Written by Jill Fraser
Our entire concept of reality as we have come to know it looks set for an extreme makeover as the frontiers of science march ever onward.
Increasing numbers of research findings and laboratory breakthroughs are challenging what have until recently been seen as ironclad tenets of life, death and everything in between but are now in danger of being superseded by radical discoveries. The latest scientific finding to oppose the current blueprint is an astonishing discovery called neuroplasticity, which overthrows the centuries-old notion that the adult human brain is fixed and unchanging.
Neuroplasticity refers to the brain´s natural ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life; thereby altering its own structure and function - without operations or medications.
American research psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Dr Norman Doidge has been travelling around the U.S. gathering evidence of neuroplasticity from people whose lives have been totally transformed as a result of this cutting edge brain science.
Doidge admits that until recently neuroplasticity was an extremely 29 Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Dr Norman Doidge. It all started way back when... 30 " IQs have been raised, stroke victims have recovered" - Dr Norman Doidge controversial issue among his peers but says that it is now on the cusp of gaining widespread acceptance. The focus of Doidge´s research, discussed in his book, ‘The Brain That Changes Itself´ (Scribe publishing), is on the power of thought to turn genes on and off, which in turn alters the brain´s anatomy.
Doidge defines neuroplasticity as "the fundamental property of the brain that allows it to change its structure and function based on what it is perceiving, sensing, acting, thinking and imagining".
"All these activities change the structure and function of the brain, and not only in traumatic circumstances. This is the way the brain works. The brain changes its structure. It´s a revolutionary discovery," he declares. The neuroplasticity revolution has major implications on the accepted understanding of, among other things, love, sex, grief, relationships, learning and addictions.
Doidge witnessed neuroplasticity in a range of different scenarios. He met and studied people whose mental limitations or brain damage had been perceived as unalterable and who had been dismissed as hopeless cases yet are now fully functioning members of society.
His research led him to a woman born with half a brain that had rewired itself to work as a whole and another woman who had been labelled retarded and had cured her deficits with brain exercises and now works to assist others in a similar position.
He spoke to blind people who had learnt to see and heard of learning disorders that are cured, IQs that were raised, ageing brains that have been regenerated, stroke patients who have recovered their faculties, children with cerebral palsy who acquired the skills to move more gracefully and the disappearance of entrenched depression and anxiety.
"Originally the brain was viewed as a complex machine with each part performing one mental function. That meant that if a function was damaged (as in stroke) or failed to develop properly (as in a childhood illness or learning disorder) you were out of luck," he says.
"It also meant that if you were trying to preserve your brain by doing exercises it was assumed that you were wasting your time because the concept was that the brain was a machine and that machines don´t get better with exercise – they just wear out.
"What we know now is that the brain is more like a muscle and that the correct approach is, ‘use it or lose it´. It can be developed much more than we ever imagined and when parts are damaged, for instance through a stroke, a neuroplastic approach can get other nerve cells to take over from the damaged ones."
A neuroplastic approach focuses on reinvigorating brain function through exercise - mental and physical - in order to stimulate the area that is weak. Specifically devised exercise can increase the connections between nerve cells in a matter of hours.
Doidge explains that the impact of a stroke tends to be experienced primarily in the left hemisphere of the brain. Therefore stroke victims often have trouble using their right hand, right leg and recovering their speech.
Currently most post-stroke rehabilitation therapy utilizes the compensatory approach, which entails transferring all significant functions to the functioning hand and leg. The problem with this method, says Doidge, is that because it´s not being used the brain learns ‘my right hand doesn´t work´. Consequently any cells that might help it to work start to waste away.
The neuroplastic approach adopts a totally opposite stance. Doidge cites an instance in which Dr Edward Taub, a brain scientist at the University of Alabama, took the good hands of stroke patients and put them in slings so they could not be used. He then incrementally trained the stroke-affected arm starting with very small movements. He found that after 10 days of intensive treatment the majority of people who previously could not use their hands had recovered sufficient functionality to give them complete independence.
Taub did brain scan studies which showed that different areas of the brain had taken over from the dead cells. "This is a case of radical plasticity," Doidge says. "Parts of the brain that were devoted to other activities got reassigned and learned from scratch how to move the hand."
The plastic paradox, maintains Doidge, is that what has camouflaged the brain´s plasticity for all these years has been plasticity itself.
"Plasticity is like snow on a hill in winter," says Doidge. "If we want to ski down the hill we can take many different paths because the snow is so pliable and plastic.
"But being human we tend to favour one path and pretty soon we´ve developed a grooved track, which ultimately becomes a rut that is hard to get out of."
Equating this to the brain, which he says is riddled with ruts due to habitforming behaviour, Doidge says that the neuroplastic approach entails blocking the easy, familiar path and adopting a new way.
Doidge predicts that in years to come the science of neuroplasticity will permanently alter the way we view not just the brain but the whole of human nature and human potential.
