His brain got rewired, not yours Harry. Imagine what would have happened
if yours had.
REH
----- Original Message -----
From: "Harry Pollard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Karen Watters Cole" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2003 12:19 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Survival of the Busiest
> Karen,
>
> Amazing!
>
> My sole contribution to the musical world is the result of my brain not
> rewiring.
>
> Henry Holst - brother of Gustav - tried to teach me the violin. The
> experience was so nerve-racking he stopped teaching and became a soloist
> with many of the world's great orchestras.
>
> If my brain had been capable of rewiring, he might still be teaching
violin.
>
> HARRY
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
>
> Karen wrote:
>
> >I do not remember where this article came from (perhaps FW since I do not
> >have the source) but remembered it during this latest discussion on the
> >brain and thought to add it to the menu. It s fairly long, but
> >interesting reading for those who are keeping up with the debate over
> >Nature vs Nurture and research applications. If anyone would prefer it
> >formatted in a doc, please let me know. The book is now available and
> >Amazon.com has reviews. Karen Watters Cole
> >
> >Survival of the Busiest
> >Parts of the Brain That Get Most Use Literally Expand And Rewire on
Demand
> >
> >Adapted from the book The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the
> >Power of Mental Force.
> >Copyright © 2002 by Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D., and Sharon Begley. (Oct
> >2002 ReganBooks, a division of HarperCollins Publishers Inc. Reprinted by
> >permission). ISBN: 0060393556.
> >
> >For the conventional wisdom on our gray matter, just open any lavishly
> >illustrated brain book. There, detailed diagrams map out specialized
brain
> >structures: areas that generate speech and areas that process vision,
> >areas that sense sound and areas that detect when you touch your left big
toe.
> >
> >The diagrams resemble nothing so much as zoning maps produced by the most
> >rigid land use board. Every bit of neural real estate is assigned a job,
> >reflecting the decades-long belief that different parts of the brain are
> >hardwired for certain functions.
> >
> >This view of the brain dates back to 1857, when French neurosurgeon Paul
> >Broca discovered that particular regions are specialized for particular
> >functions, such as language. His and subsequent discoveries gave rise to
> >the dogma of the hard-wired adult brain, and it had profound real-world
> >consequences. It held that if the brain sustained injury through stroke
> >or trauma to, say, a region responsible for moving the left arm, then
> >other regions could not step up to the plate and pinch-hit. The function
> >of the injured region would be lost forever. And it implied that if, by
> >the age of 12 or so, you had not recruited neurons to the specialized
task
> >of playing the violin, for instance, or learning a second language, then
> >you might as well give up: your old brain was simply not going to learn
> >new tricks.
> >
> >But that dogma has been under assault in recent years. Although specific
> >portions of the brain do, usually, specialize in certain tasks, the brain
> >is much more adaptable and renewable than previously thought-and that s
> >true throughout life.
> >
> >Animal experiments provided the first hints that the brain is able to
> >change dramatically after childhood. When lab monkeys practiced - and
> >practiced - the trick of using a single finger to reach into a tiny dish
> >and grab a morsel of food, the brain region devoted to fine motor control
> >of that finger grew like suburban sprawl. And these were grown-up
monkeys.
> >
> >Even the adult brain is plastic, able to forge new connections among its
> >neurons and thus rewire itself. Sensory input can change the brain, and
> >the brain remodels itself in response to behavioral demands. Regions
that
> >get the most use literally expand. In terms of which neural circuits
> >endure and enlarge, you can call it survival of the busiest.
> >
> >In 1993, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, then at the National Institute of
> >Neurological Disorders and Stroke, led the search for what would become
> >one of the earliest findings in human neuroplasticity. Does anyone, he
> >wondered, habitually experience powerful tactile stimulation to a
> >particular portion of their body? Of course: blind people who read
> >Braille with their fingertips.
> >
> >Dr. Pascual-Leone recruited 15 proficient Braille readers and wired them
> >up so he could measure their somatosensory cortex-the part of the brain
> >that registers and processes the sense of touch. Then he administered
> >weak electrical shocks to the tip of their right forefingers (the reading
> >finger ), recording which parts of the somatosensory cortex registered
the
> >sensation. He did the same thing to the blind people s left index
finger,
> >and to fingers in non-Braillereaders that don t get exceptional use.
> >
> >The result was unmistakable. In the Braille readers, the area of
> >somatosensory cortex devoted to the reading finger was much larger than
> >the comparable area for fingers in both blind and sighted people who don
t
> >have such demands put on them. It was a clear case of sensory input
> >changing the brain. The cortical region processing that input had
> >expanded, with a consequent increase in sensitivity. That would explain
> >how Braille readers are able to make such fine discriminations among
> >patterns of tiny raised dots.
> >
> >By the spring of 1995, Edward Taub was also exploiting the ability of the
> >brain to rewire itself. The University of Alabama, Birmingham, scientist
> >was developing a revolutionary new therapy for stroke patients. The goal
> >was to enable an intact area of the brain to take over for a region
> >knocked out by stroke. But Dr. Taub was sure that neuroplasticity went
> >beyond damaged brains. His goal was to see how normal behaviors changed
> >brain maps.
> >
> >One evening that spring, he and his wife Mildred Allen, a lyric soprano
> >who had been a principal artist at New York s Metropolitan Opera in New
> >York, were having dinner in Germany with a group of neuroscientists.
> >Casting around for a study they could collaborate on, Dr. Taub asked the
> >group: Is there any normal activity that uses one hand way more than the
> >other? The scientists were flummoxed, but Ms. Allen chimed in, Oh, that s
> >easy-playing a string instrument.
> >
> >When a right-handed musician plays the violin, four digits of the left
> >hand continuously finger the strings. (The left thumb grasps the neck of
> >the violin, undergoing only small shifts of position and pressure.) The
> >right, or bowing, hand undertakes far fewer individual finger
> >movements. Might this pattern leave a trace on the cerebral cortex?
> >
> >To find out, the scientists recruited six violinists, two cellists and
one
> >guitarist, all of whom had played their instrument for seven to 17 years,
> >as well as six nonmusicians. The volunteers sat still while a pneumatic
> >stimulator applied light pressure to their fingers to record neuronal
> >activity in the part of the brain that processes the sense of touch.
> >
> >There was no difference between the string players and the nonmusicians
in
> >how much of the cortex was devoted to feeling the fingers of the right
> >hand. But there was a huge difference when it came to the left hand: The
> >amount of brain territory devoted to those fingers had increased
> >substantially. That increase was greatest in musicians who began to play
> >before the age of 12.
> >
> >But to Dr. Taub, the most dramatic finding was that even in people who
> >took up the violin as adults, regular practice had changed their
> >brains. Their cortex had rezoned itself so that more neurons were
> >assigned to the fingers of the left hand. Even if you take up the violin
> >at 40, you still get brain reorganization, he says.
> >
> >These were the opening shots in what would become a revolution in
> >treatment for stroke, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette
> >s syndrome and other brain diseases. All were based on the discovery
that
> >the brain has the ability to change in response to the input it receives.
> >
> >At the University of California, San Francisco, researchers led by
Michael
> >Merzenich had shown that sound has the power to reshape the brain in lab
> >monkeys. Across the country, at Rutgers, University in New Jersey,
> >neuroscientists Paula Tallal and Steve Miller had begun to suspect that
> >Specific Language Impairment (a general term that includes dyslexia)
might
> >reflect a problem not with recognizing the appearance of letters and
words
> >but, instead, with processing certain speech sounds-fast ones.
> >
> >Dyslexics, Dr. Tallal thought, have some brain impairment that prevents
> >them from hearing staccato sounds like b, p, d and g, which burst from
> >the lips and vanish in just a few thousandths of a second. Since
learning
> >to read involves matching written words to the heard language, it s no
> >wonder that a failure to hear certain sounds impairs reading ability.
> >
> >When Dr. Tallal discussed her theory at a science meeting in Santa Fe,
you
> >could almost see-the light bulb go off over Dr. Merzenich s head. His
> >experiments on monkeys, he told her, had implications for her ideas about
> >dyslexia. Dyslexics might become better readers, he said, if their brain
> >could be rewired to hear staccato phonemes something that could be done
by
> >harnessing the power of neuroplasticity.
> >
> >To find out if the brains of young dyslexics could be rewired, and if
that
> >rewiring would help them read better, the Rutgers scientists recruited
> >about a dozen kids and designed an experiment. One of Dr. Merzenich s
> >colleagues, meanwhile, wrote software that slows down staccato phonemes,
> >stretching out the interval between b and aaah in baa, for example. To
> >everyone else, the processed speech sounds like someone shouting
> >underwater. But to the dyslexic children, the scientists hoped, it
would,
> >sound like baa -a sound they had never before heard clearly. When Dr.
> >Tallal listened to the processed speech, she was so concerned that the
> >kids would be bored out of their minds listening to endless repetitions
of
> >words and phonemes, that she dashed out for a supply of Cheetos. She
> >figured her team would have to bribe the kids to stick with the program.
> >
> >And so began Camp Rutgers. For 20 days one summer, 22 kids age five to
> >nine played CD-ROM games structured to alter the brain. One game asked
> >the child to point to rake when pictures of a lake as well as a rake were
> >presented, or to click a mouse when a series of the spoken letter g was
> >interrupted by a k . To train the brain to hear target sounds, the
> >computer voice stretched them out, intoning rrrake and ddday and bbbay.
> >
> >To ease the monotony, the scientists offered the kids snacks and puppets,
> >frequent breaks and even handstand demonstrations. Steve Miller recalls:
> >All we did for hours every day was listen. We couldn t even talk to the
> >kids; they got enough normal speech outside the lab. It was so boring
> >that Paula had to give us pep talks and tell us to stop whining. She
> >would give us a thumbs-up for a good job-and we d give her a different
> >finger back.
> >
> >After a few months of training, all the children tested at normal or
above
> >in their ability to distinguish sounds. Their language and reading
> >ability rose two years, something no other dyslexia program had
> >achieved. Although the research did not include brain scans, it seemed
> >Fast ForWord (as the software was called) was doing something more
> >dramatic than your run-of-the-mill educational CD: It was rewiring
> >brains. You create your brain from the input you get, says Paula Tallal.
> >
> >At first that was only speculation. Critics of Fast ForWord said the
> >system was being rushed to market before its claims had been proved. The
> >contention that Fast ForWord reshapes the brain was the target of the
most
> >vituperation. Michael Studdert-Kennedy, past president of the Haskins
> >Laboratories, a center for the study of speech and language at Yale
> >University, told the New York Times in 1999 that inducing neuroplasticity
> >was an absurd stunt that would not help anyone learn to read.
> >
> >Yet a year later, researchers reported compelling evidence to the
> >contrary. Using brain-scan technology called functional Magnetic
> >Resonance Imaging (fMRI), John Gabrieli of Stanford University compared
> >the brains of dyslexics before and after Fast ForWord. He found exactly
> >what the skeptics said he wouldn t: In dyslexics whose language
> >comprehension had been improved, the brain s left prefrontal region
showed
> >more activity after training. Hearing the drawn-out sounds apparently
> >induced this region, impaired in dyslexics, to do its job of processing
> >staccato sounds.
> >
> >As evidence accumulated that changes in the sensory information reaching
> >the brain can profoundly alter the cortex, an obvious question arose: Can
> >the mind itself change the brain? Can mere thinking do it? Dr.
> >Pascual-Leone, now at Harvard University, provided a preliminary answer,
> >with an experiment that has not received nearly the attention it
deserves.
> >
> >He had one group of volunteers practice a five-finger piano exercise, and
> >a comparable group merely think about practicing it. This second group
> >focused on each finger movement in turn, essentially playing the simple
> >piece in their heads, one note at a time.
> >
> >Actual physical practice produced changes in each volunteer s motor
> >cortex, as expected. But so did mere mental rehearsal. In fact, as big
a
> >change as the physical practice. Like actual movement, imagined
movements
> >change the cortex. Merely thinking about moving produces brain changes
> >comparable to those triggered by actually moving.
> >
> >The existence, and importance, of brain plasticity are no longer in
> >doubt. The brain is dynamic, and the life we lead leaves its mark in the
> >complex circuitry of the brain -footprints of the experiences we have
had,
> >the thoughts we have thought, the actions we have taken. The brain
> >allocates neural real estate depending on what we use most: the thumb of
a
> >videogame addict, the index finger of a Braille reader, the analytic
> >ability of a chess player, the language skills of a linguist.
> >
> >But the brain also remakes itself based on something much more ephemeral
> >than what we do: It rewires itself based on what we think. This will be
> >the next frontier for neuroplasticity, harnessing the transforming power
> >of the mind to reshape the brain.
