What about vacations for your brain? Part 2

Fabian Foelsch
Aug 9, 2017 · 3 min read

Still curious to have more tips to increase you brain power during vacations after our first tip? Here is a second one for you!

TIP N°2: DISCOVER NEW PLACES

Moving to a new place, a new city or a new country always seems a bit scary, so much new and unknown things… but still kind of exciting right? And indeed, your brain just love that. Have you ever noticed how easily and rapidly you get used to a new places?

Let’s take an example! I just move in Germany at the beginning of the year and had to move twice in two different cities, a big one (Berlin) and a small one (Trier). In both case I was currently surrounded by novel sights, sounds, and experiences. It was an overload of new for my brain. However, after only being here for a week, I was surprised how ordinary my flat and my street seemed. After walking the same way to work or to the train station three or four times, it quickly became boring no matter the size of the city. How quickly novelty can disappear as we become familiar with the things around us, and yet how completely stimulated we become when we find yet another brand new experience to have or sight to see. It turns out, this isn’t just because I’m part of this digital native generation, always connected, or because I don’t appreciate life enough. It actually comes from my brain — and yours — which appreciate and seek out novelty.


How is it really working? There’s a region in our midbrain called the substantia nigra/ventral tegmental area aka SN/VTA. This is considered as the major “novelty center” of the brain, which responds to novel stimuli. The SN/VTA is closely linked to two areas of the brain I’ve already talk about before, the hippocampus and the amygdala, both of which play large roles in learning and memory.

Dopamine Pathways

An experiment carried out by the UCL found that the SN/VTA was activated by novel images — meaning imagines never seen before. Images that only slightly deviated from more familiar ones didn’t have the same effect, and neither did images with strongly negative emotional context such as car crashes or angry faces. The Dopamine pathways are activated when we are exposed to novelty. So the brain reacts to novelty by releasing dopamine which makes us want to go exploring in search of a reward.

Here is what Dr Düzel from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience said about how novelty motivates us:

“When we see something new, we see it has a potential for rewarding us in some way. This potential that lies in new things motivates us to explore our environment for rewards. The brain learns that the stimulus, once familiar, has no reward associated with it and so it loses its potential. For this reason, only completely new objects activate the midbrain area and increase our levels of dopamine.”

So what are you waiting for folks? Go discovering new places, traveling the world during your vacations! Adventure time is starting!


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Fabian Foelsch

Written by

CO-Founder & CEO of BRAINEFFECT ; a performance food brand from Berlin. Former professional athlete & strategic consultant at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

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