Neuroplasticity and the Brain That Changes Itself

I first dis­cov­ered Nor­man Doidge’s book, The Brain That Changes Itself, in a May, 2007 review in the New York Times. Intrigued, but caught up in myr­i­ad end-of-school-year respon­si­bil­i­ties, the book was put out of my mind until lat­er that sum­mer, when our schools learn­ing spe­cial­ist emailed to say she had just fin­ished a fas­ci­nat­ing book. The Brain That Changes Itself: Stores of Per­son­al Tri­umph from the Fron­tiers of Brain Sci­ence, is a com­pelling col­lec­tion of tales about the amaz­ing abil­i­ties of the brain to rewire, read­just and relearn after hav­ing a slice of itself ren­dered dys­func­tion­al. The first sev­en chap­ters cap­ti­vat­ed me for their per­son­al sto­ries; the final four chap­ters for the sci­ence and philosophy.

Part of what makes Doidge’s writ­ing so acces­si­ble is he tells sto­ries, and his sto­ries just hap­pen to incor­po­rate brain sci­ence. As a result, his book is easy to digest. The neu­ro­science behind Doidge’s book involves neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, which is the brain’s abil­i­ty to rewire itself. This means that the brain is our intel­li­gence  is not some­thing fixed in con­crete but rather a chang­ing, learn­ing enti­ty. On the face of it, this con­cept should not sound unusu­al, for it is what hap­pens to indi­vid­u­als all the time as we go about the learn­ing process, from infan­cy onwards.

What sep­a­rates the sto­ries in this book from dai­ly learn­ing is that the brains in ques­tion have been dam­aged in some form or oth­er. Each tale is inspi­ra­tional in that the indi­vid­u­als are able to over­come sub­stan­tial, life-alter­ing events, such as severe ill­ness and stroke, in part thanks to the research of vision­ary sci­en­tists and doc­tors who devel­oped meth­ods and tools to facil­i­tate neuroplasticity.

Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty
The catchy phrase behind neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty is “neu­rons that fire togeth­er wire togeth­er”. The idea is that when two events (neu­rons fir­ing) occur in the brain at the same time, the events (neu­rons) become asso­ci­at­ed with one anoth­er, and the neu­ronal con­nec­tions (wiring) become stronger.

For many years, it was thought that each area of the brain had its own respon­si­bil­i­ties; in oth­er words, cer­tain func­tions were local­ized or hard­wired to cer­tain brain areas. If some­thing is hard­wired then it is fixed and not capa­ble of change.

How­ev­er, while cer­tain areas of the brain do tend to be respon­si­ble for spe­cif­ic func­tions, since the brain is plas­tic, areas over­lap and even can co-opt one anoth­er’s func­tions. Ini­tial maps drawn of our men­tal sys­tem turn out to be not as sta­t­ic as orig­i­nal­ly thought. If one path­way gets blocked, the brain is very good at find­ing alter­na­tive pathways.

As with any path­way, the more a par­tic­u­lar path is used, the more ingrained it becomes, and path­ways near one anoth­er become asso­ci­at­ed with each oth­er. If a path is under­uti­lized, over time it will be co-opt­ed by oth­er path­ways that are branch­ing out and need more space.

Hence, plas­tic­i­ty can be summed up in a few suc­cinct state­ments all from chap­ter three  Redesign­ing the brain:

- Neu­rons that fire togeth­er wire together.

- Neu­rons that wire apart fire apart. This is also stat­ed as Neu­rons out of sync fail to link.

- Use it or lose it.

The Sci­en­tists
Doidge includes sto­ries of the neu­ro­sci­en­tists, among them Paul Bach-y-Rita, who pio­neered the idea of “pol­y­sen­so­ry”. Pol­y­sen­so­ry refers to the sen­so­ry areas of the brain, which rather than only pro­cess­ing infor­ma­tion from just the sens­es that nor­mal­ly report to those areas, are actu­al­ly able to process infor­ma­tion from any of the senses.

Michael Merzenich, a devel­op­er of the cochlear implant and founder of Posit Sci­ence, is anoth­er of the sci­en­tists not­ed by Doidge. Merzenich says that “You can­not have plas­tic­i­ty in iso­la­tion — an absolute impos­si­bil­i­ty. (and Doidge con­tin­ues) His exper­i­ments have shown that if one brain sys­tem changes, those sys­tems con­nect­ed to it change as well.

Fol­low­ing on his heels is Edward Taub, who estab­lished con­straint induced ther­a­py, an alter­na­tive ther­a­py for indi­vid­u­als felled by stroke. Taub’s research sup­port­ed Merzenich’s find­ings that “when a brain map is not used, the brain can reor­ga­nize itself so that anoth­er men­tal func­tion takes over that pro­cess­ing space.

Alvaro Pas­cual-Leone’s exper­i­ments began with look­ing at what hap­pens in the minds of those who read Braille, and tran­si­tioned to look­ing at how “our thoughts can change the mate­r­i­al struc­ture of our brains. His goal was “to test whether men­tal prac­tice and imag­i­na­tion in fact lead to phys­i­cal changes. This is, indeed, what hap­pens when ath­letes use visu­al­iza­tion to help pre­pare for sports trials.

In the last quar­ter of Doidge”s book, which is equal­ly inter­est­ing for the clar­i­fi­ca­tion of the­o­ries, he dis­cuss­es the work of Eric Kan­del, Sig­mund Freud, San­ti­a­go Ramy Cajal, Jor­dan Graf­man, and sev­er­al oth­er sci­en­tists who are explor­ing neuroplasticity.

My Take-Aways
I see plas­tic­i­ty and metacog­ni­tion as close­ly entwined. This com­bi­na­tion of know­ing that intel­li­gence is not fixed and thus you can change it, and know­ing how you learn, is immense­ly pos­i­tive and pow­er­ful, and has huge impli­ca­tions for stu­dents of any age. I trans­late this to stu­dents who strug­gle with learn­ing issues, and aging adults who fear their brains will fade. I also think it is impor­tant for teach­ers to under­stand the con­cept of brain plas­tic­i­ty, as a means for no longer pigeon hol­ing students.

Of course, we take away from an authors writ­ing what we want or need to learn. As a provider of pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment to fac­ul­ty, the final les­son I take from Doidge’s book is the pow­er of mul­ti­fac­eted pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment to fos­ter neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty in adults, and there­fore enhance their cre­ativ­i­ty. I take the mes­sage that most of us have the abil­i­ty to break out of habits and to learn some­thing new, and each time we do this, it strength­ens our abil­i­ty to do it the next time!

– Lau­rie Bar­tels writes the Neu­rons Fir­ing blog to cre­ate for her­self the “the grad­u­ate course I’d love to take if it exist­ed as a pro­gram”. She is the K‑8 Com­put­er Coor­di­na­tor and Tech­nol­o­gy Train­ing Coor­di­na­tor at Rye Coun­try Day School in Rye, New York. She is also the orga­niz­er of Dig­i­tal Wave annu­al sum­mer pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment, and a fre­quent attendee of Learn­ing & The Brain conferences.

For more on brain plas­tic­i­ty and learning:

• Brain Plas­tic­i­ty: How learn­ing changes your brain
• Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series: inter­views with over 15 brain sci­en­tists on how to direct the prop­er­ty of neuroplasticity.