The Changing Brain

-Devlyn Steele

Where does personality end and brain damage begin?

-Doug Coupland

When faced with the disappointing behavior of someone you know, we often revert to the old saying, "People are who they are" or, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks" , etc. Basically, we believe that people can't change. We have all been guilty of thinking that way, and our scientific community has followed suit. Until recently it was thought that the brain cannot change.

In science, their theories are often wrong and later revised. When we don't know what's out there and have no evidence of anything other than what we see, we are left to make facts out of what we can see. It often takes those who can envision beyond, to see what isn't there and then prove it that ultimately advances our thinking. Until we sailed beyond what we saw as the edge of the world, the common belief was that the world was flat. When it came to the brain, mainstream science believed that the anatomy of the brain was fixed. We had no instruments to see what the brain was doing, and it was thought that your brain after childhood could no longer change, thus the only remaining change that the brain had left was to decline in capacity as we age.

If you suffered from brain damage or injuries the thought was that damaged cells could not be replaced. Brain functions were established and the brain couldn't alter that functionality and find a new way to process information. The medical and scientific community has had their reasons to believe this, as there was no evidence to support otherwise. This meant that we didn't look into ways to improve or alter brain functions.

As in the case of the progress of what we believe to be true, it takes those who don't accept the wisdom of the crowds and are determined to find out new truths. If you sailed the oceans, would you in fact fall off the edge of the world? This has occurred in brain science, as evidenced by new discoveries that have shown that as a brain cell dies, it can be replaced. What were considered automated behaviors that were literally hardwired into the brain, can in fact be rewritten. It is now known that a damaged brain can reorganize itself substituting failed parts with new ones. It is even now shown that children are not always stuck with the mental abilities they were born with.

What is now known is that the brain can change. The brain has flexibility and ability to continue to grow. The new term is called "neuroplasticity". It's so new that the WORD program marks the word as misspelled as I type it (Note to editor, don't correct...ha ha). Why am I joking? -- consider it more as being excited. This is truly an incredible moment. There are those who think that this might be the most important discovery of the twentieth century, and I certainly agree, which is why I am so excited.

I have been writing about the fact that you can change your life for over a decade, with how you think. How you think leads to two realities about all our lives; the first being how you experience your life, the second being what actions you take in your life. You experience your life through your perceptions, which are centered around your thoughts. No action is taken with a preceding thought, food, alcohol, drugs, all require that you have a thought that leads to that behavior or any other behavior.  Learning that the brain can change, changes everything about how you can experience the world and what we do, because we can change both our perceptions and our behavior. As psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge, M.D., puts it, "The neuroplastic revolution has implications for, among other things, our understanding of how love, sex, grief, relationships, learning, addictions, culture, technology, and psychotherapies change our brain".

This changes not only how we should approach education, but also how we should approach helping people create change. What this means is that you are not stuck, and that we're not dogs and we can in fact learn new tricks. This means a person can change, and that "you" can change. It means that you can create new behavior and learn how to move out of negative thought patterns and even introduce and learn new thought patterns. It means your brain does not have to decline as you get older. It means you can get past your addictions, depressions, OCD, and other negative behaviors. The implications are beyond what we know now and will lead to improving brain functions and lives.

The brain can change and you can change, but this doesn't mean it's easy. Changing behavior and your thought patterns takes considerable effort, time and desire on your part. It takes learning how to shift thoughts and how to ingrain new thoughts. So whether you think it's your personality, or that maybe you just have brain damage-- neither is true... Join the revolution and believe that not only can you change, you can change your life.

Consider "Tools to Life" as a brain changing program. We will continually adopt cognitive solutions to improving both our perceptions and our behavior. This will lead to improving our experiences today while getting into new action that will build our tomorrows.

This week on the Tools To Life Daily Podcast we will continue to explore the changing brain.