I think those similar principles do apply to us adults, no?

Absolutely, absolutely.

Those are the studies that we have underway right now is looking at the same thing in adults.

And Brain Bounce didn't start as a program for adults.

We worked with kids for a decade and a half, and the parents kept saying, but what about me?

Where's the program for me?

Is my brain too old to be helped?

And we're seeing such promising outcomes and results with our adults.

We just, just looking at some data on a research paper that we're working on right now, we're seeing adults reporting a 42% reduction in challenges of destructibility and attention.

So they're noticing noticeable change in their productivity and their ability to stay on task and execute the things that we need to do to be successful at home, at work, at school.

So the brain can be changed at any age is the exciting thing that science has taught us in the last two decades.

And thank you for the research work that you do.

That's how we come to have this information.

Now, a lot of our professional listeners suffer from stress, burnout, anxiety, which you've mentioned.

Would the strategies you've shared today help with those conditions as well?

Because usually we think, oh, that means you work too much, quit the job or have a work-life balance.

All of those are great, but is there more that can be done?

There's so much more that can be done.

The book that I just published is written for kids, but each section also talks about teens, and everything that we talk about with teens can also be applied to adults.

So there's an entire chapter on well-being, on attention, on learning, on ways to maximize and optimize the brain to support success in those areas.

And when it comes to fatigue and stress and burnout, to understand, again, if we go back to our resources, if we go back to every morning you wake up with $100 of money to spend on attention, when our brain is stressed or we're facing times of change, which triggers a lot of stress, that spends so much money.

So if you wake up stressed and you've got a busy day ahead of you, again, instead of waking up with $100, now you've got $70 to spend.

So if you go on TikTok, you're down to $50 before your days even started.

So stress and anxiety has such a real impact on making things harder.

And finding things that, again, re-engage the brain, that brings joy to the brain.

So when you think about burnout, burnout is fatigue.

And again, I say it all the time, a tired brain is a negative brain.

When we are tired, when we're facing stress, when there's already negativity, it's such a heavy cognitive and emotional load to carry.

So finding ways to trigger joy can help to re-trigger that motivation and energy in the brain.

So making sure that we get enough sleep, making sure that we get enough exercise and fueling our brain well with what we eat, those are the basics.

Those are absolutely foundational, necessary pieces.

We cannot expect our brain to function well when we're tired and not eating healthy.

So those pieces aside, we'll take those for granted.

But things like spending time with a friend, connecting with an individual that's a meaningful connection, meaningful conversation, can spark joy and happiness in the brain.

That dopamine release is going to give you more energy and more activation.

So finding moments and opportunity for joy.

I loved a study that I read a while back.

It was talking about how planning a trip can be as rewarding to the brain as the trip itself.

And so if it's January and it's cold and dark outside and you're feeling tired and burnt out, planning an event can be just as rewarding to the brain as doing it.

So you've got to really get into the details of it, of where do I want to go?

What would I want to do when I'm there?

And it doesn't have to be a big, expensive vacation.

You can plan an outing with a friend.

Again, it's finding ways to trigger joy in the brain is going to then, in a healthy way, is going to help to re-energize the brain.

And then understanding, again, the balance between technology and movement.

When we're tired and burnt out and stressed, one of the best things that we can do beyond sleep is physical activity.

Physical activity is just so powerful to the brain.

It's going to wake up the brain.

Depending on how much time you exercise or what type of exercise you do, there's different benefits to it.

So if you do a long cardio, there's endorphins that are released.

But there's also benefits to short, high intensity.

And again, in the chapter on well-being, I talk about the different types of exercise and the different benefits to the brain.

But it's finding ways to trigger the joy.

And one of my favorite things for the brain is understanding the power of goal setting.

Your brain loves to set a goal.

It releases dopamine in the brain.

Now, it's hard to accomplish that goal.

Dopamine doesn't stay active for long.

So that's why setting short goals and then achieving it can be really helpful.

But another way to trigger that energy, that excitement in your brain, is thinking about a goal that you want to set.

So if you are so burnt out and frustrated and fatigued at work, taking a step back, connect with somebody at work that means a lot to you on a personal level.

Connect and have fun, even if it's set work aside.

Then set a goal for yourself that really means a lot to you that you can really get excited about.

It's got to be something really personally motivating.

And then map out a plan of step by step what you're going to do so that you can be achieving little micro mini goals along the way to work that big goal.

When you talk about connecting with friends, I remember the beginning of the pandemic.

I have a friend whose daughter, she's now 12.

She was 10 at the time.

And, you know, they were no longer going to school.

And one of her friends from school had a birthday.

Remember, they were not supposed to touch.

They made a poster, and they stood at the friend's home outside the driveway.

And for the poster to say happy birthday, and they couldn't hug.

Both children, adults, everyone, how many of us lost that, even physical?

The power of a hug to your brain.

I'm sure, Rebecca, you can explain.

Human touch is so important.

And how many people went through that, not being able to touch their loved ones, not being able to fly and see their loved ones?

And we've had to recover slowly from that period of three years of not touching, basically.

And you're absolutely right.

There was an impact.

And we saw it in the numbers.

We saw it in the data with both kids and adults seeing increased struggles with attention, anxiety, depression, that the impact was very, very real.

And that's, you know, hopefully we'll never live through another pandemic, but take lessons from that and apply it to daily life to say, okay, the pandemic taught us the importance of finding balance between technology and movement, the importance of sensory input, and how that has such an impact on us.

So silver lining is the lessons that we can take from the pandemic and apply to our life here going forward.

Absolutely.

Now, please tell us a little bit more about your book back on track.

It stemmed from what I was watching during the pandemic at Brain Balance.

We had more parents than ever reaching out, saying, I'm worried about my child.

Is this something that you can help with?

They're struggling.

I don't know what to do.

And the parents' concerns changed.

Kids were no longer in classrooms at school.

They were now at home.

And so the parents were often seeing firsthand what some of the struggles were with staying on task, getting work done.

On the flip side, there were some kids that staying home for school was a huge relief.

If it was a child that really struggled socially or a school environment was a really overwhelming sensory environment, being home for some kids was a relief and a break in some of those ways.

But we saw escalation in parent calls and concerns, and we saw it in the data.

Kids were struggling more, and it was impacting their assessments.

I'll do interviews such as these, and during that time, it was just interview after interview talking about these same topics of how is this going to impact our kids?

What's the downstream effect of what's happening?

And the news headlines were so negative.

Increase in suicide rates, increasing academic achievement gaps.

And we knew all of this, but I kept sitting back waiting for the hope and the help.

So what are we going to do about this information?

Where do we go from here?

As news tends to be negative anyway, it just continued with the negative, and I finally thought, okay, I need to enter this conversation in a bigger way.

I certainly don't have all the answers.

There's not one silver bullet for anything, but I wanted to be able to contribute to the conversation to say, there's a very real reason for why kids and adults are struggling more now, and we need to learn from this time.

And what can we do as parents on a daily basis for ourselves and our kids to optimize their current abilities?

And then what can we do for our kids on a daily basis to really springboard things if there are gaps in development to help get them back on track, help get them caught up so that they're not having to spend energy trying to hold still in the classroom when they could be sitting back, absorbing the content, learning and interacting with friends.

And so to provide parents hope and an action plan and education to understand why they're seeing what they're seeing and what to do about it to help.

Yes, solution driven.

Thank you, Rebecca, for the work that you do.

Is there anything I haven't asked you today that you were hoping to share with our listeners?

Oh, that's such a good question.

There's so many fun things.

You know, thinking about the topic of your podcast with speaking and communicating and being effective in our professional roles and as we grow and develop, one of the things that I always try to keep in mind before a big meeting or a big presentation is I always want to approach things through what I know about the brain.

So when it comes to attention and memory, knowing that people have shorter attention spans than ever, and people, what they remember and what they take away from an interaction is story, not words, and if it pertains to them, if it connects to them, they're going to remember it even more.

And so anything you can do, and I didn't do well with that in this conversation.

I should have asked you questions about yourself so that we could apply it to you, but the TikTok example that you shared was perfect, and hopefully you'll be more likely to remember the information about attention and balancing attention, those short micro bursts on TikTok versus doing something like cooking dinner over a long period of time.

You'll be more likely to remember that information because it directly pertained to you.

So those are just a couple quick things that we know about the brain to help people trigger memories and to pay attention to get the most out of what you're sharing.

So here's what we're going to do, because we always emphasize the importance of storytelling on the show.

You are going to come back and talk to us about storytelling for presentations and what happens to the brain when you tell stories versus just dumping information, as we say.

Absolutely.

That sounds great.

Thank you so much, Dr.

Rebecca Jackson from North Carolina, who is a brain health specialist and a chief program officer doing that for 15 years.

We appreciate all the knowledge, expertise that you shared with us today, and hopefully we'll apply it because we all need it.

Absolutely.

And know that if you're struggling, the book Back on Track is there to provide information, and Brain Balance is just an incredible program that drives lasting and meaningful change in the brain.

So if you're struggling and worried, you don't have to be, brainbalance.com.

You can find out information about assessments.

We've got locations all across the country and work with people around the world as well.

Excellent stuff.

brainbalance.com.

Is there any other socials or websites where we can find you besides brainbalance.com?

Sure.

You can find me on Instagram at drrebeccajackson.com, and the book is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or anywhere you get books.

Awesome stuff.

Thank you so much, Rebecca, for being here today.

This has been such a pleasure and much more of a learning experience.

Excellent.

Thank you, Roberta.

My absolute pleasure.

Thank you for joining us on the Speaking and Communicating Podcast once again.

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