My BrainWise Coach

Phil watched something happen on a tennis court at Apple in the late 1980s that he could not explain for thirty years. Complete beginners were rallying inside forty minutes, and the coach, Tim Gallwey, never once told them where to put their feet. The neuroscience has finally caught up, and it turns out Gallwey was working around brain architecture nobody had imaged yet.

Visit brainwiseenterprises.com to get certified, take the Personal Threat and Reward Profile assessment, and book personalized 1:1 coaching.

Here is what you will learn:

• How Gallwey's 1974 model of Self 1 and Self 2 maps onto the prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia, and cerebellum
• Why "watch the seams of the ball" works as a neurological intervention, not a motivational trick
• What 7 Tesla fMRI imaging reveals about the cerebellum's corrupted predictions under pressure
• Explicit monitoring theory versus distraction theory, and why Gallwey's methods beat both
• The developmental finding that surprised us: children aged 7 to 12 consolidate motor learning during rest better than any other age group
• Why more technical instruction may be actively counterproductive for young athletes
• Where the implicit learning evidence is genuinely contested, and what the critics get right

If this changed how you think about learning under pressure, rate and review us wherever you listen, and follow @mybrainwisecoach on every platform.

00:00 Forty Minutes On The Tennis Court

01:40 Welcome To My BrainWise Coach

02:36 Tim Gallwey And The Inner Game

04:27 Watch The Seams Of The Ball

05:24 Beyond Left Brain Right Brain

06:36 The Prefrontal Cortex And Explicit Learning

07:40 Basal Ganglia Cerebellum And Automatic Movement

08:35 What Imaging Shows About Choking

09:48 Two Competing Theories Of Choking

12:00 Implicit Learning And Pressure Resistance

12:53 Neurofeedback Training For Athletes

14:21 The External Focus Of Attention

15:10 Why Children Consolidate Motor Skills Better

17:50 How To Coach Children Differently

19:08 Sport Builds The Prefrontal Cortex

20:20 What The Research Does Not Settle

21:51 The Field Guide Summary

23:45 Get Out Of Your Own Way

• Gallwey, W. T. (1974). The Inner Game of Tennis. Random House. 50th anniversary edition, 2024. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/57757/
• Ogasawara, K., Koike, T., Fukunaga, M., Yoshioka, A., Yamamoto, T., & Sadato, N. (2025). Neural substrates of choking under pressure: A 7T-fMRI study. Neuroscience Research, 212, 41–60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neures.2024.11.004
• Van Roy, A., Albouy, G., Burns, R. D., & King, B. R. (2024). Children exhibit a developmental advantage in the offline processing of a learned motor sequence. Communications Psychology, 2(1), 30. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-024-00082-9
• Garnaas, H. B., & van den Tillaar, R. (2024). Comparison of effects of implicit versus explicit learning of a novel skill in young gymnastic athletes. Behavioral Sciences, 14(9), 798. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14090798
• Wu, J. H., Tu, Y. C., Chang, C. Y., Chueh, T. Y., Gentili, R. J., Hatfield, B. D., & Hung, T. M. (2024). A single session of sensorimotor rhythm neurofeedback enhances long-game performance in professional golfers. Biological Psychology, 192, 108844. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2024.108844
• Yu, C. L., Cheng, M. Y., An, X., Chueh, T. Y., Wu, J. H., Wang, K. P., & Hung, T. M. (2025). The effect of EEG neurofeedback training on sport performance: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 35(5), e70055. https://doi.org/10.1111/sms.70055
• Bobrownicki, R., Carson, H. J., MacPherson, A. C., & Collins, D. (2023). An explicit look at implicit learning: An interrogative review for sport coaching research and practice. Sports Coaching Review, 13(1), 59–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/21640629.2023.2179300

A new study in The BMJ puts a hard number on something researchers have chased for years. At least one in four former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 had CTE at the time of death, and that is the most conservative reading of the data, not the likeliest one. Cole and Phil walk you through where that number comes from, why it reaches well past American football, and what is actually happening inside the brain, in plain English.

Learn more, get certified, take the Personal Threat and Reward Profile (PTP), and book personalized 1:1 coaching at brainwiseenterprises.com.

What you get in this conversation:

• Daniel Daneshvar's 2026 BMJ study, and why 25% is the floor rather than the estimate
• The donation bias problem, and how the same data supports a ceiling near 97%
• The 2022 Glasgow study on former Scottish rugby internationals and their 2.67 times higher neurodegenerative disease risk
• A 2025 meta-analysis placing CTE prevalence at 64.7% in rugby and 53% in American football
• The 2019 NEJM soccer study and the 3.5 times higher rate of death from neurodegenerative disease
• Bobby Hull, stage 2 CTE, and what the hockey data adds
• Tau explained as scaffolding: how impact makes it sticky, how it clumps, how it spreads
• Why subconcussive hits, not diagnosed concussions, appear to drive the cascade
• Youth heading restrictions from the FA and US Soccer, and whether they go far enough
• The informed consent question the BMJ editorial puts to every contact sport

If this helps you think differently about how your brain works, rate and review wherever you listen, then follow, comment, and share at @mybrainwisecoach.

00:00 The Deal No Neuroscience Jargon

02:09 The BMJ Study One In Four

03:13 Why Brain Bank Data Is Biased

04:07 What CTE Is Four Stages

05:34 Rugby Players Neurodegenerative Disease Risk

06:36 Hockey Boxing And Bobby Hull

07:16 Soccer Heading And Dementia Risk

09:34 The Technical Version Of CTE

10:53 Tau Explained As Brain Scaffolding

12:51 Subconcussive Hits The Silent Damage

14:28 Should Kids Head A Football

15:42 What Leagues Are Actually Doing

16:40 Informed Consent And Tobacco Parallel

17:55 The Scaffolding Summary Field Guide

19:11 Ten Thousand Small Hits

• Daneshvar, D. H., Mez, J., Nowinski, C. J., Cantu, R. C., et al. (2026). Prevalence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy among former National Football League players. The BMJ, August 25, 2026. https://concussionandcte.org/nfl-cte-prevalence-study/
• Russell, E. R., Mackay, D. F., Lyall, D., Stewart, K., MacLean, J. A., Robson, J., Pell, J. P., & Stewart, W. (2022). Neurodegenerative disease risk among former international rugby union players. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 93(12), 1262–1268. https://doi.org/10.1136/jnnp-2022-329675
• Qi, et al. (2025). Prevalence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in athletes with repetitive head impacts: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 35, e70047. https://doi.org/10.1111/sms.70047
• Mackay, D. F., Russell, E. R., Stewart, K., MacLean, J. A., Pell, J. P., & Stewart, W. (2019). Neurodegenerative disease mortality among former professional soccer players. New England Journal of Medicine, 381(19), 1801–1808. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa1908483
• Ling, H., Morris, H. R., Neal, J. W., Lees, A. J., Hardy, J., Holton, J. L., Revesz, T., & Williams, D. D. R. (2017). Mixed pathologies including chronic traumatic encephalopathy account for dementia in retired association football (soccer) players. Acta Neuropathologica, 133(3), 337–352. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00401-017-1680-3
• Boston University CTE Center (2023). CTE diagnosed in 345 of 376 former NFL players. https://www.bumc.bu.edu/camed/2023/02/06/researchers-find-cte-in-345-of-376-former-nfl-players-studied/
• Concussion Legacy Foundation and Boston University CTE Center (2025). Hockey Hall of Famer Bobby Hull diagnosed with CTE. https://www.bu.edu/cte/2025/02/19/hockey-hall-of-famer-bobby-hull-diagnosed-with-cte

You have carried a belief about yourself since childhood that someone else handed you, and you have probably never tested it. Phil Dixon has spent years watching one of those beliefs come apart in about ninety seconds, using nothing more than an orange and a single change of instruction. This episode walks you through exactly what happens in the brain when that belief falls, and why the mechanism applies to far more than catching.

Learn more, get certified, take the Personal Threat Profile, and work with us one on one at brainwiseenterprises.com.

What you get in this one:

• Why "I can't catch" lives in explicit declarative memory rather than in your motor system
• How the prefrontal cortex retrieves the identity statement and triggers the threat response before your hand ever moves
• The one instruction that removes the task, occupies the prefrontal cortex, and frees the visual motor pathway to run clean
• The woman with vision in one eye who was told her whole life that she had no depth perception, and what happened when she watched the dimple instead
• Monocular depth cues, optical expansion, motion parallax, and the cerebellum's predictive model
• How the audience does real neurological work by flipping the protection driver into the participation driver
• The seven-step field guide for running the demonstration yourself
• What the tears actually are when a lifelong belief gets falsified in public

Rate and review us wherever you listen, and follow @mybrainwisecoach across platforms. Your review helps another BrainWise friend find the show.

00:02 The Moment A Belief Breaks

01:21 Welcome And Neuroscience Of Sports

02:14 Choosing The Volunteer Who Cannot Catch

03:05 What The Belief Looks Like Neurologically

04:45 Where The Belief Came From

06:21 The Orange And The Dimple

07:24 Removing The Task From The Brain

08:20 Why The Motor System Runs Free

09:36 Escalating Throws Build Witnessed Evidence

11:03 How The Audience Does Neurological Work

12:18 The Woman With One Eye

15:29 A Belief Installed As Medical Fact

16:46 Why People Cry After Catching

18:12 Seven Step Field Guide

21:37 What The Orange Actually Proves

22:41 Practitioner Guide And Close

Your friend is quiet at lunch, and by evening you are certain she is upset with you. A landmark study out of Columbia, published in Nature Medicine this month, traces that exact experience down to a stalled process inside a single region of your hippocampus. Phil and I read the paper carefully so you can understand what it actually shows and what it does not.

Learn more, get certified, take your Personal Threat Profile, and book 1:1 coaching at brainwiseenterprises.com.

You'll hear:

• How the Columbia team profiled roughly 495,000 hippocampal cells from depressed and non-depressed donors
• Why adult hippocampal neurogenesis stalls in depression rather than stopping outright
• What pattern separation is, and how the dentate gyrus keeps similar memories from bleeding together
• Why impaired pattern separation makes neutral events arrive already feeling like threats
• How the BrainWise protection driver gets calibrated against old rejections instead of current events
• The unresolved scientific debate over whether adult humans make new neurons at all
• Sorrells 2018, Boldrini 2018, and the March 2026 Nature multiomic study
• Maura Dupont's vision of reclassifying depression by molecular features, the way oncology reclassified cancer
• Why roughly a third of patients do not respond adequately to standard antidepressants
• What exercise and antidepressants actually do to hippocampal neurogenesis

Rate, review, and follow at @mybrainwisecoach so more people find this work.

00:00 The Lunch That Felt Wrong

01:55 Welcome And Episode Roadmap

02:59 Inside The Columbia Hippocampus Study

04:15 How Adult Neurogenesis Actually Works

06:28 Pattern Separation Explained

07:54 Why Neutral Events Feel Threatening

10:06 Protection Driver And Threat Profile

11:16 The Adult Neurogenesis Debate

14:30 Reclassifying Depression Like Cancer

17:29 Exercise Antidepressants And Neurogenesis

18:48 What Depression Actually Is

20:17 Support Resources And Close

Peng, M. S., et al. (2026). Dysregulated adult hippocampal neurogenesis in major depressive disorder. Nature Medicine. Open access.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-026-04571-8

Sorrells, S. F., et al. (2018). Human hippocampal neurogenesis drops sharply in children to undetectable levels in adults. Nature, 555, 377-381.

https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25975

Boldrini, M., et al. (2018). Human hippocampal neurogenesis persists throughout aging. Cell Stem Cell, 22(4), 589-599.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stem.2018.03.015

Tosoni, G., et al. (2023). Mapping human adult hippocampal neurogenesis with single-cell transcriptomics: Reconciling controversy or fueling the debate? Neuron.

https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(23)00206-4

Disouky, A., et al. (2026). Human hippocampal neurogenesis in adulthood, ageing and Alzheimer's disease. Nature.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10169-4

Krotkova, O. A., et al. (2025). Delayed, transient, lateralized deficits in pattern separation and pattern completion after focal hippocampal irradiation in humans. Scientific Reports, 15, 43846.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-29852-z

Pereira, A. C., et al. (2007). An in vivo correlate of exercise-induced neurogenesis in the adult dentate gyrus. PNAS, 104(13), 5638-5643.

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0611721104

Erickson, K. I., et al. (2011). Exercise training increases size of hippocampus and improves memory. PNAS, 108(7), 3017-3022.

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1015950108

Columbia University Irving Medical Center press release:

https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/depression-stalls-formation-new-brain-cells

You take a personality assessment, read the results, and think yes, that's me. Six months later you land in the exact situation it warned you about and respond exactly the way it predicted, having changed nothing. Phil and Cole unpack the neuroscience behind that gap, and why a description of what you're like is a fundamentally different measurement from a map of what your brain is most alert to.

Visit https://brainwiseenterprises.com to learn more, get certified, take your Personal Threat Profile, and book personalized 1:1 coaching.

What you get in this conversation:

• The lexical hypothesis and the 1936 dictionary study that produced the Big Five
• Costa and McCrae's NEO Personality Inventory and the 60-item NEO-FFI
• What a personality trait actually measures, and why traits hold steady across situations
• Big Five predictive validity, from conscientiousness and job performance to neuroticism and stress
• Why a neurological sensitivity is a different kind of measurement from a trait
• The Personal Threat and Reward Profile's five drivers: protection, participation, prediction, purpose, and pleasure
• Four coaching cases where the Big Five alone misreads the client, including the introvert with a high participation driver and the low-agreeableness client with a hidden belonging need
• Why two people with identical neuroticism scores need completely different coaching conversations
• The double edge principle and the developmental calibration of threat sensitivity

Rate and review the show wherever you listen, then follow @mybrainwisecoach on every platform.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Why Personality Assessments Don't Change Behavior

01:21 Welcome To My BrainWise Coach

02:28 Lexical Hypothesis And Big Five Origins

04:33 What Personality Traits Actually Measure

06:15 Traits Versus Neurological Threat Sensitivity

07:45 The Personal Threat And Reward Profile

09:48 Four Cases Where Frameworks Diverge

15:16 What Each Framework Uniquely Gives You

17:48 Field Guide Summary And Close

REFERENCES

Allport, G. W., and Odbert, H. S. (1936). Trait-Names: A Psycho-Lexical Study. Psychological Monographs, 47(1). https://doi.org/10.1037/h0093360

Costa, P. T., Jr., and McCrae, R. R. (1992). Revised NEO Personality Inventory and NEO Five-Factor Inventory Professional Manual. Psychological Assessment Resources.

Barrick, M. R., and Mount, M. K. (1991). The Big Five Personality Dimensions and Job Performance: A Meta-Analysis. Personnel Psychology, 44(1), 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1991.tb00688.x

McCrae, R. R., Terracciano, A., and 78 Members of the Personality Profiles of Cultures Project (2005). Personality Profiles of Cultures: Aggregate Personality Traits. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89(3), 407-425. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.89.3.407

CONNECT

Website and Personal Threat Profile: https://brainwiseenterprises.com

Podcast: https://brainwiseenterprises.com/podcast

Everywhere else: @mybrainwisecoach

#Neuroscience #BigFive #PersonalityTest #Leadership #ExecutiveCoaching #MyBrainWiseCoach

A visionary founder shares a brilliant idea, someone asks a reasonable clarifying question, and the meeting falls apart. You have probably watched this happen, or lived it from one side or the other. Cole Bastian and Phil Dixon explain why the pattern is neurologically predictable rather than anyone's fault, and hand you seven tools that work with the founder's brain instead of against it.

Learn more, get certified, take your Personal Threat Profile (PTP), and book personalized 1:1 coaching at brainwiseenterprises.com.

What you get:

• Why high openness to experience and reduced latent inhibition let visionary founders see connections other people miss
• The schema problem, and why a founder's idea feels complete to them and incomplete to everyone else
• The curse of knowledge, first documented by Camerer, Loewenstein, and Weber in 1989
• How the protection driver turns a clarifying question into a perceived attack on competence
• Why the team's prediction and participation drivers make speaking up feel socially risky
• Seven tools: confirmation questions, extension questions, the prototype sketch, the yes and opening, the designated translator, structured idea capture, and the PTP-informed pre-meeting frame
• Why the team member who does not understand the idea is your map, not your obstacle

If this episode helps you think differently about how your brain works, rate and review us wherever you listen, and follow @mybrainwisecoach everywhere.

CHAPTERS

00:00 The Joy And The Terror
01:42 Welcome To My BrainWise Coach
02:51 High Openness And Latent Inhibition
04:13 The Schema Problem Explained
05:10 The Curse Of Knowledge
06:02 The Clarification Trap Explained
07:11 Why The Team Nods Along
08:51 How The Failure Mode Accumulates
09:29 Tool One Confirmation Not Clarification
11:05 Tool Two Extension Not Evaluation
12:00 Tool Three The Prototype Sketch
13:00 Tool Four The Yes And Opening
13:50 Tool Five The Designated Translator
15:07 Tool Six Structured Idea Capture
16:01 Tool Seven PTP Pre-Meeting Frame
17:27 Phil's Single Most Important Point
18:51 White Paper And Closing Thoughts

REFERENCES AND MATERIALS DISCUSSED

Camerer, C., Loewenstein, G., and Weber, M. (1989). The Curse of Knowledge in Economic Settings: An Experimental Analysis. Journal of Political Economy, 97(5), 1232 to 1254. https://doi.org/10.1086/261651

Carson, S. H., Peterson, J. B., and Higgins, D. M. (2003). Decreased Latent Inhibition Is Associated With Increased Creative Achievement in High-Functioning Individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(3), 499 to 506. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.3.499

Peterson, J. B., and Carson, S. (2000). Latent Inhibition and Openness to Experience in a High-Achieving Student Population. Personality and Individual Differences, 28(2), 323 to 332.

Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology. Cambridge University Press.

Felsman, P., Gunawardena, S., and Seifert, C. M. (2020). Improv Experience Promotes Divergent Thinking, Uncertainty Tolerance, and Affective Well-Being. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 35.

Lewis, C., and Lovatt, P. J. (2013). Breaking Away From Set Patterns of Thinking: Improvisation and Divergent Thinking. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 9, 46 to 58.

Your best ideas rarely show up at your desk. They arrive in the shower, on a run, in the car, at the exact moment you stop trying to solve the problem. A brand-new Emory study explains why, and the answer is that the most sophisticated part of your brain is often the thing standing in your way.

Learn more, get certified, take the Personal Threat Profile (PTP), and book personalized 1:1 coaching at brainwiseenterprises.com.

Cole and Phil walk you through:

• The 2026 Emory study in Science Advances by Kai Lu and Robert Liu, showing that silencing the medial prefrontal cortex lets mice learn a better strategy three times faster
• Why the prefrontal cortex runs a "win-stay" system that conserves old patterns instead of breaking them
• Charles Limb and Allen Braun's 2008 jazz improvisation fMRI study and the dorsolateral prefrontal deactivation it found
• Siyuan Liu's 2012 freestyle rap study reproducing the same neural fingerprint
• Arne Dietrich's transient hypofrontality hypothesis and what hard exercise does to your evaluating brain
• The 2026 Frontiers review on flow states and default mode to executive network connectivity
• Right temporal alpha and the neuroscience of the aha moment
• Why creative generation and creative evaluation need separate calendar blocks
• The prediction driver in the Personal Threat and Reward Profile, and why high-certainty brains feel this most
• The cognitive mechanism that makes psychological safety a creativity intervention, not just a culture one

Rate, review, and follow the show at @mybrainwisecoach. It moves the episode in front of the leaders who need it.

00:00 When Your Best Thinking Happens
01:52 Welcome To Neuroscience Digest
02:54 The Emory Mouse Maze Study
04:17 Silencing The Prefrontal Cortex
05:19 The Poker Player Analogy
06:10 The Mouse Model Caveat
07:20 Jazz Improvisation In The Scanner
08:34 Freestyle Rap Shows The Same Pattern
09:18 Transient Hypofrontality And Hard Exercise
10:23 Exercise Intensity And Divergent Thinking
11:16 What Flow States Reveal
12:31 The Aha Moment Mechanism
13:21 Why Four Studies Converge
14:55 Generating Versus Evaluating Ideas
16:03 The Prediction Driver Connection
17:11 Stop Brainstorming At Peak Focus
18:09 Exercise As A Cognitive Strategy
19:07 Psychological Safety And Creative Output
20:23 The Single Most Important Point
21:50 Closing Thoughts And Sign-Off

Lu, K., Wong, K. T., Yang, C. J., Zhou, L. N., Shi, Y. T., Costello, M. L., & Liu, R. C. (2026). Neural competition between prefrontal and auditory cortex constrains novel sound strategy learning. Science Advances. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aeb3005

Limb, C. J., & Braun, A. R. (2008). Neural substrates of spontaneous musical performance: An fMRI study of jazz improvisation. PLoS ONE, 3(2), e1679. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0001679

Liu, S., Chow, H. M., Xu, Y., Erkkinen, M. G., Swett, K. E., Eagle, M. W., Rizik-Baer, D. A., & Braun, A. R. (2012). Neural correlates of lyrical improvisation: An fMRI study of freestyle rap. Scientific Reports, 2, 834. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep00834

Dietrich, A. (2003). Functional neuroanatomy of altered states of consciousness: The transient hypofrontality hypothesis. Consciousness and Cognition, 12(2), 231-256. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1053-8100(02)00046-6

Maleki, M., Ahmadpour, A., Moraru, A., & Memmert, D. (2024). Acute aerobic exercise and creative thinking: Comparison of transient hypofrontality state and strength model of self-control's theoretical predictions. Retos, 58. https://doi.org/10.47197/retos.v58.103685

Barnett, K., & Vasiu, F. (2026). Enhanced functional connectivity between the default mode network and executive control network during flow states may facilitate creativity and emotional regulation. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 19, 1690499. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2025.1690499

You walk in after a brutal day, and before you say a word your dog is already there, doing the specific thing they do when something is wrong. You assume you are projecting. Four peer-reviewed studies say you are not.

Learn more, get certified, take the Personal Threat Profile (PTP), and book 1:1 coaching at brainwiseenterprises.com.

• Hernández-Pérez and Cuaya's 2026 iScience study at the University of Vienna, scanning awake pet dogs in an fMRI as they viewed human faces
• Why a human smile lights up the caudate nucleus, the dog's reward center, and the caveat the authors raise themselves
• Wilson, Campbell, Petzel and Reeve at Queen's University Belfast, where four dogs identified human stress by scent alone at 93.75% accuracy
• How your stress chemistry changes your breath and sweat within four minutes, and what that means for service dogs and panic attacks
• Koskela and colleagues on heart rate variability synchrony between dogs and owners, and why the dog appears to be leading
• Sundman's finding that long-term cortisol mirroring survives when you control for shared exercise
• Nagasawa's oxytocin gaze loop and Larry Young's feedback model of social bonding
• Where the participation, pleasure, and protection drivers show up inside the dog-human bond

Rate, review, and follow @mybrainwisecoach wherever you listen. Your review is what helps other people find the show.

00:00 Your Dog Already Knows Something

01:03 Four Studies On Dog Cognition

01:46 Awake Dogs Inside An fMRI

03:01 Happy Faces Light Reward Centers

03:55 Separating Anger Fear And Sadness

05:26 What Brain Scans Cannot Prove

06:16 Can A Dog Smell Stress

07:54 Ninety Three Percent Scent Accuracy

09:25 Service Dogs And Panic Attacks

09:58 Heart Rate Variability Synchrony Explained

11:36 Long Term Cortisol Mirroring Owners

12:24 The Oxytocin Loop Both Ways

13:19 Three BrainWise Drivers Explained

15:35 The Practical Takeaway For Owners

16:21 Closing Thoughts And Sign Off

• Hernández-Pérez, R., Concha, L., Andics, A., Bernal-Gamboa, R., & Cuaya, L. V. (2026). Dog brain representations of human facial expressions: Encoding happiness and differentiating specific negative expressions. iScience. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2026.116900 — Published August 7, 2026. First author Raúl Hernández-Pérez, senior author Laura V. Cuaya, University of Vienna.
• Wilson, C., Campbell, K., Petzel, Z., & Reeve, C. (2022). Dogs can discriminate between human baseline and psychological stress condition odours. PLOS ONE, 17(9), e0274143. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274143
• Koskela, A., Törnqvist, H., Somppi, S., Tiira, K., Kykyri, V.-L., Hänninen, L., Kujala, J., Nagasawa, M., Kikusui, T., & Kujala, M. V. (2024). Behavioral and emotional co-modulation during dog–owner interaction measured by heart rate variability and activity. Scientific Reports, 14, 25201. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-76831-x
• Sundman, A.-S., et al. (2019). Long-term stress levels are synchronized in dogs and their owners. Scientific Reports, 9, 7391. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-43851-x
• Nagasawa, M., et al. (2015). Oxytocin-gaze positive loop and the coevolution of human–dog bonds. Science, 348(6232), 333–336. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1261022
• Stoeckel, L. E., Palley, L. S., Gollub, R. L., Niemi, S. M., & Evins, A. E. (2014). Patterns of brain activation when mothers view their own child and dog: An fMRI study. PLOS ONE, 9(10), e107205. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0107205
• Young, L. J. (1967–2024), Emory University. Founder of the Center for Translational Social Neuroscience and the Silvio O. Conte Center for Oxytocin and Social Cognition. See obituary: Larry J. Young (1967–2024), Neuron. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2024.05.014

In 2012 Amy Cuddy tells a TED audience that two minutes of open posture rewires your hormones. Three years later a bigger study finds nothing, and the original lead author publicly abandons her own finding. The question buried under that wreckage finally gets asked properly.

Learn more, get certified, take the Personal Threat Profile (PTP), and book 1:1 coaching at brainwiseenterprises.com.

• Carney, Cuddy and Yap's 2010 power posing study and what it actually claimed
• Eva Ranehill's 2015 replication in Psychological Science and why the hormone effects vanished
• Dana Carney's 2016 statement abandoning power pose effects
• The replication crisis in psychology and what it repaired
• Demand characteristics, and why telling someone to pose invalidates the test
• Veenstra, Schneider and Koole on stooped posture, mood recovery and negative thoughts
• Interoception, and how your brain reads your body as live evidence
• The 2026 McGill study by Wainio-Theberge and Armony in the British Journal of Psychology
• Manipulating posture through desk height instead of instruction
• Neck angle measured objectively from video tracking software
• Upright posture, smarter risk-taking on the balloon task, and higher pride
• The protection driver inside the BrainWise framework
• Workplace ergonomics as a quiet input to your mood and your decisions

Rate, review and follow @mybrainwisecoach so more people find the show.

00:00 The Power Pose Origin Story

02:14 Welcome To My BrainWise Coach

02:57 What Carney Cuddy And Yap Claimed

04:34 Why The Power Pose Spread

05:35 The 2015 Replication That Failed

06:38 Dana Carney Retracts Her Finding

07:48 The Question That Survived The Collapse

08:38 The Demand Characteristics Problem Explained

09:35 Veenstra Posture And Mood Recovery

11:22 Interoception And Body Brain Signals

12:19 The McGill Study Design Explained

13:59 Measuring Neck Angle From Video

15:31 Upright Posture And Better Risk

16:57 Protection Driver And BrainWise Framework

17:54 Workplace Ergonomics Field Guide

18:48 Why Science Correcting Itself Matters

19:44 Close And Final Takeaway

• Carney, D. R., Cuddy, A. J. C., & Yap, A. J. (2010). Power posing: Brief nonverbal displays affect neuroendocrine levels and risk tolerance. Psychological Science, 21(10), 1363–1368. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610383437

• Cuddy, A. (2012). Your body language may shape who you are. TEDGlobal 2012. https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_may_shape_who_you_are
• Ranehill, E., Dreber, A., Johannesson, M., Leiberg, S., Sul, S., & Weber, R. A. (2015). Assessing the robustness of power posing: No effect on hormones and risk tolerance in a large sample of men and women. Psychological Science, 26(5), 653–656. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614553946
• Carney, D. R. (2016). My position on "Power Poses." Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. https://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/dana_carney/pdf_my%20position%20on%20power%20poses.pdf
• Veenstra, L., Schneider, I. K., & Koole, S. L. (2017). Embodied mood regulation: The impact of body posture on mood recovery, negative thoughts, and mood-congruent recall. Cognition and Emotion, 31(7), 1361–1376. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2016.1225003
• Wainio-Theberge, S., & Armony, J. (2026). Manipulating posture implicitly through environmental constraints influences mood and risk-taking behaviour. British Journal of Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.70083

Three peer-reviewed studies land in Phil's inbox on the same morning, and for once he reads all three on the spot. They share no theme, but they share something underneath. Each one found the brain already doing something it has always done, and we simply had no way to see it until the tools caught up.

Learn more, get certified, take the Personal Threat and Reward Profile (PTP), and book personalized 1:1 coaching at brainwiseenterprises.com.

Here is what you get:

• How a Cleveland Clinic foundation model trained on 10,000 overnight sleep studies found five patient risk groups hiding in discarded polysomnography data
• Why the apnea-hypopnea index compresses eight hours of physiology into one number, and why that number works better for men than for women
• The glymphatic system, sleep, and Alzheimer's protein clearance
• The McGill posture study from Wainio-Theberge and Armony that changed the furniture instead of telling anyone how to sit, then measured neck angle on video
• Why upright posture produced more effective risk-taking on the Balloon Analogue Risk Task and stronger feelings of pride
• Embodied cognition, interoception, and what your desk height is doing to your decisions
• The Nagoya University orexin study in PNAS, and why motivation behaves like a gate rather than an accelerator
• What a ceiling on effort means for the purpose driver in your Personal Threat and Reward Profile

If this helps you think differently about how your brain works, rate and review us wherever you listen, and follow @mybrainwisecoach.

00:00 Fourteen Studies Before Coffee

00:56 Introducing The Morning Inbox Format

01:40 AI Reads Discarded Sleep Data

02:51 How AHI Throws Data Away

03:28 Five Hidden Risk Groups

04:36 Glymphatic Clearance And Alzheimer's Risk

05:21 Why AHI Underserves Women

06:12 McGill Posture Study Explained

07:19 Letting The Furniture Do It

08:22 Upright Posture And Smarter Risk

09:39 Embodied Cognition And Interoception

10:30 Nagoya Orexin Motivation Study

12:12 Turning Motivation Up Does Nothing

13:58 The Purpose Driver Has A Ceiling

14:59 What Ties All Three Together

16:35 Show Notes And Sign-Off

References

1. Cleveland Clinic / IBM / Yale / University of Washington. (2026). A foundation model for sleep-based risk stratification and clinical outcomes. Nature Communications. Senior author Reena Mehra. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-75326-9
2. Wainio-Theberge, S., & Armony, J. (2026). Manipulating posture implicitly through environmental constraints influences mood and risk-taking behaviour. British Journal of Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.70083
3. Dong, Y., Rahaman, S. M., Zhu, W., et al. (2026). Reward prediction is encoded by orexin neuron activity during motivated behavior. PNAS, 123(27), e2520677123. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2520677123