MindMap-BookSummary: The Brain That Changes Itself

MindMap-BookSummary: The Brain That Changes Itself

• Preface
  • Braint Plasticity
    • Definition-pertaining to the nerves and/or brain and plastic – moldable or changeable in structure

      Refers to changes in neural pathways and synapses which are due to changes in behavior, environment and neural processes, as well as changes resulting from bodily injury

      Human brain can change itself

      Without operation or medications, our brain has the ability to change

      Brain function can be preseve as we aged

  • Long standing theory
    • 1. Brain change only as it began the process of decline

      2. When brain cells failed to develop properly, or were injured, or died, they could not be replaced

      3. Brain ever alter its structure and fi nd a new way to function if part of it is damaged

      4. The theory of the unchanging brain decreed that people who were born with brain or mental limitations, or who sustained brain damage, would be limited or damaged for life.

      5. Many brain problems was in effec tive or even unwarranted

      6. Since the brain could not change, human nature, which emerges from it, seemed necessarily fixed and unalterable as well

  • Hardwiring
    • “Hardwiring” was another machine meta phor coming from the idea of the brain as computer hardware, with permanently connected circuits, each designed to perform a specifi c, unchangeable function.

      Human brain is not hardwired

  • Discoveries
    • brain changed its very structure with each different activity it performed
    • deaf hears
    • stroke patients recover
    • learning disorder cured
    • IQ raised
    • memory improved
    • incurable obessesion and traumas cured
    • addictions to drugs, sex, perversion cured
  • Problems of Nueroplasticity
    • It renders our brains not only more resourceful but also more vulnerable to outside influences.

      Neuro plas ticity has the power to produce more flexible but also more rigid behaviors—a phenomenon called “the plastic paradox.”

      Ironically, some of our most stubborn habits and disorders are products of our plasticity. Once a particular plastic change occurs in the brain and becomes well established, it can prevent other changes from occurring

• Chapter 1-A Woman Perpetually Falling
  • Rescued by the Man Who Discovered the Plasticity of Our Senses
  • And they saw the voices. Exodus 20:18
  • Cheryl lost her balance but later regained it
  • Vestibular Sensor
    • Balance system
    • Sense of spatial orientation
    • Provides information related to movement and head position
    • Development of balance, coordination, eye control, attention
• Chapter 2-Building Herself a Better Brain
  • A Woman Labeled “Retarded” Discovers How to Heal Herself

    confusing assortment of serious learning disabilities

    The area of her brain devoted to speech, Broca’s area, was not working properly,

    trouble pronouncing words.

    understood nothing in real time, only after the fact, in lag time

    did not understand what was happening around her while it was occurring

    thoughts are faster than speech and leave chunks of information

    When we write a thought, our brain converts the words—which are symbols—into movements of the fingers and hands

• Chapter 3-Redesigning the Brain
• Chapter 4-Acquiring Tastes and Loves
• Chapter 5-Midnight Resurrections
• Chapter 6-Brain Lock Unlocked
• Chapter 7-Pain
• Chapter 8-Imagination
• Chapter 9-Turning Our Ghosts into Ancestors
• Chapter 10-Rejuvenation
• Chapter 11-More than the Sum of Her Parts
• Terms
  • Spatial Reasoning
    • Spatial reasoning is also necessary for forming a mental map of where things are
  • Kinesthetic perception
    • Kinesthetic perception allows us to be aware of where our body or limbs are in space, enabling us to control and coordinate our movements.
  • Compensations
    • Once brain cells die or fail to develop, they cannot be restored. Compensations work around the problem

      Activity can produce changes in the structure of the brain.