| Author | Message | ||
     Anand_n Side Hero Username: Anand_n Post Number: 7872 Registered: 02-2008 Posted From: 173.174.176.93 Rating: N/A |
 Came across this article (actually quite old) on how thought/mental activity can physically rewire your brain. Posting the link to the article and audio as this is a topic some of us have discussed a lot on the db. Transcript: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7131130 Some highlights: In the last few decades, scientists have shown that you actually can re-grow brain cells and you can change the structure and function of your brain by the way you think. This new science is called neuroplasticity let's say the region of the brain that was knocked out by the stroke is in the right motor cortex and as a result you can't move your left arm, you can retrain the brain so that a different region takes over that function. In this case instead of having the right motor cortex control the left arm, the left motor cortex steps up to the plate. It's like, you know, the guy who was supposed to be hitting up there is suddenly on the disabled list. And the pinch hitter steps up. On the physical changes caused by meditation FLATOW: You write about the meetings between these scientists presenting to the Dalai Lama, and he listening to them. Was there any reverse - did the scientists learn anything that they can use in their own work, from how the - the Buddhist teachings? Ms. BEGLEY: The scientists most benefited and are benefiting from the monks and other Buddhists who are lending their brains to them. And by that I mean at a lab at the University of Wisconsin in Madison there is just a sort of constant stream of visiting Buddhist scholars and practitioners who will undergo meditation while sitting in a FMRI tube or with electrodes over their heads, and the scientists will say turn on compassion meditation; turn off compassion meditation; turn this on; turn that on. And their brain activity is being measured. And the idea there is to see not really what happens when the brain is meditating, because I don't know about you but I'm getting tired of seeing all these, you know, pretty brain scans, because of course the brain is doing something when, you know, you're thinking or feeling or believing or imagining. What's more interesting is whether those activity changes last past the actual, you know, period of meditation. And what is being found is that those changes do last, that, I mean, I call it a change in a brain trait as opposed to a brain state. The state is what happens during meditation, but trait is more enduring. So this too is suggesting that with the practice of meditation - again, just one form of mental training - you can indeed shift some brain activity. Interesting strides in understanding brain function and its regenerative and rewiring abilities aa chal ke tujhe main leke chalu ik aise gagan ke tale jahan gam bhi na ho, aansoo bhi na ho,bas pyaar hi pyaar pale |
