Nathaniel Thom
- Assistant Professor -
- Wheaton College -
How do I take care of my brain?
I'm interested in better understanding the neurobiological underpinnings of how people successfully adapt to stress. Therefore, I study non-pharmacological ways to enhance brain health. I've pursued this line of research by evaluating topics as diverse as the effects of aerobic exercise on the brain as well as cognitive training programs designed to enhance interoception function and attention control.
Aid Workers
Aid Workers face some of the most challenging situations in life; often-times the stressors they encounter rival those faced by our men and women in uniform, yet the effects of aid work on brain health are poorly understood. I'm taking what we know about resilience and applying it to aid workers.
Athletes
Adventure racers are a unique group of athletes that are able to perform under a variety of physical, psychological, social, and environmental factors. Therefore, gaining a better understanding of how their brains work is important for improving brain health. During my post-doc I had the opportunity to analyze fMRI data on elite adventure racers to better understand how they perform so well under the stressors they face.
Military
Some of the best stress physiology research has been done with the military. When our men and women in uniform answer the call to serve, they face incredible challenges. Some of them struggle with stress-induced issues, but most are changed in ways that promote health. We know a great deal about the factors that are associated with that type of resilience, but little is known about how to modify those factors. During my post-doc I had the honor of helping conduct a large randomized controlled trial to enhance resilience. By training the Marines interoceptive system, we were able to improve brain health.
Exercise is probably the single best thing you can do to improve brain health, but because the effects of exercise on the brain are so varied, we still don't really understand why. My research focuses on how exercising alters emotion function. Initial findings demonstrate that a single bout of aerobic exercise prevents the onset of an angry mood.
Exercise
I'm very interested in how to prevent stress-related disease and especially in how physical and mental training programs provide this type of protection so most of my collaborations are in that vein. However, my love of statistics allows me to collaborate with a variety of people on meta-regression analyses. I also do my best to let my students stretch me into new areas of research.