Introduction & What Me, Worry? INTRODUCTORY COMMENT: The reader should understand that this book represents the informed opinion of the author, and is not intended to provide a complete scientific treatment of any of the subjects considered herein. There are hundreds of thousands of scientific studies that have generated data relevant to the topics at…
The Gift of “Adult Brain Plasticity” in a Human Life: The story of David Significant improvements in speech reception abilities like those recorded in David have been achieved several million times in our trained language-impaired child populations. Studies show that recovery of speech reception abilities (which was the major target of the “Fast ForWord” training…
MY Earth is Spinning Faster and Faster…Special challenges for developing and sustaining a modern brain Helmuth Plessner, a leading proponent of “philosophical anthropology”, is most strongly identified in my mind with the argument that one of our greatest human assets is our “non-specialization”. Plessner was a member of the Weimar School of German philosophers active…
The Great Awakening: “My Brain Is PLASTIC” How the scientist writing this account finally saw the light An annotated autobiography including an abbreviated description of my University of California laboratory’s studies on brain plasticity has been recently published; see History of Neuroscience in Autobiography, Volume 7, Chapter 10 (2012). The majority of the main claims…
A Special Experiment That Demonstrated the Incredible Power of Cortical Plasticity in Older Adults Lessons learned, from the development of a cochlear implant Again, I have published a brief account of the development of the UCSF Cochlear Implant elsewhere (History of Neuroscience in Autobiography, Volume 7, Chapter 10 (2012.) A few key references to that…
The Power of Plasticity for Transforming Lives It’s all about YOUR brain and YOUR future John Corcoran tells the story about his reading failure as a child, and about his learning to read as an adult, in his biographical account The Teacher Who Couldn’t Read. www.johncorcoranfoundation.org/literacy-books.php For a wonderful elucidation of the personal and societal…
Riding The Human Roller-Coaster… The Rise—Then Fall—of Human Ability Across a Lifetime Psychologists studying the development of language-specific phonological processing have shown that newborns can discriminate between phonemic inputs (phonemes are the categorically-processed meaning-bearing sound parts of words) from the time of birth. However, there is a long (many-month) path from a capacity to discriminate…
Cranking Up the New Machinery… The acquisition of skills and ability in early life General reference books and review articles on the critical period and on child development listed in the notes on the previous chapter again apply here, for the initial conclusions drawn in this Chapter (using my grand-daughters as a platform for reminding…
How DOES an Older Brain Remodel Itself?! Ten fundamental principles of brain plasticity “Change is mostly limited to those situations in which the brain is in the mood for it.”On one level, there is a long history of studies in experimental psychology that show that we learn (our brain is plastic in an advancing direction)…
Reaching the Mountain Top Your brain, on steroids A few references related to my description of the general development of motor control ability in childhood (note that many hundreds could be cited): For a description of fetal movement patterns, see de Vries JL, Fong BF (2006) Normal fetal motility: an overview. Ultrasound Obstet Gynecol 27:601…
Slowly Sliding Back Down the Slope… Aging – and other sources of decline in our cognitive abilities – that can degrade the quality of our operation capabilities and imperil our older lives. We shall later describe changes with aging in greater detail. I cited references that would lead you to a number of broad population…
Believing in Brain Plasticity Applying this science to recover a life You can learn more about Ryan and his special journey (and meet him) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y817Q7oOYw Ryan Reitmeyer and his mother and father are particular heroes of the author. Since Ryan’s accident and rehabilitation, Ryan and his family has been on a crusade to help…
You are Special! How your brain remodeled itself to create the unique person that is reading this book. For a general reference to memory processes, see Schacter DL, Searching for Memory: The Brain, The Mind and the Past. Basic Books, New York, 1996; for a little more modern and broader treatment, see Roedinger et al.,…
Your parallel universes… Growing, sustaining and controlling your operations in ALL of your brain Worlds For the classical description of the loss of cutaneous sensation in oxygen-deprived skin, see Head et al., Studies in Neurology, Oxford Univ. Press (1920) The neurologist Antonio Damasio has written extensively about some of the most interesting aspects of the…
Loading Your Own Encyclopedia Magnifica Memory acquisition and use For a few of Abe Lincoln’s jokes, see Paul Zall’s (2007) Abe Lincoln’s Legacy of Laughter: Humorous Stories By and About Abe Lincoln or Alexander McClure’s Abraham Lincoln’s Humorous Stores, El Paso Norte Press (2006); of course Mr. Lincoln is the real author of these books.…
A Typical Day in the Life of Your Brain! Perceiving, recognizing, recording, pondering, understanding, responding The basic numbers/facts about the brain provided in this superficial description of the brain and the cerebral cortex largely come from www.BrainFacts.org. Estimates of total cell numbers (both neurons and glial cells) have been ‘corrected’ in contemporary studies using more…
Transformation, Part Deux How improvements at the ‘little things’ can change the course of a life These are self-reported tales (chosen from among many examples) that come a) from two individuals who have used our Posit Science training programs to address problems that are slowing them down in life –and generously related to us because…
Losing Ground, Just By Having a Birthday! How, more exactly, do mental and physical performance abilities change as we grow older? Several hundred studies have documented changes in processing speed associated with aging. There are many measured brain process “speeds;” they ALL slow down. See Salthouse TA (2000) Aging and measures of processing speed. Biol…
It’s Not Just About Growing Older. Of Course. Many other things can befall us that can contribute to our neurological struggles For a first-person account of autism (there are several wonderful books) see Temple Grandin’s (1995) Thinking in Pictures …. and Other Reports from My Life with Autism. Vintage, New York. Amazon.com lists more than…
When Brains Change, You Change. Older should be wiser, better, and more balanced, but alas The weaknesses described in this chapter have been referenced earlier, esp. in the notes for Chapters 8 & 12. Older individuals confabulate more than do younger ones, in part because they want the story to come out in the over-practiced…
Machinery In Need Of Repair Physical, chemical and functional changes in older and in wounded brains For a description of changes in brain volumes in aging—and in the progression into Alzheimer’s and its neuropathological cousins—begin with Sowell ER et al (2004) Mapping changes in the human cortex throughout the span of life. Neuroscientist 10:371; Jagust…
WHY Is My Brain Slowing Losing It? Root causes of physical and functional changes in aging Scientists have noted differences in the numbers of sensory receptors in human skin as a function of age in studies that date back to more than a hundred years. On the average, numbers of receptors/cm2 drop to 10-50% of…
Pushing harder on that accelerator, in reverse! How ‘negative learning’ can speed up age- and brain injury-related decline Age related differences in gait patterns have been recorded in many studies. You can begin with Seung-uk K et al (2010) Age-associated differences in the gat pattern changes of older adults during fast-speed and fatigue conditions: results…
Frankly, This Subject Is Depressing Me… How other medical issues contribute to – and often accelerate – functional and neurological decline I’m not going to go all the way down the list of risk factors contributing to an earlier than otherwise-expected onset of Alzheimer’s. I’ll just cite references for a few of these clinical indications…
Alzheimer’s How changes in a brain can result in its ultimate catastrophic collapse For a general reference about Alzheimer’s Disease, written for the informed layperson, see Coste JK, Butler R (2004) Learning to Speak Alzheimer’s: A Groundbreaking Approach for Everyone Dealing with the Disease. Houghton Mifflin, Boston; for a poignant first-person account of losing the…
That Troublesome Body Hooked Up To My Brain… A healthy brain is CRUCIAL for sustaining a healthy body Many scientists demonstrated the neurobehavioral benefits of a regular dose of physical exercise. For example, see Ratey JJ, Hagerman E (2008) Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. The neurological bases of these effects…
Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks How the scientist writing this book began to realize that there are very good uses for one of God’s (Mother Nature’s) greatest gifts: Your plastic brain! Our initial plasticity studies conducted more than 30 years ago documented progressive representational remodeling following median nerve transection deafferenting the skin in the palmar…
“Science to the People” Bringing this new form of help from the Ivory Tower out into the real world Again, the history of our founding Scientific Learning Corporation, Posit Science Corporation and the Brain Plasticity Institute have been told elsewhere, albeit in abbreviated form. See History of Neuroscience in Autobiography, Volume 7, Chapter 10 (2012).…
Reorganizing Your Life With a Brain Fitness Goal Daily activities that can contribute to the maintenance of a healthy brain This discussion is supported by annotation accompanying other book chapters (especially Chapters 28 & 32; see www.soft-wired/ch28 and www.soft-wired/ch32 ). In addition: Many studies have demonstrated the destructive consequences of social isolation—and the high value…
Programs for Brain Rejuvenation or Brain Recovery Features of computer-controlled, Internet-delivered neuroscience-based programs designed to grow, rejuvenate or recover – then sustain – your brain health The principles guiding the designs and strategies for delivery of these brain-health-targeted training programs have been well-described in a number of published reviews. See, e.g., Merzenich MM et al…
What Does Mike Do? How has the writer of this book organized his life so that person that he is can continue to THRIVE and GROW. My own personal strategies are based on the science described in (and annotated as references for) the preceding chapters of this book. I offer no further references because this…
Can’t I Just Take a Pill? Other useful strategies that can contribute to your brain health. For general references (now several years old) summarizing evidence that physical exercise is good for your brain, see Ratey JJ & Hagerman E (2008) Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. Little-Brown:Boston; or Hillman CH, Erickson…
My memory is pretty good, but my back is driving me crazy… Helping your brain help your body. Annotation largely in earlier chapter. H Flor driving antinociception In its early history, enduring pain was a relatively infrequently occuring negative outcome following surgical mastectomy. That picture has changed over the past 3-4 decades; now, estimates of…
Driving Matters Navigating the Modern World Drs. Karlene Ball (University of Alabama at Birmingham), Daniel Roenker (University of Western Kentucky) and Jerri Willis (University of South Florida) first demonstrated the strong relationship between a speed-related divided attention ability in vision (the individual’s “Useful Field of View”, UFOV) and their driving accident rate THEN showed that…
Improving Yourself Taking a holistic approach to improving your Personhood. This is my perspective, based on the research summarized in earlier chapters. Refer to those chapters for references supporting these conclusions.
“Today Is The First Day Of The Rest Of Your Life” GROW AGAIN. Begin that transformation to a new, better place in life TODAY. My perspective; needs no additional annotation or comment.