For many years, the consensus was that the human brain couldn't generate new cells once it reached adulthood. Once you were grown, you entered a state of neural decline. This was a view perhaps most famously expressed by the so-called founder of modern neuroscience, Santiago Ramón y Cajal. After an early interest in plasticity, he became sceptical, writing in 1928, "In adult centres the nerve paths are something fixed, ended, immutable. Everything may die, nothing may be regenerated. It is for the science of the future to change, if possible, this harsh decree." Cajal's gloomy prognosis was to rumble through the 20th century.
[...] This, then, is the truth about neuroplasticity: it does exist, and it does work, but it's not a miracle discovery that means that, with a little effort, you can turn yourself into a broccoli-loving, marathon-running, disease-immune, super-awesome genius. The "deep question", says Chris McManus, Professor of Psychology and Medical Education at University College London, is, "Why do people, even scientists, want to believe all this?" Curious about the underlying causes of the neuroplasticity craze, he believes it is just the latest version of the personal-transformation myth that's been haunting the culture of the West for generations.
[...] Even the people whose lives are being transformed by neuroplasticity are finding that brain change is anything but easy. Take recovery from a stroke. "If you're going to recover the use of an arm, you may need to move that arm tens of thousands of times before it begins to learn new neural pathways to do that," says Downey. "And, after that, there's no guarantee it's going to work." Scott says something similar about speech and language therapy. "There were dark days, say, 50 years ago, where if you'd had a stroke you didn't get that kind of treatment other than to stop you choking because they'd decided it doesn't work. But now it's becoming absolutely clear that it does, and that it's a phenomenally good thing. But none of it comes for free."
On the other hand, the new brain hackers are using electro-stimulation to make it easier to re-wire pathways.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2015, @05:26PM
It's due to your memories, emotions and desires (sometimes the emotions and desires can surface even if your "explicit" memory isn't working well- people with problems with long term memory will can still tend to avoid/not like stuff that zapped them, they just didn't know why).
As with the the therapy stuff - you often get better at what you practice.
But this is why a lot of popular psychology stuff is quackery or even harmful. Practice letting your anger out and you might find you have a lot more anger to let out ;). Practice remembering the wrong things from your childhood and you may create new false and harmful memories out of nothing.
Practice reliving/remembering a traumatic experience just right after the event and it just makes it more likely you'll remember every terrible detail for the rest of your life. If you really want that (for revenge or other stuff ) then sure do it, but if you don't want to then going for counseling with a quack is probably more harmful than filling your entire day with intense memories of other stuff.
Some anger can be useful when properly channeled , but uncontrolled anger is harmful. If you want to manage your anger, don't practice getting angry or "letting it out", practice not getting angry practice feeling something else instead (you could say to yourself this is a valid emotion, but it doesn't need to be so intense; or this emotion is inappropriate - you shouldn't be angry - you're actually just hungry). Don't practice suppressing it- don't remain very angry and bottle it up.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday November 19 2015, @05:46PM
But memories, at least, are encoded in neural pathways.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2015, @06:57PM
But memories, at least, are encoded in neural pathways.
What makes you so sure that it's as simple as that?
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050620/full/news050620-7.html [nature.com]
http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/03/30/149685880/neuroscientists-battle-furiously-over-jennifer-aniston [npr.org]
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7567-why-your-brain-has-a-jennifer-aniston-cell/ [newscientist.com]