Neuroplasticity - Part 1

Neuroplasticity refers to the brain's ability to change itself structurally in response to stimuli. I'm reading about it in the book Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain by Sharon Begley. Its a good book.

I find the book and overall topic particularly interesting because it intersects with a bunch of other things I am interested in - such as memory training, expertise, mindfulness, networks (as in the brain being a network), chess - I could go on and on. I am calling this "Neuroplasticity - Part 1" because I am only about half way through the book. But I wanted to get a couple of my thoughts down while they are still fresh.

First, as I was beginning Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, I was just finishing the book Moonwalking with Einstein by Foer which covers his experience training for the US Memory Championship, but also touches on  a host of interesting topics - in particular, training the mind or body to become an expert (in anything). I recommend it.  These two books fit together perfectly and together could form the basis of a whole bunch of interesting blogs. What a rich area this is!

Second, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain fits in with cognitive behavioral therapy, the subject of my last blog.  The first half of  Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain covers primarily early experiments and findings in the subject of neuroplasticity. In general, this area of the book covers the brain's ability to change structure in response to outside/physical stimuli. For example, in blind people the area of the brain typicaly used for optical processing will start responding to other types of stimuli - such as spacial and sound processing. Or stroke victims can retrain other parts of their brain to handle the work previously done by the stroke damaged areas of the brain. Using various scans, scientists can measure the new brain activity and changes in brain size caused this external stimuli.

The second half of the book (which I am starting now) takes up the subject of the brain changing in response to internal stimuli. Much to my surprise, it starts in on cognitive behavioral therapy (see my last blog) and experiments done on patients suffering from OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). This is a quote from the book on a Dr Schwarz discussing the experiment's findings:

"Therapy had altered the metabolism of the OCD circuit" says Schwartz "This was the first study to show that cognitive-bahavioral therapy has the power to systematically change faulty brain chemistry in a well-defined brain circuit." The ensuing brain changes, he said, "offered strong evidence that willful, mindful effort can alter brain function, and that such self-directed brain changes - neuroplasticity- are a genuine reality."

So the evidence on CBT is not just that it seems to work, but that it can cause measurable and lasting changes to the brain structure. Totally cool!!  As I like to say: be careful with what you think!

P.S. Of course this could also tie into my Michael Lewis blog relative to my comments on the social construction of reality. If our brains physically change in response to stimuli, then the socially constructed belief system within which we all live forms a constant directed stimulus which will  physically affect our brain wiring - perhaps then reinforcing the belief system. This would certainly explain some of the psychological trauma that occurs when a person perceives a falseness in this social reality (what I called the universal story). And of course all this ties into David Hume....