Not quite so hardwired

The other day I overheard two people talking about neuroplasticity while waiting in line at Peets Coffee & Tea in San Jose. Talk about coming a long way!

When I was studying Psychobiology—aka, the neurological basis of behavior—at UC Santa Cruz back in the early 1980s, the structure of the brain was understood to be given and unchangeable. The homunculus—the representation of the physical body on the sensory and motor cortices based on Wilder Penfield’s research—provided a physical basis for Feldenkrais’ idea of the self-image. However, the homunculus was taken to be fixed, like a map that was hardwired into the brain at birth.

This presented a problem. If Feldenkrais was right—that we move according to our self-image and not our structure AND that our self image changed—that implied that the sensory homuculus, at least, would have changed as we learned. This idea was unacceptable to the orthodoxy at the time, which lead to some pointed conversations with some of my professors and fellow students.

At one point, I remember reading an article about research into the development of the nervous system of dogs done by Russian neurophysiologists. Following Penfield, they stimulated the motor cortex of puppies through the first days of life and they were able to show that the projection of the body onto the brain (since they were canines, does that mean we’d have called it the “canunculus?”) changed over time. This was a breakthrough: the first evidence that the brain changed with learning that I had stumbled upon.

Jump to the present: Science—and my neighbors in line at the coffeeshop—have caught up with Dr. Feldenkrais’ thinking! It makes me wish that he was alive to see his ideas vindicated, and more importantly, being to put use in so many ways.

Psychiatrist, researcher, and author, Norman Doidge, MD, has been one of the leading advocates for spreading the word about neuroplasticity. His book, The Brain That Changes Itself, is a wonderful introduction to what it means to have a brain that can restructure and reprogram itself.

This Wednesday, Dr. Doidge will be interviewed as part of an online conference on brain science. He will be addressing such topics as learning disabilities, social clumsiness, and chronic pain through the lens of brain plasticity. You don’t have to pay for the interview—you sign-up for the free online video or audio broadcast of Ruth Buczynski’s interview with him HERE—scroll to the bottom of the page to get to the button that says Register Here For The Wednesday Broadcasts Only Free of Charge.

You can also go directly to this link:

http://www.nicabm.com/brain2013/?del=2.4.13emailf

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