NOTE FROM TED: Please do not look to this talk for medical advice. While some viewers might find advice provided in this talk to be helpful as a complementary approach, several claims around brain size and lifestyle are not corroborated by sufficient scientific evidence. TEDx events are independently organized by volunteers. The guidelines we give organizers are described in more detail here: http://storage.ted.com/tedx/manuals/t...


Chronic stress is devastating for your brain. It ruins your memory, your attention and concentration and your emotional resilience. The brain areas that help execute these functions literally deteriorate.

Luckily, brain science has revealed many ways to prevent or counteract this. In her talk Niki Korteweg shares the four most important things you can do to keep your brain healthy and working at its very best.

Niki Korteweg is a Dutch science journalist with a PhD in neurobiology, and she has been writing about health and brain science for almost 20 years. Ironically, after experiencing a burnout about 10 years ago, her own brain started to let her down. It was the start of a quest in the scientific literature to discover what actually helps to guard our brain against stress and make it work better than ever. As a science journalist at NRC Handelsblad with a PhD in neurobiology, Niki is very knowledgeable about brain research, medical science, and psychology. She is a versatile journalist: she writes features, interviews, news articles, and books, gives lectures and teaches about science writing. After experiencing burnout in 2010, Niki published the book ‘Een beter brein’ (A better brain) in 2017. In this book, she discusses the fastmoving developments in neuroscience and all the ways in which we can use those insights to take good care of our brains. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx