Power Up Your Brain (15 page)

This is another reason why all those pats on the back, gold stars, recognition ribbons, and colorful merit badges we earned as children are so important to the brain! Even if those once-cherished prizes are now collecting dust on a shelf or stored in a forgotten box in the closet, the brain still remembers and appreciates the positive reinforcement from that impressionable time.

As Merzenich pointed out, the choices you make actually do influence the physical structures, the neural networks, in your brain. He remarked, “Experience coupled with attention leads to physical changes in the structure and future functioning of the nervous system. This leaves us with a clear physiological fact . . . moment by moment we choose and sculpt how our ever-changing minds will work, we choose who we will be the next moment in a very real sense, and these choices are left embossed in physical form on our material selves.”
²

The need for focused attention is further affirmed by Joe Dispenza in his book
Evolve Your Brain
: “The key ingredient in making these neural connections . . . is focused attention. When we mentally attend to whatever we are learning, the brain can map the information on which we are focusing. On the other hand, when we don’t pay complete attention to what we are doing in the present moment, our brain activates a host of other synaptic networks that can distract it from its original intention. Without focused concentration, brain connections are not made, and memory is not stored.”
³

So, attention matters, whether it is gentle meditation or the intense concentration of an athlete at a critical competitive moment. As Sharon Begley, an award-winning science writer summarized in a
Wall Street Journal
article in 2007: “The discovery that neuroplasticity cannot occur without attention has important implications. If a skill becomes so routine you can do it on autopilot, practicing it will no longer change the brain. And if you take up mental exercises to keep your brain young, they will not be as effective if you become able to do them without paying much attention.”
⁴

OVERCOMING TOXIC EMOTIONS

Sensing and responding to threats instinctively through our emotions is one role of the limbic brain, which enables us to develop behaviors that keep us out of harm’s way. Just as our ancestors learned during our hunter-gatherer past that danger lurked in a particular part of the forest and that it wasn’t safe to stray away from our clan, so we too are taught to “stop, look, listen” before crossing a street, through which we gain a deep respect for danger from oncoming vehicles. The problem in responding instinctively to all perceived threats is that we turn over to our amygdala control of our responses rather than using the logic of the prefrontal cortex.

With our new understanding of neuroplasticity, we know that our brain can adapt not only to injuries but, more importantly, in response to any and all experiences we may encounter. This frees us from merely responding reflexively as a consequence of genetically determined hardwiring. Alvaro Pascual-Leone, a neurology researcher at Harvard Medical School, recently stated that neuroplasticity “is an intrinsic property of the human brain and represents evolution’s invention to enable the nervous system to escape the restrictions of its own genome and thus adapt to environmental pressures, physiologic changes, and experiences.”
⁵

Researchers have discovered that not only can we create new neural networks, but also we can create them to be powerful enough to overcome our instinctive emotional reactions. In an experiment, individuals were asked to do two tasks—one perceptual and one intellectual. The first task was to match the emotion of anger or fear that was apparent in images of faces projected onto a screen—a perceptual task involving images. They were then asked to look at the faces and associate them with the words
anger
or
fear
—an intellectual task involving words. When matching the angry or frightened expression, participants experienced increased blood flow to the amygdala, the primary fear center of the brain. In contrast, when the participants assigned the word labels to the image, blood flow to the amygdala diminished while circulation to the right prefrontal cortex increased. Because the prefrontal region is associated with overriding our primitive emotional responses, the researchers concluded that we can develop new neural networks in higher regions of the brain and reduce these responses.

The neural networks formed while in our mother’s womb and during childhood are the foundation for our later beliefs. They are the beliefs we carry into adulthood and through which we understand and interpret our experiences. And while the first lessons from our infancy generally serve us well, they can negatively color future experiences that would otherwise have been perceived as benign or even positive.

The science of neuroplasticity suggests that you can rewire the circuits of the brain and create new, more positive associations within your day-to-day experiences. Shamans learned that the instinctual survival emotions of fear, lust, and anger that color the way you respond to the events of your life are actually the causes of illness. You no longer have to succumb to the tyranny of the emotional limbic brain with its self-created nightmares that prevent you from experiencing joy. You don’t have to experience fearful responses when faced with new situations. Instead, you can come to them fresh, open to the possibilities they present.

You can change the sounding board by which you judge your present experience and allow yourself to see the world, quite literally, in a new light. You can set aside the old trauma and drama, and become enlightened to what blinded you before, awakened to what is new, exciting, rich, prosperous, healthy, and joyful.

To free yourself from the immediate emotional responses of the limbic brain, you must accomplish two tasks. First, you have to enhance your brain’s physiology, which you can achieve by making specific dietary and lifestyle modifications. Second, once your brain has been optimized, you can take full advantage of its powerful ability to develop pathways that will enable you to experience people and events you once perceived as negative, instead, as enriching, fulfilling, and positive.

Alberto:
Men with Beards

I grew up in Cuba during the Communist revolution and witnessed the aftermath of tremendous violence: An old woman hosing off what looked like fresh blood on her driveway. Militiamen storming through our front door, demanding to know where my father was, threatening to hurt my mother. For years, I was unable to trust people, especially anyone who sported a beard, because all the militiamen, after years of fighting in the mountains, were bearded.

Shortly after we arrived in the United States, Woodstock, the Summer of Love, and the hippie era started, and all my male friends let their hair down and grew a beard! Immediately, after the first hairs appeared on their faces, I found myself shying away from their friendship even though I had also let my hair grow long. All my friends would ask me why I was clean-shaven. I understood perfectly well why I was reacting in this manner, yet I was not able to change my reaction. The neural networks in my limbic brain kept superimposing the images of violence from my childhood onto the peaceniks and flower children!

THE MECHANICS OF NEUROPLASTICITY

Michael was able to regain the use of his speech because his brain established new neural pathways that, fortunately for him, allowed for the dramatic return of function. But how do individual neurons actually connect? What initiates the connection and keeps them connected?

While the individual working unit of the brain is the single neuron, even simple tasks require that vast numbers of interconnected neurons function as a unit or network devoted to accomplishing even the simplest activity. Joe Dispenza, in his book
Evolve Your Brain,
eloquently described a neural network as “literally millions of neurons firing together in diverse compartments, modules, sections, and subregions throughout the entire brain. They team up to form communities of nerve cells that act in unison as a group, clustered together in relation to a particular concept, idea, memory, skill, or habit. Whole patterns of neurons throughout the brain become connected through the process of learning, to produce a unique level of mind.”
⁶

Pioneering research into neuroplasticity dates back to the work of Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb, who proposed a theory of what he called “cell assembly” to explain how neurons develop a relationship with one another. In his landmark book,
The
Organization of Behavior,
published in 1949, Dr. Hebb hypothesized that “neurons that fire together, wire together,” which is commonly referred to as Hebb’s law.

While the precise biochemical changes that take place to facilitate this growth process when neurons connect to form neural networks is quite complex, researchers generally agree that brainderived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) creates the fertile ground for this union to take place, helping transform a mere embrace of two neurons into an eternal dance.

The corollary of Dr. Hebb’s “neurons that fire together, wire together” hypothesis is that patterned thoughts and activities must be maintained if the neural networks associated with those activities are to remain functional. Or, in complementary terms: neurons that don’t fire together don’t remain wired together.

So, is the glass half full or is it half empty? It’s both.

And is that good news or bad news? Thankfully, it’s all good news.

The good news is that, with focused attention, as stated earlier, you can change your thoughts, change your activities, and change your behaviors to make a positive improvement in your life. The other good news is that if you don’t reinforce the neural networks currently used for negative thoughts, activities, and behaviors, such as for emotional suffering, your brain will stop using those networks and they will fall by the wayside of unwanted past experiences like so much harvest chaff.

Your job, then, is to stop feeding the old circuitry that reinforces your fears and anger and, instead, direct your attention toward new, positive neural connections. Fortunately, you have the capacity to do that.

So, as we stated earlier—and it’s worth repeating and reinforcing here; after all, that’s how we build new neural pathways, isn’t it?—becoming mentally engaged with an activity is requisite for learning that activity and strengthening the pathways that serve you in positive ways.

That is true in the physical world, and, as we will see later on, it’s also the science that underlies your ability to connect with the divine energy field that permeates your existence.

But wait! The glass gets more full and the story gets even more exciting. Research now demonstrates that if you merely imagine yourself engaging in an activity, you can create the neural connections associated with learning it—without actually performing it.

In 1995, Dr. Pascual-Leone conducted experiments that compared changes in the brains of individuals who had practiced playing the piano, physically, with persons who had mentally envisioned their fingers moving across the keyboard. The brain changes in both groups were virtually identical.
⁷
The motor areas of the brain involved in playing the piano expanded in size in the group contemplating the activity, just as it did in those who actually performed the exercise. These subjects, therefore, demonstrated that the mere act of thinking about an activity imparted physical changes in the brain.