Brain Fact Friday ”How to Be a Neuroscience Researcher” Using Our Creativity

“Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.” – Robert A. Heinlein And I want to add a quote I heard often over years, that "To believe in the things you can see and touch is no belief at all. But to believe in the unseen is both a triumph and a blessing.” On today’s Episode #278 we will cover: ✔ How to Be A Neuroscience Researcher in 4 Simple Steps ✔ Why Creativity and Innovation are Important to Move You Towards Your Goals ✔ How to Navigate Through Pubmed When Looking for Answers to Questions You Might Have. ✔ How to Use Science and Evidence-Based Studies in Your Daily Life and Work Welcome back to The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we cover the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning (for schools) and emotional intelligence training (in the workplace) with tools, ideas and strategies that we can all use immediately, with our brain in mind.  I’m Andrea Samadi, an author, and educator with a passion for learning specifically on the topics of health, wellbeing and productivity, and launched this podcast almost 4 years ago, to share how important an understanding of our brain is, for our everyday life and results. For today’s episode #278, keeping in line with our Season Theme of Going Back to the Basics to Build a Stronger, More Resilient 2.0 version of ourselves, we look back at EPISODE #124 on “How to be a Neuroscience Researcher in 4 Simple Steps”[i] I knew even before writing this one, that I had to spend some time getting creative. Science and research can be so very boring, especially if I were to just read through Pubmed.gov with some steps for all of us to navigate through the research, for our daily use. I can’t imagine getting excited about that, and that’s not what I wanted this episode to be about, so of course, I’m jolted out of sleep, in the early hours of a busy workday, to jot down some ideas that could bring the science into our daily lives, in a way that we can find evidence-based, science-backed answers to inform whatever questions might be keeping YOU up at night, or at least crossing your mind in the day, and make this episode a bit more memorable, interesting and useful for you. To do this, I went back to EPISODE #265 where we covered “Improving Creativity in Our Schools, Sports and Modern Workplaces”[ii] to revisit what makes something truly “creative” according to science, using the work of Dr. Andrew Huberman. He said “To Show Creativity—It must Reveal something new to us (entertaining, thrilling or useful) and it changes the way we access the world—acting as portals into the world and ourselves.”  On this past episode that I wrote just before Christmas of last year, I gave three examples of past guests who’ve come on this podcast who have done just that, and have shown their creativity to change the world in our schools, sports environments and workplaces of the future. You can review this episode and these examples, but for today’s episode, I’m hoping that I can show you how to use this research portal, Pubmed.gov to change the way YOU access the world, and take some things that you might be wondering about, and see how science can inform how you see the world, revealing something NEW, entertaining, thrilling or useful. Now this is an episode worth waking up at 1am to write. Before we dive in here, I’ve got to go back a bit in time, because I did name this podcast Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning, knowing full well that this link to science could help all of us to improve our results not only in our schools (where most of my work has been spent the past 3 decades) but also in our corporate workplaces, and sports environments. I remember in those early days planning this podcast, I was told to keep my message simple and focus on one area (schools) as you will be confusing your end listener. I remember thinking I don’t want my end listener to only be working in our schools. I was hoping these ideas would app