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| Dr Norman Doidge has found we can do remarkable things with our brains. |
IT sounds like science-fiction, but radical psychiatrist Norman Doidge says our brains can often heal with a little help and create new pathways that could change our lives.
Simple movements of the body, meditation techniques and thought exercises can teach us to do things we never thought possible.
The groundbreaking research in his new book, The Brain’s Way of Healing, shows how people suffering from chronic pain, stroke, learning difficulties or Attention Deficit Disorder can with training in many cases resolve.
Even frustrations you might think are just part of who you are — a lack of co-ordination, for example, or difficulty in concentrating on words — can be altered through the relatively new science of neuroplasticity.
At its most extreme, the work being done in this field by doctors, therapists and patients all over the world has succeeded in diminishing the symptoms of multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, brain injuries and cerebral palsy — and lowering the risk of dementia in a population by 60 per cent.
USE IT OR LOSE IT
Not only can an injury or a genetic abnormality make us function less efficiently, we can also sabotage our brain’s capacity through how we use (or don’t use) it.
“Whenever we neglect a skill, the brain area that is devoted to that skill is taken over by other activities,” Dr Doidge told news.com.au. “It’s a sobering thought.
“If you’re chronically anxious, it’s not just an unpleasant experience, parts of the brain are starting to shrink and the memory system can be affected. The parts in the worry circuit hypertrophy because they’re always turned on.”
With chronic pain, our brains can become so attuned to a certain ache, pain circuits enlarge and we feel constant agony.
Dr Doidge and other neuroplasticity experts contend that supercharging your mind can be a simple process, once you identify what is missing or inadequate.
“It usually requires finding the brain function that is absent and developing incremental exercises for that.”
The Brain’s Way of Healing takes us to the front line of modern science.Source:Supplied
BRAIN TRAINING
The cognitive techniques in the book, and the Canadian Psychiatrist’s 2011 bestseller, The Brain That Changes Itself, start simple and can get very complicated.
Many learning disorders can be seen and dealt with when kids are still at school, and never bother them again. But rather than “flogging a dead horse” by trying to teach them in the same way over and over, we need a different approach.
Dr Doidge offers this example: “There are a number of children who have three problems, which seem unrelated. They can’t put their thoughts into words in real time, their eyes skip all over the page when they read, and their handwriting is so atrocious they give up on it and just write in print.
“There’s a part of the brain the function of which is to turn symbols into movements the body executes. It’s about decoding the symbols you’ve read and turning them into movements.
“The exercise involves tracing simple shapes like stick figures and then moving on to extremely complicated squiggles. You have to draw the pen along the line without going off it. As you do it, you improve your handwriting, reading and speaking.”
Co-ordination can have different causes — left brain/right brain problems or issues with the kinaesthetic senses that tell us where our limbs are in space. All this will affect the techniques we use to tackle it.
But if we get them right, they can sometimes slow the brain’s decline as we age.
The Canadian neuroscientist’s research has radical implications for us all.Source:News Limited
HOW THE BODY AFFECTS THE MIND
Neuroplasticity is not just about the mind, it’s about our physical being as well. It’s not just the brain that controls the body, but vice versa as well.
In the past, scientists believed that if someone had a stroke and found they could no longer move their foot, this was a problem solely based in the brain.
In fact, Dr Doidge learnt, manipulating and exercising the foot can send messages back and rebuild pathways in the brain.
Similarly, he has worked with scientists developing electrical stimulation devices placed on the tongue that allow blind people to “see with the mind” and helped an opera singer with multiple sclerosis regain his voice.
Something as basic as “conscious walking” helped a man with Parkinson’s drastically improve his lifestyle.
The same goes for exposure to light and sound. His research also came across children on the autism spectrum who were able to radically diminish their symptoms using the sound of a mother’s voice and modified music to treat their hypersensitivities to sounds.
EAST MEETS WEST
Many of the discoveries in Dr Doidge’s documents are so unexpected they inspire initial scepticism.
The scientist supports many techniques popular in complementary medicine, and he admits some doctors are “wary” of anything they can’t see on a brain scan. “But sometimes scans lack enough resolution to pick up changes, which are microscopic, or even injuries,” he said.
“Western and Eastern medicine take very different approaches. Each specialises in some things and is weak on others.
“Why someone wouldn’t want to benefit from both, I’m not sure.”
He advocates mindfulness meditation, a technique tens of thousands of years old that has recently become popular in Western countries, and has been shown to change the brain structure on scans.
“It’s almost become a cliche at this point,” said Dr Doidge.
He recommends a holistic view of ourselves, taking in everything from the foods we eat (he agrees with claims some can be inflammatory) to psychoanalysis of feelings like anger or guilt that we may be avoiding.
“I take everything patient by patient,” said Prof Doidge. “I don’t treat disorders, I treat people with disorders. No two brain injuries are alike.”
Even if they were, your IQ, previous concussions, love of certain sports and lifestyle habits will affect the treatment.
Science used to tell us that if part of the brain was inactive or damaged, it was gone forever — it couldn’t heal like other organs. Dr Doidge and others doing this groundbreaking work say otherwise.
“I think we don’t know what the limits are,” he says.
And that makes this the most thrilling scientific field of our time.
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