Sunday, June 20, 2010

Neuroplasticity, and creating your own destiny

I saw documentary on ABC last night about Neuroplasticity, how doctors/medical scientists are discovering how the brain can change itself and applying these findings/hypothesis to treating patients. I can't find the same doco online, so these are the closest video clips I could find that more or less touches on the topic:



Dan Rather Reports - Mind Science
This is the first of a 6 part video presented in a more easy to understand way.

"Scientists, with the help of Buddhist monks are unlocking mysteries of the brain. An interesting reports about brain plasticity and the effect of meditation on brain and emotions. "

Coincidentally, "unlocking mysteries" seems to be an oft repeated phrase in scientific/medical programs watered down for general audiences.



Lecture conducted by V.S. Ramachandran
Date: October 4, 2008
Topics: Cerebral Feedback Loop, Human Brain, Human Flourishing, Mystery of the Mind, Neuroplasticity
V.S. Ramachandran is Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and Professor with the Psychology Department and the Neurosciences Program at UC San Diego.


This video is a lot richer in terms of the knowledge and language, but is drier in that it isn't a television program, it's a recorded lecture. It covers the best bits of the current (2008 at least) findings on Neuroplasticity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity

These medical findings aren't new. Even the videos above were from 2008. Its just astonishing to discover for me, and quite mind blowing.

In summary, it seems that there are measurable and quantifiable medical results of physical/mental effects from changing one's thinking, through training/practice or illusions/manipulating external feedback. I mean, this sounds logical, but to witness changes on stroke victims, amputees feeling phantom pain among other examples in the videos...

All this appears to reinforce the kind of philosophy I've been taught or I've studied growing up. Except the same concept is applied in a more abstract way towards ethics or perceiving the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_a_man_thinketh (from Wikipedia)
As a Man Thinketh is a literary essay of James Allen, published in 1902. The title is influenced by a verse in the Bible from the Book of Proverbs chapter 23 verse 7, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

The book opens with the statement:

Mind is the Master power that moulds and makes,
And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes
The tool of Thought, and, shaping what he wills,
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills: —
He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass:
Environment is but his looking-glass.

Quotes From As a Man Thinketh
* Men do not attract what they want, but what they are.
* A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.
* Cherish your visions. Cherish your ideals. Cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment, of these, if you but remain true to them your world will at last be built.
* The soul attracts that which it secretly harbors, that which it loves, and also that which it fears. It reaches the height of its cherished aspirations. It falls to the level of its unchastened desires - and circumstances are the means by which the soul receives its own.
* Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves, they therefore remain bound.
* Every action and feeling is preceded by a thought.
* Right thinking begins with the words we say to ourselves.
* Circumstance does not make the man, it reveals him to himself.
* You cannot travel within and stand still without.
* As the physically weak man can make himself strong by careful and patient training, so the man of weak thoughts, can make them strong by exercising himself in right thinking.


In the first two verses of the Dhammapada, a prominent Buddhist scripture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhammapada

1. All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.
2. All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.


Conclusion

What I'm getting at is it that it was very revelatory for me to somehow connect the more concrete and scientific findings on Neuroplasticity with some of the more esoteric philosophies I've been familiar with.

The health of the body will reflect that of the mind, and will react to mental cultivation. Keeping a positive mindset, eventuates a more positive reality. Self affirmation solidifies the message. Who you are attracts the like minded. The external world is somehow going to mirror the internal world, so it will be the internal world that we must govern. Self mastery, (or perhaps a Zen Buddhist may say, knowing that there is no "self"), is the way we change our perceptions of the world, and subsequently the world itself, or how it appears to you, or what happens to you.

Great isn't it. I'm pretty happy to quite often be able to trick myself into positivity and genuinely falling for it. With that down to pat, everything else will fall into place.