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Neuroplasticity gets your brain in shape in a very literal way
Posted on Jul 14 2009
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It turns out that the old positive mental attitude saw, "if you think you can or you think you can't, you're right," may well have science-based underpinnings. The science -- neuroplasticity, or brain plasticity -- indicates that we may be able to change not only our attitude, but other physical aspects of our brain as well.

It has long been understood that there is a high degree of brain plasticity in young people. (To see an astonishing video showing a remarkable example of child brain plasticity after surgery removing half the brain, go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSu9HGnlMV0. This video also contains an interesting conversation with surgeon Benjamin Carson, who performed the surgery.) What is new is that there appears to be significant plasticity in adult and even older adult brains.

The idea that brains can change is very new in the history of brain study. "For 400 years (the idea that the human brain can change itself) would have been inconceivable because mainstream medicine and science believed that brain anatomy was fixed," said Dr. Norman Doidge, "The Brain that Changes Itself." Doidge continues, "The common wisdom was that after childhood the brain changed only when it began the long process of decline, nor could the brain alter its structure and find a new way to function if part of it was damaged." Essentially, the new idea of neuroplasticity challenges this long-held, near-doctrinal belief that our brains are hard-wired.

I don't think it is just that I want to believe this. It seems deeply unjust for humans to labor under a misconception that their horizons, both in terms of physical and mental health, are bound by the supposed fixed capability and capacity of our brains. This scientific dogma has stunted our intellectual growth and limited our imagination for centuries.

"Brain plasticity refers to the brain's lifelong capacity for physical and functional change; it is this capacity that enables experience to induce learning throughout life," says Dr. Michael M. Merzenich. According to Merzenich and his colleagues, it was determined in a human study that significant improvements in memory enhancement resulted from a highly targeted memory training program. "This study demonstrates that intensive, plasticity-engaging training can result in an enhancement of cognitive function in mature adults" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, June 27, 2006).

One of the important developments in the science of neuroplasticity is, in effect, "that thinking can make it so." It is obvious, and scientists have long understood, that our brains react to external stimuli. While many ordinary people understand that our mind, or our thinking, can influence our brain, it is only recently that scientists are coming to this conclusion.

Alvaro Pascual-Leone, chief of the laboratory for magnetic brain stimulation at the Harvard Medical School, has conducted a number of interesting studies on the way our thoughts can change our brain. For example, he "taught two groups of people, who had never studied piano, a sequence of notes, showing them which fingers to move and letting them hear the notes as they were played." One group physically practiced; the other imagined their practice. In the end, the mental practice group performed nearly as well as the physical practice group, and with a single two-hour physical practice session, the group performed at the same level as the physical practice group ("The Brain that Changes Itself"). Other studies have been done on obsessive compulsive disorder patients and patients suffering depression with similar results ("Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain," Sharon Begley).

Many scientists are startled by this because they think that the brain is simply a consequence of a vast evolutionary timeline and that our thoughts can only emanate from our brain. That is, there is no distinction between what religious believers understand to be our spirit operating on the physical part of our body our brain, and our brain simply acting in and of itself.

Dr. Benjamin Carson, world-class child brain surgeon, is often asked, as "somebody who was brought up in the sciences, how can you believe in a God? When I look at the human brain with hundreds of billions of interconnections, much more sophisticated than anything that we can create and call a computer, I know that that did not just happen" (Interview in the "Academy of Achievement").

 

Last changed: Jul 14 2009 at 7:07 PM

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