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Глава одиннадцатая(eleven): A Girl Who Lost Half of Her Brain(LITERALLY)

Michelle born with only a right hemisphere. Although Michelle has some difficulties such as understanding abstract thought and visual-spatial activities, she can enjoy life as mostly normal people can. Her right hemisphere must not only carry out the key functions of the left but also economize on its "own" functions. In Michelle, the right hemisphere had to evolve without input from the left and learn to live and function on its own. 

Her right wrist is bent and a bit twisted, her right leg need a brace to support, her right eye is blind. The hyperdevelopment of hearing compensates the lack in vision. Her hearing is so acute that she can clearly hear her parents talking in the kitchen when she is up-stairs at the other end of the house. But this sensitivity has a cost. In traffic, when a horn blares, she puts her hands over her ears, to avoid sensory overload. She is also supersensitive to touch. At frustrating times she uses nonsense words, not so much to communicate as to discharge feelings. 


Fortunately, Michelle has supermemory. She able to retrace the date, day and memory as far as 18 years vividly. Sometimes savants have unusual ways of representing experiences. The Russian neuropsychologist Aleksandr Luria worked with a mnemonist, or memory artist, "S", who could memorise long tables of random numbers. S had a photographic memory, going all the way back to infancy, and was also a "synesthete," so that certain senses, not normally connected, were "cross-wired." High-level synesthetes can experience concepts, such as the days of the week, as having colours, which allows them to have particullarly vivid experiences and memories. S associated certain numbers with colours and, like Michelle, often could not get the main point. But Michelle associates the days of the week with scenes rather colours. 

Jordan Grafman, chief of the Cognitive Neurosciences Section. Grafman studied the relationship of preinjury intelligence to that after recovery. He found that aside from the size of the wounds and the location of the injury, a soilder's IQ was a very important predictor of how well he would recover his lost brain functions. Grafman's data suggested that highly intelligent soilders seemed better able to reorganise their cognitive abilities to support the areas that had been injured. 

Grafman's theory provides an explanation of how Michelle's brain evolved. Michelle's loss of brain tissue occurred before there could have been any significant commitment of her right hemisphere. Since she was still developing in her mother's womb, the plasticity was still high so Michelle was saved from certain death. Her right hemisphere, which normally processes visual-spatial activities, was able to process speech because, being partially blind and barely able to crawl, Michelle learned to speak before she learned to see and walk. Each hemisphere tends to specialise in certain functions but is not hardwired to do so. 

Grafman thinks that her superior ability to remember events may be related to the fact that she has only one hemisphere. Normally two hemispheres are in constant communication. Each not only informs the other of its own activities but also corrects its mate., at times restraining it and balancing the other;s eccentricities. What happens when that hemisphere is stricken and can no longer inhibit its partner?


Since there are many thousands of brain activities going on at once, we need forces to inhibit, control, and regulate our brains in order to keep us sane, organised and in control of ourselves so we don;t "ride off in all direction at once."

http://www.thecoolist.com/autistic-artist-draws-the-manhattan-skyline-from-memory/

http://hubpages.com/hub/Left_Right_Brain

εξακολουθήσει: του εγκεφάλου που αλλαγές ίδια

δέκα(ten) κεφάλαιο:- Rejuvenation

Dr. Karansky who was 90 years old man had surprising mental and physical flexibility. He describes himself as lifelong self-educator. As a dilettantism, he tends to get interested in a period, for whatever reason until he feels he has learned enough, then he move on to something else. These keeps the regulatory system for plasticity and dopamine from atrophying. His philosophical attitude also protects his brain because he doesn't get worked up about little things. "I understand what random events are. There are many things that go on that can affect me that are beyond my control. I can't control the, only how I react to them. I've spent my time worrying about things I can control and can affect the outcome of". 


The brain can regenerate with neuronal stem cells. The process called neurogenesis. Living neurons form in us until the very end of our lives. In an experiment, the mice in enriched environments, filled with toys and exercises equipments had increase in the volume of brain and neurons. Paradoxically, sometimes losing neurons can improve brain function. Keeping unused neurons supplied with blood, oxygen, and energy is wasteful, and getting rid of them keeps the brain more focused and efficient. 

Every organ gradually deteriorates. However, the brain still undergoes massive plastic reorganisation, possibly to adjust for the brain's losses. Here is an example. Subjects around 14 to 30 years did a variety of cognitive tests, brain scans showed that they performed them largely in their temporal lobes, and the more educated they were, the more they used these lobes. Subjects over 65 years had a different pattern. Brain scans showed that they performed these same cognitive tasks largely in their frontal lobes, and again, the more education they'd had, the more they used the frontal lobes. The shift demonstrated the sign of plasticity. It is a large "migration" as a function can make.

Normally, brain activities are "lateralised". The left and right hemispheres control different functions and processes, creating a phenomenon called "hemispheric asymmetry".  But when we aged, some lateralisation is lost so prefrontal activities that took place in one hemisphere now take place in both. This can be guessed that one of our hemispheres starts to become less effective, the other hemisphere compensates. 


Preventing Alzheimer's disease, physical and mental exercises are necessary, especially those required genuine concentration, not low intense(leisure) activities. Physical activity is helpful not only because it creates new neurons but because the mind is based in the brain and the brain needs oxygen. 

When Pablo Casals, the cellist, was 91 years old, he was approached by a student who asked, "Master, why do you continue to practice?" Casals replied,"Because I am making progress."

계속: 두뇌는 그 변경 사항을 자체

장 구(nine): Psychoanalysis

Since the discovery of gene, we see that the psychiatric and character problems are due to our hardwired genes. However, the genes have the "transcription function". When, a gene is turned on, it makes a new protein that alters the structure ans function of the cell. Eric Kandel's work shows that when we learn our minds also affect which genes in our neurons are transcribed. Psychotherapy is about "talking to neurons", going deep into the brain ans its neurons and changing their structure by turning on the right genes.


In 1895 Sigmund Freud completed the "Project for a Scientific Psychology", one of the first comprehensive neuroscientific models to integrate brain and mind, still admired for its sophistication. The first plastic concept, "free association" is 60 years earlier than Hebb's Law (fire together, wire together). 


The third idea was a plastic view of memory. Children who were molested when very young and unable to understand what was being done to them were not always upset at the time, and their initial memories were not always negative. But once they matured sexually, they looked upon the incident anew and gave it new meaning, and their memory of the molestation changed. Memories are constantly remodeled. The memories had to be conscious and become the focus of our conscious attention to be changed. 


Baby:
The right hemisphere of the brain starts to grow, then the left hemisphere continues the spurt of its own. The right hemisphere processes nonverbal communication such as recognising faces, reading facial expressions, musical component of speech and tone. The left hemisphere processes the verbal-linguistic element of speech and analyses problems using conscious processing. 


Mother plays big role in her baby emotional development. She uses musical speech and nonverbal gestures, teaching baby about emotion. For children to know and regulate their emotions, and be socially connected, they need to experience this kind of interaction many hundreds of times in the critical period and then to have it reinforced later in life. 


-------> Case study <----------
During World War II Rene Spitz studied infants reared by their own mothers in prison, comparing them with those reared in a foundling home, where one nurse was responsible for seven infants. The foundling infants stopped developing intellectually, were unable to control their emotions, and instead rocked endlessly back and forth, or made strange hand movements. They also entered "turned-off" states and were indifferent to the world, unresponsive to people who tried to hold and comfort them. 


DreamWorld:

When we dream, the section of brain that in charge of emotion, sexual, survival, and aggressive instincts is quite active. On the other hand, the prefrontal cortex system, which is responsible for inhibiting our emotions and instincts, shows lower activity. So, the dream able to reveal impulses that are normally blocked from awareness. 


Sleep allows us to consolidate learning and memory. Therefore, neuroplasticity also happen in dream state. Infants spend many more hours in REM sleep than adults, and it is during infancy that neuroplastic change occurs  more rapidly. REM is required for normal neuron growth, enhancing our ability to retain emotional memories and turning short-term memories(hippocampus) into long-term memories.


Stress: 

Glucocorticoid is released when people stress, depress or desperate. It kills cells in the hippocampus so that it can't make the synaptic connections in neural networks that make learning and explicit long-term memory possible. Small hippocampuses are highly found on motherless children and animals. Adult survivors of childhood abuse also show signs of glucocorticoid supersensitivity lasting in adulthood. The longer people are depressed, the smaller their hippocampus gets. If the stress is brief, the shrinkage will be temporary. If it is too prolonged, the damage is permanent. Antidepressant medications increase the number of stem cells that become new neurons in the hippocampus. 


Paradox:

Human born with mental plasticity, capacity to change or adapt. Unfortunately, depletion of the plasticity occurs in many elder people. They become "unchangeable, fixed, and rigid." The plastic paradox is that the same neuroplastic properties that allow us to change our brains and produce more flexible behaviors can also allow us to produce more rigid ones. Anything that involves unvaried repetition-our careers, cultural activities, routines, skills, and neuroses-can lead to rigidity. 


As Pascual-Leone's metaphor illustrates, neuroplasticity is like pliable snow on a hill. When we go down the hill on a sled, we can be flexible because we have the option of taking different paths through the soft snow each time. But should we choose the same path a second or third time, tracks will start to develop, and soon we will tend to get stuck in a rut-our route will now be quite rigid, as neural circuits, once established, tend to become self -sustaining.  


Hippocampus:
Henry Gustav Molaison(H.M) had his both hippocampus cut out. As the result, he was unable to convert short-term memories into long, the structure of his brain and memory, and his mental and physical images of himself, are frozen where they were when he had his surgery. Sadly, he can't even recognise himself in the mirror.

 

Sambung: Otak yang Mengubah Sendiri

Angka La8an:- Im@j!nAs1

Imagination is the most basic yet powerful tool for all successful human beings. "We can change our brain anatomy simply by using our imagination", It is fascinating and unbelievable.

Pascual-Leone used TMS to observe changes of the brain between people imagining and people practicing.  Remarkably, mental practice alone produced the same physical changes in the motor system as actually playing the piece. Later, the chages in motor signals to the muscles were also same in both groups.

After a brief period of practice, as when we cram for a test, it is relatively easy to improve because we are likely strengthening existing synaptic connections. But we quickly forget what we've crammed because these are easy-come, easy-go neuronal connections and are rapidly reversed. Maintaining improvement and making a skill permanent require the slow steady work that probably forms new connections.

There is another example, Rudiger Gamm. From a positron emission tomography (PET) brain scan, he was found that he was able to recruit five more brain areas for calculating. Experts rely on long-term memory and store key facts and strategies that help them get answers.

The faster you can imagine, the faster you can do it. Imagining engages the same motor and sensory programs that are involved in doing it. Everything your "immaterial" mind imagines leaves material traces. Each thought alters the physical state of your brain synapses at a microscopic level.

En Cours: Les etonNants Pouv0irs dE transforM@tion Du cerveaU

@ se7en: P@!N

For pain, plasticity can be a curse. "Phantom pain" exists in 95% of amputees. The haunting pains are disturbing and torturing because the pains without return address. Normal or "acute" pain alerts us to injury or disease by sending a signal to the brain. Besides, there is "neuropathic pain" which is from the damage nerves. In an amputee's brain, the magnetoencephalography(MEG) shows the hand and brain maps blurred together. So, the phantom hand feels what the face felt. The face map utilises the hand map because of the "use it or lose it" rule and localisation(the hand is next to the face).

The phantom arm is fixed into previous experiences. The motor center keeps firing commands and got no feedback. Ramachandran, a neurologist magician makes a mirror box to "resurrect" the amputation or stroke. He applies illusion to trick the brain to see and think as everything is fine. According to Ramachandra, pain, like the body image, is created by the brain and projected onto the body. The brain can close a gate and block the pain signal by releasing endorphins, the narcotics made by the body to quell pain.

Technically, transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation(TENS) uses electric current to stimulate neurons that inhabit pain, helping in effect to close the "pain" gate. The pain system includes motor components. We guard and prevent any movement around the injury from aggravating the wound.

Great science can be done with elegant simplicity

Continuar: El Cerebro que se cura asi mismo

# 5: Resurrección

Contraint-induced (CI) movement therapy invented by Edward Taub. Stroke patient uses CI, training to regain their motor movements and balance. CI is unrelenting, exhausting and difficult therapy. Patients have to use the weak (stroked) parts of body and restrain the normal parts. Behaviorism, brain science and psychologies are used together to achieved higher discovery. The Taub clinics apply "shaping", teach adults to do and play child's games and increase to more complex tasks. 

After a stroke, the brain map for an affected arm shrinks by about half, so a stroke patient has only half the original number of neurons to work with. CI therapy restores the motor area of the brain to its normal size. These demonstrated the neuroplastic. 

Besides physical disorders, aphasiacs can also be treated with CI. Patients play a therapeutic card game and must strictly follow the language rules(finish the full sentence).This theory also suggests that when we "immersed" ourselves in foreign country to learn their language, the progress is much better than learning in the class.

 # 6: Bloqueo y Desbloquear

Obsessive-compulsive disorder(OCD), worry begets worry. The worries also can be bizarre and make no sense even to the worrier. Worry from the past, about the future and imaginations strike OCD patients. The brain of OCD can't move on from the mistake although the correction was made. The anxiety kept building up in the patient.

1st Acknowledgment: Patient has to realise their situation

2nd Refocus: Distract the matter with pleasure activity

繼續: TBTCI-Norman Doidge

No. 4our: Love & Sex

What determine our sexuality, "appetite" and "taste"? The brain.

Human has a critical period for the sexual plasticity(before puberty). The sexual acts, sexual excitement and satisfaction area, people we attracted to are vary from person to person. However, the types change through phases and experiences. Sexual preference can occasional switch or "add-on".

Given that sexuality is an instinct.
Instinct = hereditary behavior, hardwired purpose such as survival. Only sexuality can be so satisfy without accomplishing its biological purpose(masturbating, various perversions) and is so disconnected from its purpose.

Love too is remarkably flexible from arranged marriage(practical purpose) to romantic love. Romance become the main street due to the democratic ideals of individualism. There are exceptions but if problematic get wired into our childhood and repeated in adulthood. Traces of childhood sentiments in adult love and sexuality are detectable in everyday behaviors. "baby", "sweetie", "darling", "dirty-talk".

Sexual taste is obviously influenced by culture and experience. Acquired defined as learn. People learn to like the odor of cheeses, wines, coffee, and hint of urine. In Elizabethan times lovers were so enamored of each others body odors. Nowadays, we use perfumes to hide or delight our smells.

The content of pornography is a dynamic phenomenon. "hardcore" used to be displaying sexual intercourse between two partners. Now, "hardcore" is referred to sadomasochistic, bondage, gang-bang, etc. Unfortunately, people build up tolerance to the porno after sometimes, like drug addict. So, the pornographers has to keep introducing a stronger theme, pushing the limit to the edge just to satisfy their customers.

Amount of dopamine secretion determines how addictive of a drug. Dopamine is released when we accomplish or win. But those drugs hijack the dopamine system, the brain release dopamine without our having to work for it. Dopamine also stimulates plastic change. They are released in sexual excitement, increasing the sex drive, facilitating orgasm. 

For lovers, their brains are full of dopamine and look like people on cocaine under fMRI. When the lovers seperated, they become sad, down, tired because of the dopamine concentration is low. Tolerance also exists in romance. Like all drug, brain will develop tolerance towards dopamine. Oxytocin is essential for successful relationship and building family. It is a commitment neuromodulator, reinforcing bonding in mammals. It induces a calm and warm mood. Oxytocin makes people to trust someone more as a child attaching to the mother.

Continue: De Brain Tat Changes Itsev

Chap 3: Redesign

Brilliant neuroplastician, Micheal "Merz"enich is introduced. Brain plasiticity exists from the cradle to the grave. Thanks to Penfield and localisationists, the brain's topography is mapped.

For those who born in multiple culture country, they have the advantage to learn other languages easily and without an accent during the critical period.

Futhermore, the peripheral nervous system is plastic and able to regenerate itself. Merz also found the auditory cortex is mapped "tonotopically" like a piano. DoReMiFaSoLaDiDo, from low to high frequencies.

Besides, the nerves inside our brain always on a war. The time and efforts affect whether the brain map space is not lost to another. This also suggests why it is difficult for us to learn secondary language and end the tyranny of the mother tongue. For bilingual child, their brain's sound library has those two languages in same place. If you didn't use that part of brain, it will be taken over by others. You can't just delete or "unlearn" habits or addictions. Replacing with other things is the way to do it(persistent).

Neurons that fire together wire together. Neurons develop strong connections when they are activated at the same time. Neurons that fire apart wire apart. The skillful you become, the lesser neurons and muscles are used so we don't quickly run out of map space. The speed of the neuron and its efficiency can effect the swiftness of mental process. IQ tests measure the speed of thinking and getting the right answer.

BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor reinforces plastic changes in the critical period.
-wires neuron together and promotes thin fatty coat growth around neuron(speeds up signal transmission)
-turns on the nucleus basalis, allows us to focus
-close down the critical period(stabilization)

Reopening critical-period plasticity can help people to learn new skill effortless(photographic memory). To avoid Alzheimer's disease, old people have to learn and practice complete new skills so no metabolic decline in brain.