The hidden brain in your skin | Claudia Aguirre | TEDxUCLA

We have all heard of the phrase “beauty is skin deep,” suggesting skin has a rather superficial role in who we are. But what if that is not true? Claudia Aguirre tells us about the "hidden brain" in our skin and the surprising things it reveals about our mental health.

Claudia Aguirre is a neuroscientist, skincare expert, spokesperson and lecturer, UCLA Alumni, and TEDMED contributor.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

So, take a look at these behaviors:

Does Math

Gets High

Gets Stressed Out

And Rocks Out To Music

What's the first that comes to mind?

Does it sound like -

I heard "college," yeah.

(Laughter)

I was thinking more of a teenager.

It does sound like a teenager.

But what if I told you that your skin -

take a look at it,

that very colorful sheath
covering your body -

that your skin can perform
all of these behaviors.

Now, before I give you the "skinny"
on the teenage-like behavior of skin,

I want to show you how I got to examining
the radical behavior of skin.

It started during the economic recession,

which is where I found myself
in my first job -

an unlikely time for a first job.

So how did this happen?

Well, there was an alarming trend:

There was a rise in skin sensitivity.

And that meant more people
in the dermatologist's office

and more people in the facialist's chair.

And there was a rise in skin conditions
like inflammatory conditions,

like eczema and psoriasis.

And we didn't know exactly why,

but a lot of people
in the industry thought

maybe it was the rise in stress;

maybe it was a lifestyle thing;
maybe it was pollution.

But I wanted to know how.

So when I started working
in the skincare industry,

I asked myself:

How does something
as globally extreme like the economy,

how does that translate
to something like a skin rash?

You see, I'm a neuroscientist,
and in studying the skin,

I found that there was just as much
neuroscience in studying the skin

as there was in studying the brain.

And that was actually surprising to me.

So I want to show you some stories today
that are going to explain

how this connection
between the mind and body interact

and hopefully surprise you
with some of the ideas that came about

in understanding the connection
between the brain and the skin.

So I want to share with you first
some examples of the curious ways

in which our minds
are represented on our exterior.

This is Jack.

Jack is a veteran pilot.

He has been through it all.

He's been through wind gusts
and locked landing gear.

He can keep his cool
in just about any situation.

But every time he flies
over a particular canyon,

his forehead breaks out
in herpes blisters,

every single time
he flies over that canyon.

Naturally, he goes to the doctor,
gets a medicine,

and it treats his symptoms,

but it just keeps coming back
every time he flies over that canyon.

And this is Sophie.

Sophie is a senior in high school,
and she's a dancer.

And, of course,
as any senior in high school,

she's trying to decide
what she's going to do with her life.

"Am I going to go to college?"

"Will I continue to dance?"

"Will I dance in college?"

"What college am I going to go to?"

So as she battles with her indecision,

she develops a wart
on the bottom of her foot.

Of course, like Jack, she goes
to try to get some medical treatment,

and it does treat the symptoms
here and there,

but it always comes back.

She can't get rid of this wart.

And in the end, the wart
makes the decision for her.

She can no longer pursue dancing
because of the pain in her foot.

And this is Danny.

Danny is ten years old,

and he was born with eczema,

so he was used to the medications,

he was used to the rashes
that came and went,

but the medications always kept
his skin rashes at bay.

But one day, they stopped working.

The medicine was no longer good.

The medicine stopped working

the day his mother
tragically died in a car accident.

Cases like these
are not few and far between.

In fact, they simply highlight
the interdependence

between our emotional state
and our body state.

A blush inadvertently
reveals our mind's secrets.

Goose bumps warn us
when something is wrong.

And we feel crawling skin
when we're paralyzed with fear.

Our skin has the machinery,
the same machinery as the brain.

And it's only been a decade or so
of research that shows

that the skin has the most intricate
and sophisticated systems

that were once under
the sole domain of the brain.

So for instance, the stress axis -

the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis -

found in our central nervous system
is also found in the skin,

and it's theorized
that this stress pathway

actually evolved in the skin first
to avoid pathogens from entering the skin.

But stress is more than skin deep.

You don't have to know
anything about this man

to know that something happened to him

between the first picture
and the last picture on the right.

This is a photograph from a series
by photographer Claire Felicie,

who took picture of Dutch marines

before, during, and after
deployment to Afghanistan.

You can see the changes from
the first picture to the last picture,

and this is only in one year.

This is not due to the effects
of normal chronological aging.

So whether it's war, divorce,
losing your job, any stressful situation,

this often shows up on our skin first.

But we so often dismiss that
as unimportant and superficial.

And when we miss these cues

that our bodies are desperately
trying to tell us,

it's tantamount to repressing emotion.

So I want you to close
your eyes for a second

and imagine that you're blind.

Okay.

Now you can open your eyes,

and plug your nose,

and imagine that you can't smell.

Okay, I think we can all kind of do that.

Now, sit there with your bottoms
firmly pressed against the chair,

feet flat on the ground,

and imagine your can't feel.

That's pretty tough.

So what is that?

Our sense of touch begins in the womb.

It's nearly impossible to not feel,

even when you try.

So touch began in the womb;
it's the first sensory system to develop.

And as psychology has taught us,
Maslow taught us that monkeys,

in fact, baby monkeys

preferred mechanical mothers
covered in terry cloth.

But today we know
that scientific research is showing

that this particular
mother's touch, this caress,

actually changes
her child's epigenetic programming.

So that kind of research shows us

that there has to be
something more to this touch,

in particular, this gentle touch.

So recently, Swedish neuroscientists

discovered a new set
of nerve fibers in the skin

that respond to only
the most gentle of touches.

To give you a little bit of perspective,

in the body, the nerve impulses
can outrace a Ferrari.

That means they can travel at speeds
faster than 250 miles per hour.

That's pretty fast.

But these touch fibers in the skin,
they're slow, they take their time.

They travel at a leisurely stroll
of about two miles per hour

to reach the brain.

And, unlike their quick signals
that reach the somatosensory cortex

and tell us what we've touched,
the details of what we've touched,

these slow signals travel
to a different part of the brain

that processes emotions

and tells us what we feel when we touch.

And this part of the brain is called
the posterior insular cortex.

And so we know that this gentle touch

gives us a sense of who we are,

and it also gives us a sense
of who we are in the greater world.

So if you stimulate
another part of the brain

called the angular gyrus -

this part of the brain
is also stimulated by gentle touch -

if you stimulate this in somebody,

you will trigger an out-of-body
experience in that person.

And that means that the gentle touch fiber

is somehow reflected
in our personal sense of self,

and our sense of culture
and who we are in the community.

And so we wear our culture on our hands.

And on to my final point -

and I saved this for last
because I thought it was a cool story.

So, let me tell you a little bit
about touch and sound.

The story started about 15 years ago,

and there was a mixer
for new faculty at Rice University.

And at Rice University,
there were new faculty,

some of them were from all departments,
and there was a neuroscientist.

And the neuroscients struck up
a conversation with a philosopher

about things like
the fallability of science

and the way that the brain
organizes and orchestrates

all of the flood of sensory information
that goes into the brain

and puts it into a coherent perception.

You know, simple things like that.

So it turns out that the philosopher
had suffered a stroke,

and that had left her
with a strange mixing of her senses.

And at this point,
the neuroscientist said,

"Yeah, let's look at your brain."

So in one experiment,
she sat with her hands on the table

and two rings,

and the rings were dotted with electrodes.

And these electrodes
were transmitting some electrical pulses

that followed a beep or a tone.

And she had these
in each of her middle fingers.

So she had her hands down,

and she was to hear the tone

and then feel a little tingle
on either hand.

And she was to say
which hand she felt the tingle in.

But here's the rub:

She kept feeling tingles

even when they didn't deliver
any electrical shock.

And so, of course, the neuroscientist
was very confused and said,

"We shock; she feels.

We don't shock; she still feels.

What is going on?"

So after a while, and I mean a while,
I think it was over a year,

he kind of had an idea:

Could she possibly be reacting to the tone
that came before the shock?

And so he did another
very scientific experiment.

He simply asked her.

"Do you feel sounds?

Can you feel and sense sounds?"

And she said, "Oh yeah. All the time.

Ever since the stroke."

(Laughter)

So, fast forward ten years,

and Dr. Rowe's research found
that her mixing of senses

was due to the fact that her auditory area
had gone over the somatosensory cortex,

which was its neighbor in the brain.

And so her sound
and touch senses were mixed.

And so that shows us
that, of course, there's brain plasticity,

but that there's a very deep connection
between sound and touch.

In fact, some scientists today believe

that the sense of hearing actually evolved
from the sense of touch.

Think about the hair cells
in your inner ear.

So, imagine what it feels like

to sense so many sounds
in such a loud and busy world.

How did she deal with it?

Well, she took up the bass guitar.

Because the soft, deep sounds
felt like a massage over her body.

Not too long ago,

we thought that the brain function
was hard-wired, localized,

and that damage to the brain
was pretty much permanent.

We know that's not true today.

The paradigm shift that occurred
was neuroplasticity in the brain.

And skin is this very thin
and seemingly disposable tissue.

But I want to flip this inside out.

If the brain has plasticity,
and if the skin is like the brain,

could the skin also have plasticity?

And does that mean
that the skin has untapped potential

that we are not aware of?

Could we sense extrasensory
things like infrared through our skin?

Actually, mouse research
suggests that we can.

And could we maybe get superhuman hearing
by sending vibrations to our fingertips?

Forget the Apple watch;
your skin has a clock of its own,

and it can keep time.

We actually have
an incredible, wearable sensor

that can tell time,

and it's a shield and a communicator,

and we don't even know it.

So, how did these stories end?

Now, they all came
from different walks of life,

and they did share one common theme:

They had one problem that was unresolved.

So their unresolved emotion
led to something on the skin.

And fortunately for these people,
who are real people, by the way,

they're patients,

some of them are patients
of a psychologist in Boston,

Jack, for example,
went to see a hypnotherapist.

And in that, he revealed that his friend
had actually died in that canyon.

But his friend was a pilot,

and Jack was supposed to be
the one flying that day,

but he called in sick,

and instead his friend
flew over that canyon,

and he died.

So Jack felt extremely, extremely guilty.

And it wasn't until he was able
to speak about his feelings in this way

that his breakouts on his forehead
never came back.

Sophie also underwent hypnosis

and revealed that her wart
had been giving voice to something

that she was afraid to do herself,

which was to say,
"I no longer want to dance."

And after she understood that,
her wart went away for good.

And Danny went to see
a psychodermatologist,

and he also had
a different form of therapy,

cognitive behavioral therapy,

and through this he was able to battle
with the fact that his mother had died

and that made his skin worse,

and after the therapy,
three weeks later, his lesions healed.

So conventional medicine did not
treat these people in the right way,

in a way where
they fully, fully recovered.

Conventional medicine
treated the symptoms for a little bit,

but it did nothing for the long term.

Now, we can continue
to put out little fires here and there,

but it's not until
you find the source of the problem

where you can really
get rid of your issue.

So, I love the idea
of the hummingbird effect.

The hummingbird effect
is something where an idea in one place

strikes another idea,
completely unrelated sometimes,

in a totally different field.

And in this case, do ideas
and innovations unfold in this matter,

and if they do, does the idea
that the skin has a brain of its own

unfold in this way,

and could that trigger
new discoveries in other areas?

Especially if we know that the skin
could have untapped potential

that we know nothing about yet.

And so imagine how
understanding these discoveries

could change technology and medicine.

Twenty years ago,

Dr. Michael Gershon revealed
that there was a brain in the gut.

Today, if you go to a grocery store,

difficult to find a grocery store
without probiotic drinks

or probiotic supplements.

And today, I'm telling you
that the skin also has a mind of its own.

And so, for decades we've known
that the brain controls the body,

but if we now know that the body
greatly influences the mind,

and we see these in cases

like the person that develops an actual
clinical depression or anxiety

due to a very visible disorder,

or the anorexia patient that gets better
after wearing a tight body suit,

or the power one feels
when they're wearing a white lab coat.

Embodied cognition is not a new idea,

but it's finally gaining steam

in ways that doctors and therapists
can finally implement.

And so many people
live disembodied nowadays.

They tell you that they
disconnect themselves from the body.

But when we mind the body,
we know our sense of self.

And so, as these ideas unfold,

it'll take some time
for them to reach an everyday life.

So I want to leave you with this:

to listen to your skin.

Thank you.

(Applause)