When Secret Lifer Andre Fenton moved from Guyana to Toronto, he did what all good Canadian boys do. He played hockey. Says Andre:

“This is the first hockey team I played on. It is probably 1978, and I am 11. I was not the best skater, but I was also not bad. I remember being so nervous before the games that I’d get dressed and then have diarrhea, so I’d have to undress and was always last out of the dressing room. I recall being a pretty good goalie, but I also know better than to trust a person’s memory, so who knows. In any case, I recall feeling pretty integrated into Toronto society at this time since I was waking up to play little hockey at 6am on Saturday mornings.” Check out Andre in the lower right corner – your uniform is bigger than you, Andre!

The human mind is a constantly firing, immensely complex maze of neural networks and systems. It’s so complex, our meager human brains have yet to fully figure out and comprehend the amazing human brain. Stay relaxed and present as you focus on this video! It’s incredibly difficult to tune out all the many thoughts we are capable of having at one time and practice the art of mindfulness, to be as present in the moment as humanly possible. Luckily, Andre has been doing this for years so he was able to share some tips with us. So pull out your yoga mat, put on some soothing whale sounds, and enjoy the video in the player above.

Today, Secret Lifer Andre Fenton’s wardrobe includes vintage and hand-made clothing with color and style. Looking at this photo, it’s clear that this flair started a long time ago. Says Andre:

“I am guessing I was 9 in the photo below. I admit I was probably responsible for dressing myself and suspect I was wearing poorly matched bell-bottom pants that are mercifully hidden from view.” Even then, Andre was Stylin’ & Profilin’!

When Secret Life star Andre Fenton moved from Guyana to Toronto, he had to learn some new customs, and it wasn’t always easy. After a few hiccups, Andre mastered Halloween. Years later, he and his wife passed the tradition down to their daughter, Zora, and they made sure to get it right. Here’s Andre:

“The photo below is definitely my second Halloween, so probably October 31, 1975. The first Halloween was a disaster because neither I nor my parents knew what to do. We got crayon-like makeup at the last minute, and I rubbed it on my face and wore a knit shirt as pants. My family didn’t know better. Thankfully we only took some photos inside, and they did not allow me out of the apartment. We had a whole year to make up for the disaster, and so my mother had this costume made. Notice the attention to fine details. By this time, I understood the game and knew to collect loot. My uncle made me the sword. Halloween is now one of my favorite holidays.” Shiver me timbers!

“This photo is of our daughter Zora’s first Halloween. We never got around to getting her the costume we were planning, so my wife Lisa stopped at a shopping mall on her way home and bought a pirate’s hat, the essential ingredient for a costume. Halloween day I found myself determined to find a red sash. No daughter of mine was going to be a pirate without a red sash. I found one and got back just before Zora’s bed time, and we dressed her quickly and laughed a lot. I made a tin foil sword, and we laughed even more. I didn’t make the connection to my own early Halloweens until the NOVA interviews when producers Jesse Sweet and Josh Seftel juxtaposed my pirate pictures to Zora’s. I’m not sure exactly why, but it brought tears to my eyes. Hey, at least we got Zora’s first Halloween right. That’s real measurable progress.” Shiver me timbers - the sequel. Arghhh, Matey!

Secret Lifer Andre Fenton was born and spent his first few years growing up in Georgetown, Guyana. He took great pride in the hairstyle of the day, the side-part. But trends come and go. Here’s Andre:

“I was probably 4 or 5 years old. This photo below looks like it was taken in front of my grandparents’ house in Georgetown Guyana, where I lived. The side-part was very cool in the early 1970’s.” We’re sure young Andre drove lovely young ladies wild with his sporty do!

“This looks like the school photo from my first year in Toronto, Canada. I was 7. Although I introduced the side-part, I don’t recall it was met with much enthusiasm, and I believe I dropped it by the next year.” Hey Andre…Did you get any sideways glances with that side-part?

Listening to Andre Fenton talk about his pioneering work on how the brain stores and extracts information, my mind—untrained in meditation and sorely unfocused!—trailed off into the incredible notion that science seems to support: I’m not really just me and you’re not really you.

Speaking not just of our brains but of our entire bodies, Lewis Thomas wrote in the classic “Lives of a Cell”: “A good case can be made for our nonexistence as entities. We are shared, rented, occupied.” Dr. Cliff Pickover

Evidently, meditation, which Andre makes an excellent case for, is just the process to bring that idea to light. Neuroscientist Sam Harris describes how in deep meditation the feeling that there is a self thinking the thoughts disappears. “This experience of selflessness is interesting for two reasons,” Harris says, “It makes perfect sense from a neurological perspective, as there is no privileged place for the self to occupy the brain.”

And he adds, tantalizingly, “The loss of self can be utterly liberating.”

“What does it mean that your brain has nothing in common with the brain you had a few years ago?” physicist Clifford Pickover asks. “If you are something other than the collection of atoms making up your body, what are you? You are not so much your atoms as you are the pattern in which your atoms are arranged. Some of the atomic patterns in your brain code memories. People are persistent space-time tangles. It’s quite possible that you have an atom of Jesus of Nazareth coursing through your body. Gilgamesh, the historical king who ruled the city of Uruk, is part of your brain or tendons or heart. An atom in your retina may one day be in the tears of a happy lunar princess a hundred years from now.”

Who are we, where can we draw boundaries?

I wouldn’t be surprised if Andre, the man who as a boy loved Hardy Boys mysteries, who grew up to become a very different kind of detective, sheds some light on that little mystery too.

The buzz about meditation for good health and relieving stress is more common in today’s society than ever. Scientists are finding ways to explain exactly how meditation helps people. For a long time, practitioners noticed the correlation between meditation and mood. Having been skeptical until now, I started meditating at the behest of a friend and vowed to keep my mind open. I like the way I feel after, and while I have yet to recognize firm results, I’m convinced enough to continue. Andre Fenton’s connection between meditation and running makes a lot of sense to me.

I will become a neurobiologist… I will become a neurobiologist… Electrical activity occurs in the brain no matter what a person is doing – resting, problem-solving, meditating, or sleeping. Different brain waves predominate during the different activities. Alpha waves are characteristic of wakeful rest. They also show up during meditation.

Trials have shown that individuals who have meditated for many years are less disturbed by distractions. Apparently, their brains are trained to focus or concentrate better. Trials have also shown that meditation increased activity in regions of the brain used for paying attention and decision-making.

Since minds tend to wander off, concentrating on one specific stimulus is harder than it appears, especially for several minutes. Concentration takes some focus. Andre Fenton’s focus on the run seems to hold his thoughts in place.

Improving your brain to concentrate in an effortless way can be a bonus in a busy, distracting world. Meditation appears to improve concentration on the idea at hand – and the bonus is reaping the benefits in every day life. Your body can be trained to better fitness – so why not train your brain? It’s worth a try.

I’ve been fascinated about thoughts, how they arise, and how immensely valuable they can be. Once I had embraced a few foundation principles of neuroscience, it seemed self evident that experience must be fundamentally subjective and determined by the wiring and function of an individual’s brain. You are what you eat? Nope. You are what you think! One of those principles is summarized by the equality: “experience = brain activity.” In a sense this means my reality is the activity of my brain, nothing more, nothing less. That equality has challenged and soothed me, and for a rather long while, believing it made me feel like I understood something fundamental that was important in an everyday sort of way. The consequence was that I would focus my efforts on working out how neurons and brains operate.

A while back, an unsettling realization that my understanding of the equality was superficial began to percolate. Perhaps my thinking had been lazy and I had stopped short of what is a truly powerful, fundamental understanding. A very long time ago, Siddhartha Gautama, better know as Buddha, may have got it right when he said “What you think, you become.” The more I learn about neurons, brains, myself and other people, the truer that insight seems.

“What you think, you become.” That’s powerful; an understanding that can transform a lot, if not everything. If it is true, then thoughts, the network operations of brain cells, both define and can change a person, and possibly the world. I see dramatic examples all around me. Today’s inspiring examples appear to be the regime-changing news from Tunisia and Egypt. It seems there is nothing better to do for myself, and possibly everyone else, than to think clearly and well. I work to understand the nuts and bolts of how thinking works. I wonder if what Siddhartha said is true? Regardless, I’m enjoying trying to pass the thought along – “What you think, you become.” I hope we will all understand what that really means.

Working hard at just about any pursuit—laboring and thinking deeply—can lead to new self-knowledge. But some people choose a particular pursuit because they believe that the very “stuff” of that pursuit—what they’re doing, what they’re learning about—will help them understand themselves in some new and meaningful way. If you want to know about yourself, pay attention. One of those people is Andre Fenton. Andre chose to be a neurobiologist primarily because he believed that this work would help him to better understand himself. And I know this because he told us so in the “Secret Life” studios.

In Andre’s “Detective of Biology” video, he talks about how the famous study, “What the Frog’s Eye Tells the Frog’s Brain,” sparked his interest in learning about the brain. Well, Andre followed that up with a project of his own that solidified his passion for studying the brain. And it happened to involve the “secret (inner) life” of crickets:

Andre Fenton won’t erase your memory (even though he could)… as long as you ask him a question.

Use the comments, Secret Lifers.

UPDATE: We are no longer taking more questions for Andre. But check out his answers in the comments. He may have answered a question you were going to ask!

I don’t know about you, but I just came from the cupboard where I found some delicious Girl Scout cookies. Dang, those things are tasty!

Now our NOVA scienceNOW friends don’t have anything against Girl Scouts, but they think that some of us may have come from other places besides the “Secret Life” snack room. And they’re going to tell us all about it this coming Wednesday night, February 16. Not only that, but this episode of NSN will feature neurobiologist and soon-to-be Secret Lifer, Andre Fenton.

So watch the preview below, learn more about the episode, and meet Andre right here at “Secret Life” on Wednesday morning when we unveil all his videos and some new blog posts, too.