"The brain is very responsive. One of its most amazing capacities is its ability to change, and one of the most common experiences of brain plasticity is the ability to have new experiences and new sounds stick with us."
Dr. Wendy Suzuki is here, to talk all things music, exercise, and yes, the brain. She is a highly distinguished neural scientist--at her lab at New York University and through her research and writing-- and she is telling us the truth about how we can, at every stage in life, mold, stretch, and yes, improve our brain. This is a fascinating and energetic conversation on the topic we all wonder about. What's going on inside the brain? is improvement always possible, no matter what the age? The answer, it seems, might be yes.
Dr. Wendy A. Suzuki is a Professor of Neural Science and Psychology in the Center for Neural Science at New York University. She received her undergraduate degree in physiology and human anatomy at the University of California, Berkeley in 1987 studying with Prof. Marion C. Diamond, a leader in the field of brain plasticity. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from U.C. San Diego in 1993 and completed apost-doctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health before accepting her faculty position at New York University in 1998. Her major research interest continues to be brain plasticity. She is best known for her extensive work studying areas in the brain critical for our ability to form and retain new long-term memories. More recently her work has focused on understanding how aerobic exercise can be used to improve learning, memory and higher cognitive abilities in humans. Wendy is passionate about teaching (see her courses), about exercise (intenSati), and about supporting and mentoring up and coming scientists.
