Our thanks to Dr. Eugene Choi for his June 19th presentation to Rotary Burnaby members and guests on leveraging neuroscience to overcome fear, create positive lasting change in the world, and activate the part of your brain that permits these changes. A summary of the talk is below, adapted from notes of our Club's stalwart secretary Peter Beynon:

"There are two main states in the functioning of the brain: the survival state and the executive state.The Survival State is associated with stress, anxiety, anger, impatience, jealous, and selfishness. This state is associated with the amygdala and the ``fight, flight, or freeze'' response that is also impairs your body's ability to fight infection. The Executive state relates to Hope, Joy, Gratitude, compassion, a growth mindset, selflessness, taking ownership, and is associated with activity in the prefrontal cortex. Dr Choi discussed how to transfer your state from survival to executive via exercises, meditations, and deep breathing that activates the parasympathetic nervous system and gets you back to the executive state. He also discussed the benefits of tracking brain state with devices and being mindful of what state you and others are in."