What I Learned Today - The Brain That Changes Itself

26th July 2010

Post with 81 notes

The Brain That Changes Itself

is one of the most fascinating books I’ve ever read. It walks the reader through studies of patients suffering from neurological disorders to explain how our brains are constantly adapting. For a long time, neuroscience believed the brain was immutable – fixed - one part of the brain for each body part or function and that’s that. But recently the field of neuroplasticity, the idea that the organization and function of neurons can change, has gained support. The brain, is, in fact, adaptive.

Some fascinating examples:

As we get better at something, the number of neurons required to perform that task decreases, and the whole system becomes faster and more efficient.
In one experiment, a cat’s eye was sewn shut so the eye got no visual stimulation. When the eye was opened they found that the visual area in the brain map that normally processed input from the closed eye had failed to develop. Even further, the part of the brain that had been deprived began to process visual input from the open eye, “as though the brain didn’t want to waste any ‘cortical real estate’ and had found a way to rewire itself.”
Falling in love is like taking cocaine. It lowers the threshold at which pleasure centers fire. Because the pleasure centers are firing so freely, “the enamored person falls in love not only with the beloved but with the world and romanticizes his view of it.” It makes us harder to experience pain and displeasure or aversion. When one falls in love, “millions of neural networks have to be obliterated and replaced with new ones,” and that is why falling in love often feels like a loss of identity.
Interesting description of moving on from a love. “Often people cannot move on because they cannot yet grieve… In neuroplastic terms, if the romantic or the widow is to begin a new relationship without baggage, each must first rewire billions of connections in their brains. The world of mourning is piecemeal, Freud noted… We grieve by calling up one memory at a time, reliving it, and then letting it go”
This one neurologist at UCSD, Ramachandran, does a lot of research on phantom limbs. He has a bunch of Ted Talks, and I highly recommend watching if you want your mind blown.
The work of some neuroscientists shows us that we can shape our genes, or rather our gene expression. This can be done through means of psychotherapy, that goes “deep into the brain and its neurons” and changes their structure. A psychoanalyst can be a “microsurgeon of the mind” to help patients make needed alternations in neuronal networks.
One study showed that muscles get stronger if we imagine they are being exercised!
Neurons that fire together wire together is the main mantra here. This means that the more a thought or action is repeated, the stronger the connection between the neurons. This is known as Hebbian theory, which is a little too much for me but interesting nonetheless.

Super fascinating book. I took notes on nearly every page.