The Malleable Mind - The Power of Neuroplasticity Part Two

Part One can be linked to here: http://bit.ly/1GvTPqt

....With each new thought you begin to create a new neural pathway.  This is analogous to walking through a field of tall grass.  When you look back you can distinctly see the path you have taken.  The grass is bent and broken where you have trodden.  If you continue to take the same route through the field it will eventually become a well-formed path.  This is no different with the brain.  Every time we repeat a thought or an emotion we reinforce a neural pathway. 

Over time we become more efficient, more adept and more skilled at playing the guitar, swinging a tennis racket or speaking a foreign language.  It becomes automatic and forms a fixed pattern of behaviour.  These habits of thought and action become a part of us.  We literally become what we most consistently think and do.  In essence, neuroplasticity underlies all learning.

Winston Churchill is often quoted for saying, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.  From the perspective of the brain by simply recalling a specific event from our past we activate a neural circuit in the brain whereby it enters into a malleable state.  This means the activated circuits are in a state where they can be rewritten so they are no longer unhelpful, unadaptive and inflexible but instead helpful, adaptable and flexible.  We can literally learn from our past and use the principles of neuroplasticity to physically rewire the brain from being fixed in thought to being fluid in thought.  

The important idea is that the brain has not evolved to stay in a static and unmodifiable state.  Rather it is always a “work-in-progress”.  The brain is continuously learning, adapting, and changing consciously and unconsciously in response to what we attend to and what we experience.

On an unconscious level we respond to the world based on prior experience and learning.  To some extent we are mindlessly and automatically going through the motions of thinking, feeling and doing connected to a particular situation or person.  Think back to earlier today when you got out of bed and went through your morning routine.  You brushed your teeth, got dressed, toasted your bread, locked your front door and any number of other actions.  Most of it, if not all of your routine, was carried out in automatic state of mind. 

On a conscious level we are mindful of our actions and where we place our attention.  For example, when we learn to play a new instrument, memorise the lines in a play or comprehend the key principles behind a scientific idea.   In this conscious state, we are directly and actively shaping our brain to how we want to develop and grow.  We use the process of neuroplasticity to our advantage.

Part Three to follow....

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The Malleable Mind - The Power of Neuroplasticity Part One

As human beings we have an innate drive to improve and to develop ourselves.  There is a rhyme and reason behind why we do anything.  Those reasons may not always be clear to us.  Those reason may be logical or illogical, rational or irrational.  Regardless of the origins of why we do something, we do it because there is some form of reward.  There is some sort of return on our investment.

Much of what we do, what we think and what we feel is down to habit.  Evolutionary-wise our brains evolved to think as little as possible.  Thinking needs energy.  A lot of thinking requires a lot of energy.  It was quite an arduous effort for our ancient ancestors to find, track, hunt, kill, prepare and eat on a regular basis as we do today.   As a result of these environmental variables it was better for our brains to evolve down the road of forming habits in order to conserve energy.  

When learning something new a lot of initial, upfront energy is invested.  The payback is our brains have evolved to automate repeated behaviours.  This means when we move into a familiar situation very little to no thought is required.  How we react, how we feel, and how we think is pretty much on autopilot.  Habits allow us to turn learned tasks into automatic routines so we can focus our attention to more pressing matters such as potential dangers in our immediate environment.

Many of the habits we’ve accumulated over the years save us time and effort so we don’t have to constantly relearn skills.  It is also no surprise to any of us that some of the habits we’ve developed are road blocks to our growth.  As with many bad habits they may have started out as good habits because they served an emotional purpose.  Perhaps in grade school you avoided the role of giving group presentations or other situations where you had to address the class.  This made you feel safe and to feel the same as the rest of your friends.  You developed the habit of avoiding situations of being singled out and leaving yourself exposed to criticism.   The habit served a beneficial function back in school.

Since then time has moved on, we have moved on and the world has moved on.  The original reasons for why our brains first established the avoidant behaviours has faded into the blurred distance of our past where it has been long forgotten.  Bad habits are akin to maintaining a train station when the train service has long ago disappeared.  The station no longer serves any function.  Those once functional habits, now dysfunctional, have remained untouched by our inevitable movement forward and no longer play any useful purpose.  They have gone from being helpful behaviours to ones that hinder us and hold us back from developing.

The fact is our brains are constantly learning from experience both consciously and unconsciously, the majority of it being unconscious.  We’ve always known that the brain has the ability to learn regardless of age, but it is only very recently that science has woken up to the truly deep insight as to what this really means.   The challenge is to occasionally step off the automated conveyer-belt of learning and to be cognizant of how we can use this natural ability to our advantage.

It was not so long ago that scientists believed the brain formed all it’s nerve cell connections during childhood and by the time we reached adulthood everything was pretty much hard-wired.   The belief was if the brain was injured by disease or trauma the nerve cells could never form new connections and would never be able to regenerate, and so any functions controlled by that part of the brain were permanently lost.   

Advances in brain-science research on animals and humans in only the last couple of decades have completely dissolved this belief.  We now know that the brain can and does change throughout our lives.  The research unequivocally shows the brain continues to reorganize itself by forming new brains cells as well as new neural connections throughout the entirety of our lives. 

This game-changing property is called neuroplasticity.  The term derives from the root words neuron and plastic.  A neuron refers to the cells that make up our brain.  The word plastic means to hold, modify or sculpt.  Neuroplasticity is the property of the brain that allows it to change it’s structure and function through mental and physical experience.  Neurons are able to adjust their activity in response to changes in the environment, to new situations and to compensate for injury.

If you think back 10, 15, or 20 years ago your thoughts and behaviours are different from what they are today.  They way you think now as an adult is different to how you thought as a teenager.  This is neuroplasticity in action.  Our brains reorganize and adapt based on what we experience and learn.