Excuse us while we do some spring cleaning around here and publish a few entries that have been sitting in our “draft” pile longer than I care to admit…
In a bit of research done in 2000, Eleanor Maguire and her colleagues researched taxi drivers’ brains using structural magnetic resonance imaging scans (MRIs). They discovered that the longer a taxi driver had been driving, the larger a specific part of the brain (the part that we believe stores spatial representations of our environment):
These data are in accordance with the idea that the posterior hippocampus stores a spatial representation of the environment and can expand regionally to accommodate elaboration of this representation in people with a high dependence on navigational skills. It seems that there is a capacity for local plastic change in the structure of the healthy adult human brain in response to environmental demands.
Note the researchers are suggesting that their evidence shows that people can literally change the very structure of their brain. Amazing.
What does this mean to you?
It means that you can actually affect your brain structure without drugs or any strange or life-altering treatments. Simply by doing something repetitively, or doing something differently, can affect a change — not only in your life, but in your actual brain’s structure. This perhaps helps explain why oftentimes psychotherapy works just as well (or even better) than drugs on mental disorders. It helps you think and act in ways differently than you have, perhaps resulting in direct biochemical and structural changes in your brain functioning (eventually).
Hat tip: Mind Hacks
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3 Responses to “Can a Person Change their Brain Structure? Yes” (Pingbacks/trackbacks not shown below)
David Lewis at 6:43 pm on
April 9th, 2008
So what?! That’s a serious philosophical comment. We know we can change our ~mind’s~ structure by behavior — utterly obvious. So what does it tell us that we can also change our brain’s structure, unless you actually believe that mind is simply an epiphenomenon of brain.
Well, if mind is indeed an epiphenomenon of brain, then the fact that we can change our mind’s structure already told us we could change our brain structure. It’s just that the brain changes are undetectable with current technology.
If it isn’t, then the original question is of marginal interest.
Of course, there’s always another way for the mind to change the brain. Suppose I fall into a deep, suicidal depression and resolve to take my life. Being of a gruesome temperament, I take an icepick and… ummm details omitted for propriety… but fail to complete the job. Unfortunately, I do manage to inflict serious brain injury on myself and proceed through life with much altered intellectual capacities.
So in this case, something in my mind — the depression — led to a change in the brain — the injury.
I realize there are differences between that and the changes in the taxi driver’s brain form doing a lot of geolocating. But when you get down to it, both kinds of changes are mediated by physical processes: the former by signals to the muscles to pick up an ice pick and proceed with the deed; the latter, presumably by some yet undiscovered neurological/biochemical process in the body. But is there a fundamental difference from a philosophic standpoint?
–David.
Does this mean a pessimist can become an optimist and cognitively effect change of the reticular formation just through positive thought? So,then, a change in personal philosophy might effect a change in brain structure as well? (Assuming you philosophize enough) David - is the depression the brain’s or mind’s or both? (I guess if the chemistry is off in the brain the mind is victim too) How do we separate them? As for brain structure, maybe we develop more convolutions and neural pathways with repetitive activity like the cabbies. Anyway, it appears to me that, yes the mind just could be an “epiphenomenon”, sort of; the mind appears to be a representation of brain processes. So, therefore, thinking of the brain as a computer of sorts, you could only physically add a larger hard-drive, more RAM, faster processor to a computer to increase it’s capacity for input and output. You could download software to the computer(like repetitive mental processes?)….but no matter whether you typed letters to Hillary, produced charts, surfed, played games….you wouldn’t change your hard-drive size.You could change the amount of space dedicated to particular operations. A virus introduction could effect an informational meltdown …not mechanical (depression?) Rendering the computer a blithering idiot. Now,the idea that by doing more calculations my computer would gain a few gigs is cool. Amazingly it works with the brain and I’m unsure about whether that is equivalent to more software and info stored in space available or increasing space with larger hard-drive. Just some further musings.
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So what?! That’s a serious philosophical comment. We know we can change our ~mind’s~ structure by behavior — utterly obvious. So what does it tell us that we can also change our brain’s structure, unless you actually believe that mind is simply an epiphenomenon of brain.
Well, if mind is indeed an epiphenomenon of brain, then the fact that we can change our mind’s structure already told us we could change our brain structure. It’s just that the brain changes are undetectable with current technology.
If it isn’t, then the original question is of marginal interest.
Of course, there’s always another way for the mind to change the brain. Suppose I fall into a deep, suicidal depression and resolve to take my life. Being of a gruesome temperament, I take an icepick and… ummm details omitted for propriety… but fail to complete the job. Unfortunately, I do manage to inflict serious brain injury on myself and proceed through life with much altered intellectual capacities.
So in this case, something in my mind — the depression — led to a change in the brain — the injury.
I realize there are differences between that and the changes in the taxi driver’s brain form doing a lot of geolocating. But when you get down to it, both kinds of changes are mediated by physical processes: the former by signals to the muscles to pick up an ice pick and proceed with the deed; the latter, presumably by some yet undiscovered neurological/biochemical process in the body. But is there a fundamental difference from a philosophic standpoint?
–David.
Does this mean a pessimist can become an optimist and cognitively effect change of the reticular formation just through positive thought? So,then, a change in personal philosophy might effect a change in brain structure as well? (Assuming you philosophize enough) David - is the depression the brain’s or mind’s or both? (I guess if the chemistry is off in the brain the mind is victim too) How do we separate them? As for brain structure, maybe we develop more convolutions and neural pathways with repetitive activity like the cabbies. Anyway, it appears to me that, yes the mind just could be an “epiphenomenon”, sort of; the mind appears to be a representation of brain processes. So, therefore, thinking of the brain as a computer of sorts, you could only physically add a larger hard-drive, more RAM, faster processor to a computer to increase it’s capacity for input and output. You could download software to the computer(like repetitive mental processes?)….but no matter whether you typed letters to Hillary, produced charts, surfed, played games….you wouldn’t change your hard-drive size.You could change the amount of space dedicated to particular operations. A virus introduction could effect an informational meltdown …not mechanical (depression?) Rendering the computer a blithering idiot. Now,the idea that by doing more calculations my computer would gain a few gigs is cool. Amazingly it works with the brain and I’m unsure about whether that is equivalent to more software and info stored in space available or increasing space with larger hard-drive. Just some further musings.
