Every thought you have causes neurochemical changes, some temporary and some lasting. For instance, when people consciously practice gratitude, they get a surge of rewarding neurotransmitters, like dopamine, and experience a general alerting and brightening of the mind, probably correlated with more of the neurochemical norepinephrine.

In one study, college students deeply in love were shown pictures of their sweeties, and their brains become more active in the caudate nucleus, a reward center, giving them that in-love swoon. When they stopped looking at the pictures, their reward centers went back to sleep.

What flows through your mind also sculpts your brain in permanent ways. Think of your mind as the movement of information through your nervous system, which on a physical level is all the electrical signals running back and forth, most of which is happening below your conscious awareness. As a thought travels through your brain, neurons fire together in distinctive ways based on the specific information being handled, and those patterns of neural activity actually change your neural structure.

Busy regions of the brain start making new connections with each other, and existing synapses, the connections between neurons, that experience more activity get stronger, increasingly sensitive, and start building more receptors. New synapses are also formed.

London Cab Drivers’ Brains Changed

One example of this is the well-known London cab driver studies which showed that the longer someone had been driving a taxi, the larger their hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in visual-spatial memory. Their brains literally expanded to accommodate the cognitive demands of navigating London’s tangle of streets. Research has also proven the numerous benefits of meditation for your brain and shown that meditation produces measurable changes, from altering grey matter volume to reduced activity in the “me” centers of the brain to enhanced connectivity between brain regions.

Take care of your mind, your body will thank you. Take care of your body, your mind will thank you.