I am hoping Steve will discuss the neuroplasticity of the brain. To me, that is the most exciting discovery in neuroscience. See, for example, the last few paragraphs of this recent Chicago Sun-Times article:

http://www.suntimes.com/news/har...- HART14.article
Stephanie West Allen | Homepage | 01.15.07 - 7:46 am | #

Agree with Stephanie, neuro-plasticity info would be great --
Sarah | Homepage | 01.15.07 - 11:45 am | #

Thanks for your comments and your request for more information on neuroplasticity. I will continue the discussion but the size of the field makes it important that you direct me if I an not addressing your particular interest. These are my thoughts.
1. The human body is maleable in many ways. The heart often creates new routes for blood flow when there is blockage. It is not surprising that the brain seeks to do the same when there is damage.
2. While the science is fascinating I am primarilly interested in the applications and there are a few that I can see and probably many I can't.

a. Use it or loose it. The brain has a pruning mechanism and drops unused connections in our adult years. Apparantly neurons must have a purpose to survive.

b. Garbage in garbage grows. If you create a strong false memory strings they will associate and grow stonger. The slang for this is a new age statement, "what you focus on grows."
So be as careful about what you put in your brain as you are careful about what you put in your mouth.

c. The research on neuroplasticity is further emphasis of the fact that the brain is an associative mechanism and in my current blog I explore a few of the implicatins of that.

d. There are limits to the maleability and hundreds of thousand of hours were spent in the 60's and 70's patterning children who had not developed normally. The thinking was that you could re-mylanize the nerual pathways. I believe the scientists were Doman and Delacotto for those who want to look more deeply into this heartbreaking work.

Enough for now.
Tuna

c.
Big Tuna | 01.20.07 - 4:42 am | #

Thanks, Steve. I appreciate your thoughts and comments.

I probably should have been more specific and said self-directed neuroplasticity. That's what was being dicussed in those paragraphs in the Sun-Times article.

A great book on the topic is _The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force_ by Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley.
Stephanie West Allen | Homepage | 01.25.07 - 10:26 am | #

Stephanie
Thanks for the references.
Steve
Big Tuna Ph.D | Homepage | 01.27.07 - 5:46 pm | #