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May 15, 2003
The Mind and the Brain - Schwartz and Begley
In The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force brain researcher Jeffrey Schwartz and Wall St. Journal reporter Sharon Begley explore the extraordinary discoveries in brain research over the last 20 years. When we were growing up we were taught that the brain pretty much is fixed by age 10, and after that no new neurons are made. For a 100 years it was believed that if you had a stroke and lost functioning over one part of your body as a result of damage to the brain, you just had to live with it. New imaging techiniques in the last quarter century have enabled researchers to precisely map functioning of different parts of the brain, down to the millimeter. What has been discovered is that new neural pathways are being forged in the brain throughout our whole lives, depending on how we use our mind. Wherever we focus our attention is where new neural connections will be made.
In the stroke example, if the stroke patient loses control of her right arm, she can recover full use of this affected arm by restraining her good arm. By restraining the good arm, the brain is forced to create new neural pathways around the damaged area of the brain to be able to control again the affected arm. If on the other hand no effort is made to use the affected arm, no new neural pathways will be made and any remaining neural pathways will atrophy. The research has profound implications for the future of how we can use the power of our will to actually change our physiology.
The book tells a good story as well, chronicling the researchers' early discoveries and the tremendous restistance they first encountered from the scientific community. Also most of the early research was done on lab monkeys, with one experiment almost single-handedly launching the anti-animal testing movement. Revealed are the facts of the case and the apparent hypocrisy of the movement leaders.
Thanks Mom, for this great recommendation!
Posted by elise at 11:03 PM
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Comments
I'm glad to have found your post on this book and to find that you enjoyed reading it. I have yet to dig into it (I've read the first several pages, but that's it), but I do plan to soon enough. Being a psychology major, the title really grabbed me, so I took it from my university library (I love having a University library) and brought it home for the summer since we can renew it online. I'll let you know what I think once I've gotten through it.
Posted by: sps at May 29, 2003 11:51 PM
An equally fascinating book is The Scientist in the Crib by 3 notable child development experts (Gopnik, Meltzoff, and Kuhl) which discusses how babies learn and the relationship to brain structure. The issue of neuroplasticity comes up in a number of areas (including why we cannot hear sounds in other languages that are not found in our native tongue).
Posted by: Bill Patzer at May 30, 2003 1:32 PM
