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Every man can, if he so desires, sculpt his own brain

September 12, 2007 by Alvaro Fernandez

Santiago Ramon y CajalA Span­ish friend and neu­ro­sci­en­tist just remind­ed me of a great quote by San­ti­a­go Ramon y Cajal (1852–1934): “todo hom­bre puede ser, si se lo pro­pone, escul­tor de su pro­pio cere­bro”.

Which means: “Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculp­tor his own brain”.

Which real­ly means: “Each of us can lit­er­al­ly refine the struc­ture and func­tion of our brains, the same way we can do so with the rest of our body mus­cles” (my 2 cents…).

Our dai­ly thoughts and actions, learn­ings, med­i­ta­tion, cog­ni­tive ther­a­py, the grow­ing num­ber of soft­ware-based pro­grams, and more, are “sculpt­ing” tools…no more no less than tools. Good for some goals and con­texts, like improv­ing con­cen­tra­tion and mem­o­ry, becom­ing “sharp­er”, help­ing pro­tect our minds from decline, or man­age stress better.

I just bought Cajal’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, titled Rec­ol­lec­tions of My Life (thanks, Mind Hacks). Will be writ­ing about it in a month or so‑I have too many books on the table now, and only one brain.

If you want to read some good neu­ro­science blog posts, you can find a nice col­lec­tion in the lat­est edi­tion of Encephalon, host­ed by Dr Deb­o­rah Serani.

For gen­er­al sci­ence ones, try Tan­gled Bank. For edu­ca­tion, enjoy The Edu­ca­tion Car­ni­val.

Final­ly, I will be host­ing the next edi­tion of Car­ni­val of the Cap­i­tal­ists (I don’t real­ly love the name…but it is the old­est and best blog car­ni­val for busi­ness and eco­nom­ics). If you have some good posts, please sub­mit them here.

For some addi­tion­al thoughts on sculpt­ing brains, intel­li­gence, and becom­ing smarter, you can check this post.

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, Peak Performance Tagged With: basketball-players, brain-based, brain-training-games, concept-map, entrepreneurship, health-insurance, healthy-brain, magic-pills, meditation, Mindfulness-schools

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Greg Butler says

    September 12, 2007 at 12:51

    You might also want to check out Daniel Amen’s book, ‘How to Make a Good Brain Great.’

  2. Stephanie West Allen says

    September 12, 2007 at 1:28

    Yep, that’s self-direct­ed neu­ro­las­tic­i­ty if you are in charge. So much of neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty occurs with­out our knowl­edge or input so that’s why I think it is impor­tant for peo­ple to know the dif­fer­ence. Shows that we have both the pow­er and the respon­si­bil­i­ty to cre­ate our own brains.

    One of my favorite books on the top­ic is Ian Robert­son’s Mind Sculpture.

  3. Alvaro says

    September 13, 2007 at 7:42

    Thanks Greg, I will check it out. 

    Stephanie, thanks also for the book sug­ges­tion, will also check it out. And will write a post soon to clar­i­fy that the whole point of what we are doing and call­ing “brain fit­ness” is pre­cise­ly to empow­er each of us to refine our brains and minds!

  4. dr.jagadeesan says

    September 14, 2007 at 2:26

    first time visitor
    more infor­ma­tions rqi\uired
    look­ing for better
    programmes
    thank­ing you
    jagadeesan

  5. Alvaro says

    September 14, 2007 at 6:23

    dr.jagadeesanon: you will find many use­ful arti­cles in this site. Enjoy

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