Train Your Mind Change Your Brain

Sharon Begley, “Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain”, Ballantine, 2007, 275 Pages
This book introduces us to how it is possible to change the structure and function of the brain, and in so doing alter how we think and feel. In late 2004, leading Western scientists joined the Dalai Lama at his home in Dharamsala, India, to address this topic and in the process brought about a revolution in our understanding of the human mind by bringing together cutting-edge science and the ancient wisdom of Buddhism. The book shows how we all have the power to literally change our brains by changing our minds.

Conventional wisdom of neuroscience has held that the hardware of the brain is fixed and immutable — that we are stuck with what we were born with. Begley shows, however, recent experiments in neuroplasticity, and how the brain can undergo change. That the brain is capable not only of altering its structure but also of generating new neurons, even into old age. The brain can adapt, heal, renew itself after trauma, and compensate for disability. This is all particularly true for those in old age that have Harleys (1200 cc or more)!!
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About Sharon Begley
Sharon Begley is the science columnist for The Wall Street Journal and inaugurated the paper's "Science Journal" in 2002. She was previously the senior science writer at Newsweek, covering neuroscience, genetics, physics, astronomy, and anthropology. The co-author of The Mind and the Brain, she has won many awards for her articles.

Pg. xii: One of the cardinal assumptions of contemporary neuroscience is that our mental processes stem from brain activity: the brain creates and shapes the mind. This book documents that there may be a two-way street of causality, with systematic mental activity resulting in changes in the very structure of the brain.

Pg. 13: The scientific findings about neuroplasticity parallel the Buddhist narrative of enlightenment because they show that, although we have deeply ingrained ways of thinking and although the brain comes with some hardwiring, we also have the possibility of changing. The idea that we are constantly changing means there is no intrinsic nature to the self or the mind, which is what Buddhism teaches. Instead, both self and mind are extremely plastic. Our activities inform who we are; as we act so we shall become. We are products of the past, but because of our inherently empty nature, we always have the opportunity to reshape ourselves. The discovery that thinking something produces effects just as doing something does is a fascinating consonance with Buddhism.
Pg. 65: The human brain is not limited to the neurons it is born with, or even to the neurons that fill it after the explosion of brain development in early childhood. New neurons are born well into the eighth decade of life. They migrate to structures where they weave themselves into existing brain circuitry and perhaps from the basis of new circuitry.

Pg. 76: Consider the children who have undergone operations that remove an entire cerebral hemisphere before the age of 4. The worst a child typically suffers is some impairment of the peripheral vision and fine motor skills on one side of the body opposite the side of the surgery. Plasticity of this magnitude wanes with age, however.

Pg. 103: The best-known from of specific language impairment is dyslexia, which affects some 5 to 17 percent of the U.S. population and accounts for the majority of learning disabilities. For decades, educators had blamed dyslexia on deficits of visual processing. According to the stereotype, a dyslexic child sees p as q and vice versa, and b as d… However it has been found that some people with dyslexia may be unable to process certain speech sounds—fast ones. They have particular trouble distinguishing the sounds of b, p, d, and g, all of which explode off the lips or tongue and vanish in about 40 milliseconds. Other phonemes which they have no trouble with last up to 300 milliseconds. Using special software, the UYSCF scientists synthesized phonemes that still sounded like spoken English but that stretched out the duration of b before aaa, for example. When these dyslexic children became accustomed to this stretched out sound, the interval was reduced until returning to the normal span and these children could then hear the phoneme as well as normal children.

Pg. 120: Every year, some 750,000 Americans suffer a stroke. A clot in a blood vessel, or a ruptured blood vessel, shuts off blood flow to part of the brain. Because blood carries the oxygen that brain cells need to survive, cells in that region are at risk of dying. Cells, however, can hold their breath longer than people can, so there is a window of about eight hours in which doctors can minimize the damage by administering the drug TPA (tissue plasminogen activator) or even by cooling the brain, which reduces its oxygen demands…B ecause of the neuroplasticity of the brain, a therapy known as constraint-induced movement has helped in rewiring the brain so stroke victims can regain the use of an arm, for example, even after more than a year has passed.

Pg. 143: Depression is notorious for its frequent and cruel relapses. A patient may finally feel she has broken the chains of her illness, only to plunge back into the abyss of despair, as 50 percent do. Because of the high relapse rate, patients suffer an average of four major episodes of depression lasting about five months each over the course of their lives.

Pg. 148: Neuroscientist Helen Mayberg had not endeared herself to the pharmaceutical industry by discovering, in 2002, that antidepressants and inert pills—placebos—have identical effects on the brains of depressed people.

Pg. 229: Discoveries that mindfulness meditation can alter fundamental patterns of brain activity in people with depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder suggest that even rudimentary forms of mental training can induce plastic changes in the brain.

Pg. 249: Older adults are frequently told that, to keep their mind sharp, they need to stimulate it with activities such as crossword puzzles and reading. But activities done repeatedly become second nature, demanding less attention than new skills do. The result is a brain that gets fewer and fewer attentional workouts, fewer and fewer chances to keep its acetylcholine system tuned up. The result of an inability to pay attention, which is not uncommon in many elderly adults, is trouble remembering new information and experiences. And because of the centrality of attention to neuroplasticity, a brain that cannot pay attention is a brain that cannot tap into the power of neuroplasticity. Given this, rather than engaging in activities you are already good at in order to keep an aging brain in shape, it makes much more sense scientifically to take up new challenges, from ballroom dancing to travel to never before-visited places. Those will exercise the brain’s crucial attentional networks.