Andrea Wachter Blog: On CBT Self-Talk

Saul Steinberg cartoon.

by Andrea Wachter

We all talk to ourselves all day long. Our minds are basically like recorders that play back everything that's been downloaded into them. The quality of our lives is drastically affected by our internal dialogue. Even more than our life situations, it's our self-talk that can make or break our day.

Our minds are naturally active. That's their job. And we need them to help us tend to many things in our lives. But sometimes our minds seem to be working overtime! Ideally, we all have some moments when our minds are quiet and we are simply present. But when our minds are active, we have various other internal soundtrack options.

The first is neutral. A neutral internal dialogue might be deciding whether to go to the store on the way to work or on the way home. Perhaps part of you wants to stop and part of you wants to head straight home. There are no strong feelings and no moral dilemmas. You can think through the pros and cons and make your decision. Nobody gets hurt!

Another internal soundtrack is positive. An example of this is when you feel good about something you did or said and you internally praise yourself. Now, that is something we do not need to change. If you do experience positive self-talk, I say keep it up. I know many of us were raised with messages about getting a "big head" or conceited but I am not talking about being arrogant here. I am simply talking about being kind to yourself and praising yourself regularly. Positive self-talk is about knowing that you are a good person, and that you deserve praise sometimes, even though you are imperfect like everyone else.

Next on the soundtrack possibilities is negative self-talk. We all have an inner dialogue that arises from all the negative and painful things we have ever heard and experienced. It's like a program in your computer. The more painful experiences you have had and/or the more sensitive you are, the louder and stronger your internal negative soundtrack is likely to be.

In large part, we all learned to speak to ourselves from the way our parents or caregivers spoke to us. As we get older, this style turns into what I call our inner "Mom-a-logue" or "Dad-a-logue."

If our parents were critical or negative, it's not that they were horrible people; they were likely just speaking to us the way they were spoken to or the way that they were left feeling from the way they were spoken to. So the negative self-talk baton gets passed down from generation to generation.

Consequently, some people have very loud, critical Mom-and-Dad-a-logues and this can cause an array of problems.

Since most of us tend to think or speak to ourselves the way we were spoken to as children or the way we felt as children, I think it's fair to say that most of us have been doing it a long time. So it is likely a habit that will take desire, awareness and practice to change. The good news is that it is possible to retrain your brain, erase negative self-talk tracks and upload new ones.

So, if negative self-talk is on one end of a spectrum and conceited narcissism is on the other, a healthy internal soundtrack is the range in the middle. This range is where you have positive regard for yourself.

You know you don't have to be perfect. You know you are a good person and that you are no better or worse than anyone else.

As a family counselor, I work with people who are struggling with a variety of issues, everything from addictions and depression to anxiety and grief. What I notice is that while the symptoms may differ, most of the people I see have a hard time being kind to themselves. I often find myself asking why.

Most everyone had some positive experiences as children. Even people from the most negative of childhoods can usually come up with a few positive memories. Why don't we focus more on those? Unfortunately, negative memories and experiences seem to stick more than the positive ones. It's just the way we are wired.

Imagine if someone massaged your back for an hour and punched you really hard for one second. It would likely be the one-second punch you would remember as opposed to the hour of comforting massage. Or say you spent a few hours with a friend and it was really pleasant and then they said one sentence that was really hurtful. You would most likely remember and be the most impacted from that one sentence as opposed to the hundreds of other sentences that were spoken in the time you were together.

As children, we did not have logical minds that knew the difference between feeling bad and being bad. When difficult things happened many of us decided we were bad, and this contributed to our internal program of self-talk. Painful events happened to all of us, in our families and in our lives, and most of us didn't know how to distinguish between feeling bad and thinking we must be bad. So we ended up with a feeling of shame that for many turned into a deep, core belief. But shame comes from the mistaken thought or judgment, "I am bad." And there is a big difference between something feeling bad and the thought that youare a bad person.

Many people have a core sense of shame and inadequacy and think that if they could just get the relationship they want or the body they like or the job they dream of, etc. they will then be deemed worthy and valuable.

But it doesn't work that way. If their deepest belief about themselves is that they are unworthy, ugly, stupid, fat, etc., nothing external will fix that. These thoughts will need an internal upgrade.

It might seem like bad news that our thoughts are constant and that they have so much power they can actually make us feel horrible.

But the good news is that if we can make ourselves feel badly with our thoughts, then we can also learn to delete and replace them, which will then change the way we speak to ourselves, treat ourselves and feel about ourselves.

Steps For Upgrading Your Self-Talk

1. Desire: The first step in making a change is having the desire. Once you have the desire to improve your self-talk, you have begun to get ready for an internal upgrade!

2. Awareness: When we have a negative inner recording that has been playing for years, it becomes a habit. Oftentimes we kick into it without even noticing. So as soon as you become aware that a negative recording is playing, you have broken the unconscious trance and are halfway there.

3. Compassion: This process is about unlearning a very ingrained habit and we are not going to do it perfectly or immediately. Being kind and compassionate is the way to progress way more than beating yourself up. Self-hate got you here, it is not going to get you out!

4. Creative Comebacks: This is where you replace and/or respond to your negative thoughts. Try responding to a negative thought the way you might respond to a friend or a young child who was saying the same mean things about themselves.

Here are a few examples of creative ways to respond to your self-criticism:

• "Oh you again?"
• "Says who?"
• "And your point is?"
• "It's not true and you're not helping."
• "I'm not that bad, give me a break."
• "You might be trying to help by whipping me into shape but if you were going to be helpful, I think you would have helped by now."
• "You're just an old recording and I'm deleting you now."

Even if you don't fully believe it, keep practicing. You were not born with internal negative statements about yourself, you learned, practiced and perfected them and you can do the same with creative comebacks.

To replace the negative with something positive try some of these, or make up your own:

• "I'm a good person even when I make a mistake."
• "I don't have to be perfect to be loveable."
• "I have many successes, I am not a failure."

Try picturing your thoughts as pop-up windows on a computer and imagine closing them. Pretend your thoughts are on the television or radio and imagine turning them off. It helps some people to imagine they are letting smoke out of a chimney as they let their negative thoughts go.

Others find it helpful to talk back to their internal negative statements by either disagreeing in a strong way or reacting in a compassionate, softer way. For many, it helps to consciously bring themselves back to the present moment and remember that their thoughts aren't facts, they are like movies playing in our minds.

Whether you are visual, auditory or more in your feelings, you can get creative and find ways that work for you to change, stop or replace your habitual recordings.

Your negative soundtracks have likely been playing for many years. It doesn't help that we are surrounded by a culture that supports negative self-talk so this will be an ongoing practice. The way we talk to ourselves is a habit that can be changed with awareness and willingness.

With practice and patience it can become natural to speak to yourself with kindness and upgrade your internal soundtrack for good.

Depression Drugs -- SSRIs -- May Reorganize Brain Plasticity, Research Suggests

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) such as Prozac are regularly used to treat severe anxiety and depression. They work by immediately increasing the amount of serotonin in the brain and by causing long term changes in brain function. However it can take weeks of treatment before a patient feels any effect and both beneficial effects and side effects can persist after treatment is stopped.

Research published by BioMed Central's open access journal Molecular Brain investigates physiological changes within the brain that may be caused by SSRI treatment.

The hippocampus is an area of the brain involved in long term memory and spatial awareness, and is involved in symptoms afflicting people with Alzheimer's disease, such as loss of memory and disorientation. Neuronal cells in the hippocampus can change their activity and strength of connections throughout life, a process known as plasticity, which thought to be one of the ways new memories are formed. Altered plasticity is often associated with depression and stress.

Researchers from the Department of Pharmacology, Nippon Medical School, showed that chronic treatment of adult mice with fluoxetine (Prozac) caused changes to granule cells, one of the main types of neuronal cells inside the hippocampus, and to their connections with other neuronal cells.

The granule cells appeared to undergo serotonin-dependent 'dematuration', which increased their activity and reversed adult-type plasticity into an immature state. These changes to the cell's plasticity were associated with increased anxiety and in alternating between periods of hyper or hypo activity.

Katsunori Kobayashi explained, "Some of the side effects associated with Prozac in humans, such as anxiety and behavioral switching patterns, may be due to excessive dematuration of granule cells in the hippocampus."

The New Brain: How the Modern Age Is Rewiring Your Mind

On the reading table: This is the second "clearance book" by neurologist and neuropsychiatrist Richard Restak M. D. I've read. I avoided reading his books earlier (I have five or six on tap) because since he's so prolific, and was featured on PBS, I feared he might be a super-shallow "book factory," but the two books I've read have proven to be rewarding and  thought-provoking. This thin tome promises to be a quick read, and it also features a recurring pet topic of mine, "neuroplasticity." Recommended.

The New Brain: How the Modern Age Is Rewiring Your Mind by Richard Restak 

Richard Restak explains, in layman's terms, how our brains are struggling to keep up with the world we've created. Computers, mobile phones, the Internet, violence on TV -- the modern world is causing the human brain to evolve in ways that may prove irrevocable. Offering scientific proof, the author shows how the world we live in has affected our ability to focus, concentrate and respond effectively to the multi-tasking demands of modern life. At the same time research on the brain has moved away from the old emphasis on disease and dysfunction to open up insights into every kind of mental activity. And, although this is not a self-help book, "The New Brain" shows how a lot of contemporary brain research has practical applications with consequences for our everyday lives.

From Publishers Weekly

Restak (Mozart's Brain), a neurologist and popular science writer on the brain, focuses on new technology for examining the physiology of the brain (such as MRI) and how it allows us to monitor and control a far wider range of activities than was formerly possible. Recent work holds the potential for, among other things, reducing the use of psychopharmacological drugs that have unpredictable side effects; substituting one sense (touch) for another (sight); and direct repair of brain and other neurological damage. Restak also demonstrates how the brain is modified the old-fashioned way, such as by practicing a skill. The negative aspects of recent work are invoked in more polemical than scientific prose, such as the specter of social control through "medicalization" of everything, and how the overstimulation of our brains by modern society is giving us all ADD. Hackles will rise the farthest over the author's proclamation that it is proven that TV violence affects our brains in ways that lead to violent behavior without even mentioning the word "censorship." A compact if sometimes oversimplified introduction to its subject, Restak's latest is best when it stays close to the data.

From Scientific American

Pity the poor neurologists of yesteryear, saddled as they were with their conviction that our brains are hardwired after childhood. Then celebrate today’s scientists, who are exploiting brain-imaging technologies to show that our brains are capable of profound and permanent alterations throughout our lives. Neurologist Richard Restak does just that in The New Brain: How the Modern Age Is Rewiring Your Mind, even as he argues that we are being negatively altered by the sound-bite, techno environment in which we live. Technology such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, Restak begins, can now demonstrate that as a musician practices for many hours, certain neural pathways are strengthened. He then moves to a profound implication, namely that all kinds of technological stimuli are forging brain circuits that may hurt us instead of helping us. For instance, he cites correlations between positron emission tomography scans of violent people and normal experimental subjects who are simply thinking about fighting, then asserts that repeated viewing of violence on television and in video games can set up brain circuits that make us more likely to initiate realworld fisticuffs. Unfortunately, such brain imaging may leave more questions than answers. As Restak himself points out, the technology does not provide "neurological explanations," just "important correlations." Yet he is whipped up enough to diagnose all of modern society with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, the probable result of brain changes we are initiating in our media-saturated world. He reminds us of the antidote, though: we are still in control of what we allow ourselves to see and hear. In the end, Restak fails to create a sense that scientists have revealed a new way of understanding the brain. And the images that inspire speculation in the book still await research that may finally reveal the mechanisms of such phenomena as memory and aggression. -- Chris Jozefowicz

RSA Video: How Does Experience Influence the Brain?

Elizabeth Gould presents her findings on the fascinating, always-changing mammalian brain.

http://www.thersa.org/events/video/archive/elizabeth-gould

Kathy Sierra: Brain Death by Dull Cubicle

Environmental enrichment is my new thing, so I took to google to find more data. Here's a relevant blog post I found.

Brain Death by Dull Cubicle

Posted by Kathy Sierra on February 20, 2006, on her Passionate blog:

http://headrush.typepad.com/about.html

You always knew that dull, boring cubicles could suck the joy out of work, but now there's evidence that they can change your brain. Not mentally or emotionally, no, we're talking physical structural changes. You could almost say, "Dull, lifeless work environments cause brain damage."

I said "almost", because it depends on your definition of brain damage. What the research suggests is that in unstimulating, unenriched, stressful environments, the brain STOPS producing new neurons (more on that later). But it's only been the last few years that scientists have finally realized that the human brain can build new neurons. For most of the previous century, it was believed that we were born with all the neurons we'd ever have.

Scientists who believed in and studied the idea of "neurogenesis" were dismissed, criticized, ignored. But Princeton's Elizabeth Gould has picked up the neurogenesis ball and run with it. She is almost single-handedly changing the face of neuroscience and psychology.
From a fascinating article in the new print issue of Seed Magazine (my new favorite):

"Eight years after Gould defied the dogma of her field and proved that the primate brain creates new cells, she has gone on to demonstrate that the structure of the brain is incredibly influenced by one's surroundings."

One of the most interesting (and, in hindsight, "doh!") discoveries was that one of the main reasons researchers kept finding NO evidence of new neuron development in their test primates is because they kept them in an environment which shut that process down. In other words, it was the caged-living that stopped the neurogenesis process. By giving her animals a rich, natural enviornment, Gould "flipped the switch" back on, allowing their brains to work normally, and sure enough--the happier, more stimulated animals showed a DRAMATIC increase in neurogenesis as well as dendrite density.
  One summary:
"Complex surroundings create a complex brain."

[One interesting and beautiful back story--researcher Fernando Nottebohm had showed earlier that neurogenesis was necessary for bird songs. "To sing their complex melodies, male birds needed new brain cells. In fact, up to 1% of the neurons in the bird's song center were created anew, every day." Of course, his work was dissed as irrelevant. I mean, come on, these are bird brains. "Avian neurogenesis was explained away as an exotic adaptation..."]

So, back to cubicles. The key to Gould's demonstration of neurogenesis (where virtually all other primate studies had failed) was the stimulating environment. Cages stopped neurgenesis, which she describes as "The neurons stop investing in themselves." She links caged environments with stress, and stimulating natural environments as less stressful, so there is a big assumption here that a dull, boring, unstimulating cube life is also stressful (for the brain, anyway--it doesn't mean the work itself is stressful).

But she didn't just throw them in a natural environment... she also made sure they had a lot of opportunities for play. And perhaps very importantly--frequent rotation and introduction of new toys. I've always wondered why in every game company I worked for (or anyplace with "creatives"), it was assumed and encouraged that people made elaborate virtual worlds out of their workspace, but in non-game/creative workplaces, not so much. While this is often allowed in the cubes of non-game programmers, for the most part it's only the young hipster startups that consider this a primary, essential element of their corporate culture. [Apparently those ping-pong tables and games in those web startups were more than just examples of bubble/VC excess.]

With Gould's work, it would seem, we should not only be allowing employees to, say, decorate their cube, but we should be encouraging it at every turn AND take steps to make frequent changes to the area. (And by "changes", I don't mean rotating demotivation posters). For too many places I've worked, a new "official policy poster" or some new HR thing is about all the stimulating change we got. (That, and the increasingly emphatic signs posted in the coffee/kitchen area about "your mother doesn't work here, it's up to US to keep it clean!!!")
It would appear that blowing your own mind on a regular basis is not just a good idea, it's a key part of neurogenesis. One of the conclusions she came to is that "learning heals the brain." And again, we aren't talking emotionally or psychologically, we're talking physical structures.

She believes that even those who have been in a stressful environment can undo much of the damage by not just removing the stress, but actively introducing enriching and stimulating things.

Experiencing and learning new things is literally exercise for the brain!

That's so cool.

The implications of her work are of course much deeper and more significant than just "dull and/or stressful work environments with low stimulation suppress neurogenesis, which means less or no new brain cells." There are all kinds of social implications as well, although she points out that like most scientists, she does not want to see her work "twisted for political purposes".

But it does mean that the work we are all doing to help our users learn and grow and develop (and kick ass) is a lot more meaningful than just good customer support. Remember, when WE say "passionate users", we mean the kind of passion that inspires people to spend time learning and getting better at whatever it is they're passionate about. So it would seem that it might not be a huge stretch to say:

Passionate users grow more brain cells!

Apparently all work and no play makes Jack not just dull, but dumber. So don't forget to have fun...

Kathy Sierra has been interested in the brain and artificial intelligence since her days as a game developer (Virgin, Amblin', MGM). She is the co-creator of the bestselling Head First series (finalist for a Jolt Software Development award in 2003, and named to the Amazon Top Ten Editors Choice Computer Books for 2003 and 2004). She is also the founder of one of the largest community web sites in the world, javaranch.com. Kathy's passions are skiing, running, her Icelandic horse, gravity, and her latest favorite thing--Dance Dance Revolution.

The Role of Stathmin in Emotional Regulation

Nature Reviews Neuroscience 7, 6 (January 2006)

Neurogenetics: Fear not

by Jane Qiu

Fear helps animals — including humans — to survive, as it allows them to avoid predators and dangerous situations. However, too much fear, or inability to control it, can be detrimental and result in phobias, pathological anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder. The identification of the gene stathmin as an important mediator of both instinctive and learned fear might shed light on these disorders and help us to develop ways to erase unwanted fear.

The role of stathmin in emotional regulation was first proposed a couple of years ago. Gleb Shumyatsky and colleagues conducted a differential gene expression screen of single cell cDNA libraries derived from neurons of the hippocampus and the lateral nucleus of the amygdala (LA). They identified two genes, gastrin-related peptide (Grp) and stathmin, which are highly enriched in the LA but are almost absent from the hippocampus. As the LA lies at the crossroad where sensory information is transmitted from the auditory cortex and auditory thalamus to the amygdala — a crucial process for fear processing — the researchers set out to study whether these genes have a role in fear.

Writing in Cell, they show that mice lacking stathmin are fearless daredevils. Knockout mice do not seem to have instinctive fear, venturing bravely into potentially dangerous environments, such as open fields or elevated platforms, which normal mice would usually avoid.

Stathmin-knockout mice also have weaker memories for past aversive experiences. Shumyatsky et al. tested this using the fear conditioning paradigm. During training, mice were given a conditioned stimulus (a loud tone), which was immediately followed by an unconditioned one (a mild electric footshock). Normal mice make an association between the stimuli and freeze up when they hear the tone during testing the next day. However, the stathmin-knockout mice performed poorly in this test, which indicates that they are inept at forming fear-related memories.

To ensure that this was not due to changes in other features that might have resulted from lack of the gene, the researchers tested the mutant animals' sensitivity for pain. It was normal, as was their performance in spatial memory, which indicates that the effect of stathmin on learned fear is genuine and specific.

How does stathmin affect fear-related memory? It turns out that stathmin can inhibit the dynamics of microtubule formation. Microtubules in the amygdala of the mutant mice are more stable (less flexible) compared with those of their normal counterparts. As new memories involve the formation of new synpases, which may require asembly and disassembly of microtubules, the researchers conjecture that this might explain why mice lacking stathmin cannot effectively form fear-related memories. Consistent with this hypothesis, there was a significant decrease in long-term potentiation in the cortico-amygdala and thalamo-amygdala pathways of mutant mice.

This elegant study represents a significant step forward in our understanding of fear. Although stathmin is conserved across many species, including humans, whether this gene is also expressed in the human amygdala remains to be seen.

Neuroplasticity Pioneer Paul Bach-y-Rita Video

Paul Bach-y-Rita (1934-2006) was an neuroscientist whose most notable work was in the field of neuroplasticity. Bach-y-Rita was one of the first to seriously study the idea of neuroplasticity (although it was first proposed in the late 19th century), and to introduce sensory substitution as a tool to treat patients suffering from neurological disorders.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCM4UBM8wTM&feature=related

Mind Sculpture: Your Brain's Untapped Potential by Ian H. Robertson

I bought a 1999 edition of Mind Sculpture: Your Brain's Untapped Potential, and although Ian Robertson has his own poetic phrases for many of neuroplastic concepts. it's worth noting that these neuroscience research topics have been around for well over a decade. I believe their importance has been very, very undervalued in psychotherapy, self-healing, and rehabilitation programs.

Robertson uses his description of "the trembling web" for what many now call neural networks or even the catch-phrace du jour, the connectome. He uses the concept of "mind sculpture" for neuroplastic change, or what others call "re-wiring your neural circuits." His information is sync with later theories and elaborations, and though the contemporary analogies and metaphors may have changed over the years, most of the key concepts are expertly outlined in his book. Thumbs up.

Mind Sculpture: Your Brain's Untapped Potential by Ian H. Robertson

Research into the brain in the last decade has dramatically changed our understanding of how we humans manage to escape our biological shackles by constantly re-molding ourselves in a near-infinite number of ways. Here one of the world's leading researchers of brain rehabilitation explains with remarkable lucidity the new discoveries to the general reader and the important implications this has for health and human potential.

Ian Robertson explains in fascinating detail how who and what we are is sculpted throughout our lifetime, second by second, by our interactions with the world, by our relationships with other people. “Your brain is changed physically by the conversations you have, the events you witness and the love you receive. This is true all through your life, not just when you are an infant,” writes Prof. Robertson. This process, which he calls “sculpting the brain,” occurs despite the genetic hard-wiring of Darwinian evolution. Indeed, evolution's gift to us, he says, is that we are no longer slaves of our biology, even if that biology hasn't endowed us with perfection. The evolutionary gift we have allows us to modify our inclinations in countless ways in a process which constantly shapes and reshapes us, as a trembling web of 100 billion brain cells fires off cascades of impulses which ultimately create the experiences which make us what we are.

Mind Sculpture shows:

• Why your brain is physically changed by what you do, see, feel and think
• How you can become physically stronger from the comfort of your armchair by carrying out mental exercises in your imagination
• Why learning molds the brain structurally, growing new connections between brain cells
• How education builds brain power — it's not all down to genes.
• How increasing your education over your lifetime will make you more likely to be mentally healthy in old age.
• Why stress can cause brain cells to shrink or even die.
• How keeping mentally active as you get older keeps your brain working better
• Why love grows the brain

From Publishers Weekly
In an engaging hybrid of scientific inquiry and personal discovery, Robertson, who teaches psychology at Trinity College in Dublin and has worked as science correspondent for the London Times, examines the functioning of the human brain. Presenting his ideas with energy, humor and clarity, Robertson's argument that "life sculpts your brain" runs counter to a fairly recent trend in brain research that assumes most, if not all, human behavior is already "hard-wired" through evolution and genetics.

Instead, Robertson claims there are many ways we can all "sculpt" our own realities by knowing how to exercise our brains in certain ways, thus affecting the "patterns of connections between neurons."

For example, education actually builds stronger connections between brain cells, according to Robertson, as neurons fire within the "trembling web" (the 100 billion brain cells that "make up 'you'").

Retirement and lassitude, on the other hand, can diminish the number and strength of these connections. To support his central point that "cells that fire together, wire together,"

Robertson draws mostly upon clinical case studies. In several chapters, he portrays an intriguing cross-section of the population who have experienced abnormal relations between brain and body (e.g., phantom limbs) or who have severe memory blockages. In other chapters, Robertson discusses the effects of trauma, fear and hatred on the brain's neural connections. His theory about the power we all possess to shape our own life experiences has far-reaching implications for all aspects of society, including the treatment of illness, education, the workplace and human relationships.

From Library Journal
Robertson (psychology, Trinity Coll., Dublin) has served as a science correspondent for several London newspapers, is a frequent contributor to science and medical journals, and has authored several books on neurorehabilitation. Here, he describes the brain's "trembling web," in which synapses can form stronger connections as a result of repeated and coordinated firing of neurons. Experience, he argues, can literally change brain structure. His two key principles are aptly phrased, "cells that fire together, wire together" and "when cells fire apart, wires depart."

Learning, therefore, sculpts the brain and affects the complexity and number of dendrites on the neurons. Robertson explains how mental imagery can modify the brain, how paying attention to experience is critical for sculpting to occur, and how physical and mental activity can temper the effects of age on the brain.

He also makes a strong case for the role of environment in the development of emotional and intellectual intelligence. Robertson uses analogies liberally and skillfully to illustrate these processes. This very readable title will engage and inform all general readers and is highly recommended for public libraries and undergraduate collections.

Norman Doidge on the Brain and Neuroplasticity Videos

The Brain That Chances Itself youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3TQopnNXBU&feature=related


Lecture excerpt:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFbm3jL7CDI&feature=related


Full Version:

http://www.slowtv.com.au/

Michael Merzenich on Re-Wiring the Brain TED Video

Michael Merzenich is a pioneer in neuroplasticity research.

One of the foremost researchers of neuroplasticity, Michael Merzenich's work has shown that the brain retains its ability to alter itself well into adulthood -- suggesting that brains with injuries or disease might be able to recover function, even later in life. He has also explored the way the senses are mapped in regions of the brain and the way sensations teach the brain to recognize new patterns.
Merzenich wants to bring the powerful plasticity of the brain into practical use through technologies and methods that harness it to improve learning. He founded Scientific Learning Corporation, which markets and distributes educational software for children based on models of brain plasticity. He is co-founder and Chief Science Officer of Posit Science, which creates "brain training" software also based on his research.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN0Y7aoosvE

My Pet Topic: Neuroplasticity - The Wiki Link

Contrary to common ideas as expressed in this diagram, brain functions are not confined to certain fixed locations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity

Joseph LeDoux on The Tyranny of Anxiety

Joseph E. LeDoux says a “tyranny of anxiety” now wreaks havoc on our society, with more than 40 million people in the United States suffering from disorders at an economic cost of $50 billion per year.

Exceprted from the NYU Alumni Magazine #10 online article By written by Carlin Flora, Spring 2008

"Joseph E. LeDoux has become a crusader for alleviating all sorts of anxieties, a scientist who aims to literally transform the mood of the American public. Author of the acclaimed books, The Emotional Brain (Simon & Schuster) and Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are (Viking), LeDoux says a "tyranny of anxiety" now wreaks havoc on our society.

And with 24-hour TV news channels and Internet sites barraging us with a daily dose of panic and high drama, the national level of fear is only expected to rise. But LeDoux, the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science and winner of the Fyssen Foundation's 2005 International Prize for his work on the neural basis of emotion, believes he's close to understanding how to prevent and treat fear-based disorders, which are affected by our experiences and genetic influences.

"Anxiety is the low-hanging fruit of psychiatry," he says. Unlike depression or schizophrenia, which, he notes, are far more complex, LeDoux claims that fear is "a problem that could be solved with a focused research effort."

This mission to move fear off of the emotional forefront is the focus of NYU's new Emotional Brain Institute, founded in 2007, which LeDoux heads."We're not going to eliminate fear—it's always going to be waiting for another trigger," he cautions. "But we can develop strategies to overcome it."

As a kid in the small Cajun town of Eunice, Louisiana, LeDoux, a good-but-not-great student, never pursued scientific hobbies or considered research as a career. But he did get some early anatomy lessons in his father's butcher shop. "Since I was 8 or 9, my job was to take the bullets out of the cow brains," he says. "I used to think about what had been going through the cow's mind when…bam!"

Coming from a cognitive science background, LeDoux wanted to understand emotion as information processing rather than as subjective feeling—to know why we choose emotions instead of simply how we experience them. At that time, emotion was assumed to be a function of the limbic system, which includes the amygdala, a small almond-shaped structure in the brain's temporal lobe. But attached to the theory as scientists were, no one had honed in on the fact that there was no clear evidence linking emotion to most other limbic areas besides the amygdala.

LeDoux began conducting simple fear-conditioning experiments in rats (pairing a tone with a mild shock, for example) to map out the effects of emotional stimuli on the brain and, in the process, discovered that the amygdala itself is the brain's virtual seat of fear. When triggered by fearful sounds or sights, the amygdala rapidly signals to our bodies to freeze while the brain processes the threat.

LeDoux's true eureka moment came after he traced the nerves connecting the rats' auditory sensations to areas in their brain and found that their emotional, rather than rational, responses to fearful stimuli were processed more quickly. Reacting to a scary sound, a rat brain's "low road" of sensory processing, which centers in the amygdala and leads to an emotional response, functioned almost twice as fast as the "high road" of processing, which involves conscious thought. Because the fear system in humans developed so long ago, it's analogous to that of rats, LeDoux says; when we hear a loud noise, we freeze until our brain decodes whether the noise is threatening.

In rats and humans, the fear of threatening stimuli is triggered by emotionally potent memories, which is why the study of memory formation has been key to LeDoux's research. His lab team is working to figure out how to chemically interrupt the consolidation of traumatic memories so they won't have such a debilitating hold over people. So far, the team has been able to erase specific memories in rats by injecting a chemical into their brains, disrupting the protein synthesis that normally occurs when a memory is recalled. "We've had great success in the animal models," LeDoux says, but notes that "the human work is very slow." Because many victims of post-traumatic stress disorder suffer from drug and alcohol addiction, it's difficult to find the necessary substance-free subjects for the study.

In the meantime, LeDoux has found a less conventional method of spreading his understanding of the emotional brain to the masses: music. At Madison Square Garden last May, he led the Amygdaloids—his rock band comprised of fellow NYU scientists. During one song, from the group's CD titled Heavy Mental, he crooned, 'Why do we feel so afraid? Don't have to look very far. It's all in a nut—in your brain.'"

Nueroplascticity: The DVD

This 2010 DVD covers much of the material in the books I recommended  in my earlier post on neuroplasticity.

From its Amazon listing, "Brain Fitness Frontiers explores how ordinary people are utilizing their brain plasticity to create lasting and astonishing changes. From aging to recovery from injury, the frontiers of neuroscience research are proving that our own neuroplasticity holds the key to previously unimaginable and incredible transformations. Hosted by Peter Coyote, Brain Fitness Frontiers takes you into the labs of the scientists and into the lives of those who have been assisted and changed through cognitive training and other therapies on the cutting edge of neuroscientific discovery. Brain Fitness Frontiers contains interviews with luminaries of neuroscience and medicine including Dr. Michael Merzenich, Dr. Skip Rizzo, Dr. John Donoghue, and many more. It challenges our misconceptions about the brain and invites us to embrace new possibilities in our own lives as we witness the struggles, the triumphs, and the transformations made possible through the power of neuroplasticity."

Neuroplasticity: Think Yourself Well

Neuroplasticy is an exciting topic. The basic premise is that the brain is always growing and changing and is very adaptable, thus "plastic." When one part of the brain is damaged, with proper training another part can sometines assume the functions of the damaged part. Behavioral changes and new thinking can actually modify the brain's biology. "Neurons that fire together, wire together" is the sound bite. By resisting OCD compulsions with Jeffrey M. Schwartz's "Brain Lock" techniques, the areas of the brain that are implicated in the OCD disorder can be changed. I definitely plan on exploring this topic at length. I've read these books on the subject and highly recommend them. There is also a top-notch DVD on the topic. Hey Benjamin Braddock, the future is not "plastics," it's "neuroplacticity."