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The Brain That Changes Itself (2008): Neuroplasticity Insights with Dr. Norman Doidge - AI Summary, Mind Map & Transcript | Crevoisier Philippe | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: The Brain That Changes Itself (2008): Neuroplasticity Insights with Dr. Norman Doidge
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The human brain is not a fixed, machine-like organ but is remarkably plastic, constantly changing and adapting based on experiences, thoughts, and targeted interventions. This understanding of neuroplasticity revolutionizes our approach to brain function, rehabilitation, and human potential.
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foreign [Music]
there's always a strong temptation to
think of the brainer to call a brain a
when I was in medical school we were
taught that the brain is what it is and
I learned that the brain was pretty much
hardwired and what you've got by the age
[Music]
all of this works suggests that we need
to radically change this old view of the brain
I think we're now learning that in fact
the brain is changing all the time that
the brain is changing with everything we
think with everything we experience [Music]
I wrote a book called the brain that
changes itself [Applause]
[Applause]
I'm here today to describe what I've
come to believe is the most important
change in our understanding of the human
brain in 400 years
this idea is revolutionary because for
four centuries mainstream medicine and
science have seen the brain as fixed and
described it as though it were a complex
machine with parts Each of which perform
one mental function in a single location
in the brain
this machine metaphor gave rise to what
I've called the doctrine of the
unchanging brain a sense that treatment
for many brain conditions was impossible
or unwarranted took hold and it spread
through the culture even stunting our
overall view of human nature
but what if the idea of the brain is
machine or mechanism is not only wrong
but spectacularly wrong
when I first heard reports that the
human brain might not be hardwired I had
to investigate and began a series of
travels and in the process met a band of
brilliant scientists at the frontiers of
brain science who'd made a series of
unexpected discoveries
these scientific Heretics began to call
this new brain property neuroplasticity [Music]
[Music]
neuroplasticity changes everything the
brain is not a machine it has to be
understood on its own terms
and this is the remarkable story of the
[Music]
I went to Madison Wisconsin to meet with
Mitch Tyler and Yuri download
two people who had worked with Paul
bakerita perhaps the most important
Pioneer of his generation the great
Visionary of neuroplasticity who after
some very personal experiences with the
death of his father figured out that the
human brain is plastic and then began to
invent all these extraordinarily
ingenious devices to help people rewire
their brains [Music]
[Music]
given that Paul was a visual
neuroscientist and that's where his
training was he was looking for a way to
demonstrate this idea of this
neuroplasticity or the brain's ability
to rehabilitate itself and The Logical
extension of that would have been in the
blind population developing a blind
prosthesis if you will or a sensory
substitution Vice okay Bill let's try
something a little different now
and the receiver is to the right
in sensory substitution he claimed that
brain is flexible plastic and smart
enough to analyze any information that
you can deliver accurately to the brain
where you could actually take
signals from a video camera and
presenting this stimulus on the back of
a patient who was blind and have them be
able to pick up that information as
though it was coming from their retina
and treat that information the same way
it's Vision it doesn't matter where the
how a sensation entered the brain was
not important to bakirita what was
important was what the brain did with
that sensation
source of the signal is really almost
immaterial as long as you provide that
signal to the brain and give it a
context that is being used in the brain
will figure out how to use it and make
you and use it to its its owned ends to
both rehabilitate and also to perform
thank you
I'm 54 and I've been blind for 38 years
totally blind
let's stay inside the lines Roger
I see black but I have no eyes whatsoever
whatsoever
over the years that big dentist chair
and massive computer behind it have all
shrunk down so that it pretty well fits
into a pair of glasses with a mini
camera in it
the simplest way I've described it is
when your kids and you're laying in bed
and one of your brothers sisters are
drawing on your back with your finger
and you're trying to guess what it is
it's kind of the same principle and
since this device is drawing it on your
tongue in vibrations
Roger that turn was incredible yeah it
it's drawing images onto your tongue and
I try to get the whole image as much as
I can on this little one inch by one
it's tracing it like you do on your back
when you're kids but it's now tracing it
on your tongue electronically
and see if you can try and put your hand
on the top of the arrow
a little higher
I mean definitely people think well it's
touch well not for me I mean as soon as
I put that on within matter of seconds I
am seeing it I mean I talk about seeing
because I am it's it's drawing pictures
I mean this was very emotional for me
and I told my wife the same thing I said
maybe someday I'll be able to see your
we have senses that we don't know we
have until we lose them and balance is
one of them
in this helmet we have a little two axis
accelerometer and what it does is
converts your head position information
into a little signal that's presented on
the tongue display here once sparkly
reader realized that you could get
sensory modules that seem to process one
sensation to process another he turned
to a very important problem the problem
of balance and what I'm going to have
you do is go ahead and just put it in
and your job is to actually keep that
little red square in the middle of the
box so it actually moves in response to
the position of the helmet [Music]
today you can see Cheryl Schultz riding
a bike which seems like a very ordinary
event but actually it's most
extraordinary because Cheryl Schultz is
a woman who had her balance apparatus
almost completely obliterated as a side
one morning when I tried to get out of
bed I literally fell to the floor I
tried to get up try to get on my hands
and knees I was just wobbling around and
I just would fall again and I'd fall
again and I remember looking and it was
more of like a never-ending sense of tumbling
tumbling
and the doctor told me
that it is a permanent condition but
you you learn to get used to it
and actually the worst word of it all
was permanent permanent made made things
stop it made it stop that this is just
the only way it will ever be [Music]
so how is Cheryl able to ride a bike
when we first met Cheryl she was a
wobbler a self-described person with a
balance problem and on disability
but she was wobbling profoundly
what I also realized that this is her
world this is something that she lives
I always had this constant noise in my
head and not a noisy like you hear a
if you could hear confusion that's what
it sounds like and my brain was really
really confused because I didn't know
what to do like I it it was so consumed
with just trying to
when I put that device in it was just
like oh
like I stepped out of that room and I'm
standing on the side of it of the ocean
or something it was just like oh
it's quiet it's still but it feels so good
good
bajirida thought that the brain could
rewire Itself by a masking alternate
Pathways or sprouting new ones [Music]
[Music]
what Cheryl's brain is doing is
receiving the signals from her tongue
and sending them to the part of her
brain stem that normally processes touch
it's then that her brain redirects this
information to the area that deals with
well the analogy that I think I
inherited from Paul is that if you're
the enormous normal nervous system you
have your major pathways are sort of
like the the freeways in your brain that
handle large volumes of information and
then do it very efficiently but if
there's an accident on the highway you
can either sit in traffic and not do
anything or you can get off on the
secondary Road [Music]
over time what the brain does is it it
takes those back roads and turns them
into the Super highways and reroutes the
information so we're taking the existing
by having that sensation on my tongue I
had to reroute my my patterns and my my
thoughts and and and how my brain was
functioning to focus on that input if
you will Cheryl was able to pick up that
signal within a couple of minutes and
learn how to move head left right front
back and pick up the signal and maintain
upright posture perfect posture she
stood with military Precision almost and
we were Amazed by that
and when we realized that she's
stabilizing her body we decided to try
remove the device from the mouse and see
how long she can stay and keep the
balance afterwards and what we found was
when we took the took the um the strip
from my mouth that there was a residual
it would follow a little bit you know
the longer we did it the longer the
residual so then when we just continue
the exploration of this residual effect
to figure out that the effect have
ability to accumulate
with each training session it's getting
longer suddenly there was a profound
realization that these people don't have
to use this device all the time that
there's something more than just sensory
substitution it's it's a
neurorehabilitation the brain is
learning how to change Itself by use of
this device that was that's the big
breakthrough the greatest thing is is
that not depend
device anymore it truly indeed without a
doubt rewired my brain in some fashion
the idea that the brain could change its
function that it could morph it could
adapt to new tasks was really radical
and it took foot tall some 40 years to
demonstrate that that was possible and
we're just at the front edge of finally
realizing Paul's vision of being able to
take this idea and run with it
so I'll still do that for a while and
I'd like I think she'd like to do this
long if possible so once he gets the
Paul Baker read his importance lies in
being a Visionary the first of his
generation to really understand the full
potential of plasticity and to begin to
apply it so that it could help people
and to describe a new brain a brain that
evolves in a changing World to Change itself
sadly Paul bakerita is no longer with us
a couple of years ago he developed a
the first thing he said when he learned
he said oh but I have to hurry I still
have many things that I I want to do
he was
a man with a mission and I mean he
vedicated all his life to that did he
have a sense that the wave was starting
to break and suddenly plasticity was yes
just on the brink of becoming accepted
for the first time he said well you know
I just I just
planted some seeds and hopefully
others will continue [Music]
[Music]
so what we're realizing is we're still
proving Paul right and Paul's Visionary
Concepts from 40 years ago are just now
being realized I think he got a glimpse
of that realization and when you see the
film clip of Cheryl Dancing with Paul
I think Paul finally got a glimpse of
you know the realization the first
instance of of really seeing his ideas
becoming fruition [Music]
I already knew enough about the science
of the brain to know that brain
plasticity was possible
but then I had the extraordinary good
luck to meet an amazing neuroplastician
Barbara Aerosmith Young
who as it happened was living in our
oh what I'm doing here at Aerosmith
school and in this program is actually
changing cognitive capacity [Music]
[Music]
the students that I work with are
predominantly students with learning
disabilities would that be 10 minutes
before or would that be now
we're really walking into the territory
of their weaknesses were going in and
targeting the area of difficulty and you
know why you use the eye patch no cause
this eye right here talks to this brain
Barbara Aerosmith young was one of the
first neuroplasticians I met
and she was a person who was born with a
devastating array of learning disabilities
disabilities
many of her cognitive areas were quite
in fact in development she had
trouble speaking clearly she didn't know
where her limbs were in space but her
most devastating difficulties had to do
with the difficulty in understanding how
to relate symbols
this problem was so devastating for her
that she really couldn't understand
conversations as they were happening in
[Music]
growing up I felt very stupid [Music]
[Music]
my teacher told my parents that I had a
mental block and that I wouldn't learn
the way other children do and that that
I would have a struggle in school
throughout my schooling and being very
very literal I actually thought that I
had a wooden cube in my head that was
making learning difficult [Music]
[Music]
I developed all sorts of coping
strategies to try to cover up okay
you got it
one day one of her very close friends
and a fellow student gave her a book by
Alexander luria called a man with a
shattered world
it described a person who had deficits
that were very much like what Barbara
suffered from
it was the story of a Russian soldier at
shrapnel in his head and he too had
trouble with grammar and logic and cause
and effect and couldn't read a wristwatch
wristwatch
he talked about the person that couldn't
tell time couldn't couldn't understand
Concepts the person that that really
felt that they were not able to process
or understand information in real time
and it was like it was an incredible aha moment
moment
that soldier's lesion was caused by the
shrapnel that had been lodged in the
part of the brain that integrates
signals from the occipital lobe which
processes Vision the temporal lobe which
processes sound and language and the
so now she knew the junction or area of
her brain that was underperforming [Music]
[Music]
the problem was luria was never able to
provide a treatment for the poor Soldier
he was treating then I also came across
a paper by a neuroscientist Mark
rosenchweig out of Berkeley and he was
looking at neuroplasticity and that the
brain wasn't fixed that the brain
actually could change that through very
specific stimulation and exercise you
could change the brain at a
physiological level which then allowed
effective learning to go forward [Music]
[Music]
it made me realize you know what I don't
need to be stuck with this learning
disability I don't need to live the rest
of my life with it there's a possibility
here that I may actually be able to do
something about it and rewire my own brain
brain [Music]
[Music]
because she couldn't read clocks what
she did for her first exercise was very
simple and elegant I took a number of
flash cards I made up a number of times
and I drew the clock faces
and then she would add a minute hand and
a second hand and a hand for the week
and the month and the year and a number
of weeks into it she started to notice
some extraordinary changes it was
okay just by these incremental exercises
she was building up new Connections in
those processing areas so that they
could start to function eventually at an
average level and then at an above
average level
what I believe this work does through
specific cognitive exercises is actually
stimulate the function of the underlying
brain area to to change it to rewire it
to strengthen it to improve it and they
can walk out of this program and never
have to look back [Music]
foreign [Music]
[Music]
I was diagnosed with stage 3 breast
cancer two days before my 35th birthday
happy birthday you have cancer
and I was told that I was going to have
the nausea the fatigue things like that
and I certainly got those in Spades but
I also found that there's this thing
called chemo brain so chemo brain is
it's almost like a fog that just sort of
descends on you and it makes it really
difficult to kind of process information
I would struggle for word in
conversation so I didn't have that sort
of word recall that most people have
it's major memory problems that we take
for granted that we know where we put
our keys I mean everyone's lost their
keys right but it's it's a much more
profound thing than that it
is this fog that descends on you and you
well in any case in which there's
diffuse brain injury as a consequence of
something like intensive chemotherapy
basically the brain is operating with
increasing noise basically it's
struggling to represent information in
detail with high accuracy oh
to Nick is the driving force behind
scores of Innovations of practical
applications for brain plasticity
mersenic's special ability is training
people to think and perceive better by
working on brain processing areas called
our brains represent the external world
and their borders were believed to be
fixed but mercenic discovered that these
Maps can actually grow and strengthen
good morning thank you for calling
scientific learning how can I help you
well scientific learning focuses on
problems in children and we're basically
trying to improve the capacities of
children through driving their brain
plastically in in positive or corrective
directions in the ways that would
improve their academic performance
one of the systems that he co-developed
is called fast forward and it's
basically a way of treating auditory
learning disabilities disguised as a
computer game
these exercises are game like from a
kid's perspective they're fun
but in fact they're intensive serious
exercises and they're actually optimized
to drive the child as far as possible in
a corrective or more normal or more
powerful direction as fast as possible
one of the things that's so powerful
about fast forward is that before the
program kids with reading difficulties
have very unusual scans very very
different from normal but as they start
to improve on the exercises and as they
start to get better at reading mersnick
was able to show that their brain scans
but mercenic scientific work is not just
for children
ready so this exercise is called bird
Safari he has been able to prove that
plasticity exists from Cradle to grave
and studies show that the elderly can
use his brain fitness program to sharpen
their memories and function as well as
they did when they were from 10 to 25
years younger
well old brains slow down and all brains
again represent information with less in
lower Fidelity you can think of it as
little bit like a radio station that's
older brains forget most of what they
hear older brains forget most of what
they see
a younger brain remembers most of what
it hears remembers most of what it sees
this is Machinery that also contributes
greatly to controlling how we feel about
life how we operate in life how closely
we can attend to the things and enjoy
the things of the world in life
and it's really important that the
average older individual keep this
Machinery in good shape click the
matching arrows in order if you hear
click the up Arrow twice
the brain fitness program is this great
computer program it's got several
different sort of games that really
press you to expand your memory
what were the first changes you actually
noticed I noticed my attention span
lengthening that was the first thing
that I noticed but after a couple of
weeks and I started seeing changes and I
thought there really is something to
it meant that I was going to be able to
function the way I used to it meant that
I wasn't going to be limited by chemo brain
Friday morning I proceeded to go out to
play tennis with a local Pro that I've
played with for about 25 years and he
says to me Mike new game is not what it
usually is and I said my bounce is
slightly off but I continued to play
Michael Bernstein was an eye surgeon who
would work with very small instruments
operating inside an eye and he was a
classically trained pianist and a tennis
buff who in the prime of Life at the age
of 54 suffered an incapacitating stroke
that made it impossible for him to move
left hand the left arm and left leg were paralyzed
paralyzed
the speech therapist and the
occupational therapist said it would be
Michael Bernstein was one of the first
people to go to the newly opened Taub
Therapy Clinic in Birmingham Alabama to
try a new treatment called constraint
induced therapy
Dr Edward Taub developed the therapy for
stroke victims it and even work on
people who've been paralyzed for years
all right go Marlene go really let go of
it the patient's good arm is constrained
and emit so it can't be used forcing
their paralyzed arm to try rudimentary tasks
the Axiom and Rehabilitation was that
there was nothing you could do with
these people that would make them
improve that will enable them to use
their affected extremities any better
than they could
Judy had trouble communicating she had a
very serious stroke October 24th surface
one of the techniques that we use is
cold shaping it's a kind of training
technique in which you get a person to
improve their motor response their motor
function in very small steps
the essence of the Cure is this
incremental training concentrated
practice helps rewire the brain by
triggering plastic changes after there
has been massive brain death new neurons
are recruited to take over lost functions
functions
can you pick that up and back up yeah
you don't try and get a person to
perform a perfect movement if they have
just a rudimentary ability you just try
to get them to improve just a little bit
okay good stretch it out stretch stretch
stretch there are children's games to us
but to the patients their major life challenges
hello Mr Taylor how are you
that's great all right show us what's on
your other hand this one that's the myth
we wears it all day here and then when
he goes home he wears it for as many of
his waking hours as he can so that he
can't use his good hand right all right
really control it really control it
people who have had stroke or traumatic
brain injury frequently don't use the
more affected arm not because they can't
use it
they don't use it because they've
there that seven seconds faster what we
find after CI therapy is that the
healthy part of the brain is recruited
and that is what we call neuroplasticity [Music]
[Music]
technique developed because he had spent
years doing a form of research that
involves something called the afferentation
afferentation
afferent nerves are basically like
sensory nerves that feed information
from the limbs to the spine
at tout the Africans and monkeys so that
they couldn't use their arms then he
decided to take their diaphragan arms
this is a unilaterally the afferented
animal the
right hand is the afferentin right arm
and the left arm is normal
are you the afferent one limb the monkey
the monkey doesn't use that and then
again however on the basis of this
really rather short intervention one
week placing the animal in a restraining
device that prevented him from using the
intact arm he began using the diaphragm
and then when you removed him from the
restraining device he would use the limb
again for the rest of his life
when the animal is very hungry we can
increase his motivation sufficiently to
try and force him to use the diaphranted limb
limb
with adequate training the afferented
animals were capable of carrying out
virtually every major category of movement
movement
Taub was now very excited because he
wondered if this thinking could now be
applied to human beings who suffered
Strokes if you could get the same result
in human beings after stroke you would
then have an enormously powerful and
effective way of treating stroke and
traumatic brain injury and other types
of damage to the central nervous system
in human beings [Music]
[Music]
technique is good for many conditions
Beyond stroke victims he's used it with
people with all kinds of brain damage
including soldiers returning from Iraq
people who have had their brains damaged
by chemotherapy and radiation it's even
been used with children with cerebral
palsy and proven to be effective
squeeze my finger
and let them out
oh get it get it get it good girl we're
almost done
sometimes the process goes slowly and
sometimes those remarkably rapidly when
it goes rapidly it's almost like a miracle
Bernstein is now back at work using his
I only spend 10 days of therapy with Dr
Tao and the result was amazing okay sit
back I could almost sense that each hour
of doing a
different task I improved
I couldn't make that movement or that
movement or that movement or that
simple movements that are required in
daily life that you couldn't do because
I hadn't touched the piano in 41 years
and I decided to get this performance
together and I sent out the invitations
the bottom line is that you can teach an
old dog new tricks
that principle is at the heart of a
thank you
one of the most important lessons I
learned on this quest to understand
neuroplasticity is something I call the
plastic paradox
the Paradox is this that the same
plasticity that allows us to change our
brains and produce more flexible
behaviors is also the source of many of
our most rigid ones
all people start out with plastic potential
potential
some of us as we grow and develop
enhance that flexibility
for others the spontaneity creativity
and unpredictability of childhood gives
way to a rutinized existence that
repeats the same behavior and turns us
into rigid caricatures of ourselves
anything that involves unvaried
repetition our careers cultural
activities skills repeated and neuroses
can lead to rigidity [Music]
[Music]
for a while people had this notion that
plasticity must be a good thing it's a
good thing that the brain can change
because we can learn new things and
that's true
but if plasticity is an intrinsic
property of the brain
it's neither good nor bad it's just the
is elegant charismatic warm mellifluent
who expressive and whatever he does
something he radiates a very serious
[Music]
I'm just going to start with a with a
relatively low intensity so that you
have a sense of what it feels like I've
done this enough that I have a sense of
what your motor cortex is going to be
TMS stands for transcranial magnetic stimulation
stimulation
and it is a way to stimulate to apply
currents to specific parts of the brain
but without having to cut open the skin
movement right
that's sort of more your little finger
you know one of the things that we've
learned from TMS is that we can use it
to map the brain we can use it to
understand how brain activity relates to behavior
behavior
we can also use it to modify the brain
we can use it depending on the
parameters of stimulation to actually
increase activity in a part of the brain
or to suppress activity in a part of the
brain so I'm just going to Target your
language area that will give you a
little feel of what it is like when
people are trying to speak and can't
because of a stroke in that area go
ahead one two three four five six seven
eight nine it's getting tough
I was slurring my speech [Music]
[Music]
pascalioni is now expanding his work to
look at the autistic Spectrum which
includes the childhood disorder of
autism and Asperger's and his working
hypothesis is that they're both a
product of hyperplasticity in the brain
if the brain is plastic and and we
believe it is it
can plasticity itself can the mechanisms
of plasticity themselves be abnormal
could it be that one has too much
plasticity and we think that autism
autism spectrum disorders are exactly that
there are certain things in autism and
Asperger's that involve a
hypersensitivity and he's wondering
whether these hypersensitivities are
related to a very over connected brain
that's formed many many plastic connections
connections
so that autism can generate an abnormal
plasticity and excessive plasticity in fact
fact [Music]
[Music]
when the brain is excessively connected
it doesn't function well there is
recurring thoughts there is intrusions
of thoughts there is repetitive
if we arrive if the hypothesis is
correct then we would be able to use the
capacity of brain stimulation to
modulate activity to
to suppress that plasticity tendency and
therefore hopefully to help with the
symptoms of disease themselves [Music]
[Music]
pasqualeone's remarkable experiments
have shown that we can change and
restructure our brain anatomy simply by
using our imaginations one of the things
I became interested in is the question
of how do the Maps change when you
simply think of things when when you
don't do anything other than thinking
we took normal subjects and we set them
in front of a piano and ask them to
learn to do a five finger movement
exercise they just had to go from thumb
to little finger back to thumb back to
little finger at a given rate and we
found that over these five days of
practice the part of the brain that
controls finger flexions got larger and
larger and larger
but we had another group of subjects who
simply sat in front of the piano and
imagined themselves moving and we made
sure that they did not move but simply
mentally rehearse the actions
what we found in them is that the brain
changed in exactly the same way as in
those that actually physically practice
so the the idea is that just
thinking will change your brain
and what that ultimately means is that
one needs to be careful with what one thinks
thinks
this beautiful experiment complements
the work of Nobel prize-winning
psychiatrist Eric Kendall who showed the
thinking actually turns on genes inside
neurons to form new connections between
brain cells and this idea is further
complemented by brain scans which show
that psychoanalytic cognitive and other
psychotherapies also change the brain
structure through the use of thought alone
I think we're now learning that in fact
the brain is changing all the time that
the brain is changing with everything we
think with everything we experience
that plasticity is an intrinsic property
of the brain and it's not something you
can switch on and switch off it's simply
there and and so the challenge is to
learn enough about it so that you can
[Music]
my name is Derek Steen I'm 41 years old
grew up here in San Diego
and was involved in a pretty traumatic
when we wish to perfect our senses
neuroplasticity can be a blessing but
when it works in the service of pain it
there's days where I just feel phantom
pain in the hand and it feels like my
hands being crushed in a vise
plasticity can also result in phantom
pain because when the reorganization is
taking place after the amputation there
is a miswiring maybe some of the touch
input is going and activating pain areas
our guide to neuroplasticity and pain is
one of the most intriguing of the
ramachandran is the magical wizard of
modern Neuroscience he's the man who
uses Illusions to combat Illusions and
Imagination to change the brain and its contents
contents
many patients with Phantom limbs can
move their Phantom but I found that in
some patients maybe as many as a third
the Phantom is immobilized the patient
will say things like it's frozen in
stone after the amputation my body actually
actually
I could still feel the left arm and the
when I would try to make that Phantom
hand move
I created pain hey Derek how are you
doing good good to see you back here
again thank you no one really knew what
triggered the movement or pain in a
phantom ramachandran wondered was it
possible that the face maps in people
with amputated limbs had somehow invaded
the maps for their arms
what do you feel I can feel a stroking
across the Phantom hand stroking right
across a phantom and my face first of
all in normal people the entire skin
surface is mapped onto the opposite side
of the brain now it turns out the
systematic map but the hand region on
the map is right next to the face region
in that brain map
how about let's go back there it's
towards the little finger towards a
little pinky you said yeah and then
after the arm has been amputated there's
a massive sensory loss there's no
sensory input to the hand region of the
brain If You Now touch the patient's
face the message goes not only to the
face area
as it should but also invades the
vacated territory corresponding to the
missing hand here index finger here Tom
if I
I can feel the tapping on the hand you
feel the tapping on the hand here was
striking evidence for plasticity in the
adult human brain in three weeks after
amputation the phase input now activates
the original hand area of the brain
ramachandran wondered if it would be
possible to fight one illusion a phantom
limb with another what if he could trick
the brain to think that the limb was
moving by giving it some kind of false input
input
so I want you to look in the mirror put
your right hand there and look at the
reflection of the right hand kind of get
position the Phantom sort of roughly so
that it's kind of superposed okay he
asked me to come down to his office one
day and said he had a Newton something
new he wanted me to look at and he
explained to me that he had a student
that had built a mirror box and do you
feel any anything in your Phantom I can
feel my Phantom and I sat down
put my hand in the box and I'm hurting
you know the Phantom Pain's flaring up
and he said look at your right hand and
start moving your fingers and imagine
what you're doing here is using one
illusion namely vision
to negate quote unquote the illusion of
pain because pain too is an illusion of
sorts now I want you to tell me what do
you feel when you do that I can feel slow
slow
movement and resistance in the Phantom hand
hand
it was very shocking
imagine moving your fingers and having them
them
a spirit go through
so what we saw in Derek was quite
amazing initially he said the Phantom
was moving again when he looked in the
mirror when he closed his eyes of course
the Phantom was immobilized didn't move
and he opened it opened his eyes again
it started moving so we immediately knew
that Vision provides a critical role you
need to restore that whole visual motor
congruence and that's what seems to
you want to try something a little bit
different okay so where is your Phantom
now I can sort of roughly in that region
yeah okay another thing we have recently
observed which is very striking and it's
absolutely amazing it blew my mind when
I first saw it so I'm going to put my
hand here okay and I'm just going to
either stroke it or tap it or do
something with it and I want to know if
you feel anything on your face you have
a patient with a phantom limb and the
patient simply watching the normal
person being poked and stroked and
touched he starts feeling the pokes
touches and strokes in his missing
Phantom hand [Music]
feel a vague tapping and this blew my
mind it's almost like X-Files it's
empathy carried to the extreme now why
does it happen again it turns out
there's a perfectly logical explanation
based on what we know of the anatomy of
the brain
if I'm a normal person and somebody
touches me Sensory neurons in my brain fire
fire
tapping you feel tapping on your
fountain yes okay and astonishingly some
of these neurons touch neurons in my
brain will fire when somebody touches
you and these are called mirror neurons
because for obvious reasons this neuron
which I call a Gandhi neuron is actually
dissolving the barrier between you and
another human being that neuron doesn't
know the difference between whether he
is being touched or you're being touched
how about if I do that
clinically they may be important because
these neurons may be revived using
visual input and it may be one reason
there's recovery from paralysis using
visual feedback
the idea of neural plasticity is quite
Beyond any doubt now there is a
tremendous amount of amount of
malleability and you can tap into this
maybe even to enhance brain function
certainly to accelerate recovery of
brain function
it's essentially a new era of research
in brain plasticity and clinical applications
when Michelle was just a few weeks old I
noticed that she didn't have all the
normal movements that the other babies
had had and I remember telling Wally
something's wrong with Michelle
I went to visit Michelle Mack because I
wanted to test the upper limits of human neuroplasticity
neuroplasticity
something catastrophic happened in
Michelle's brain when she was in the
womb we don't know what it was but for
some reason one of her hemispheres never developed
developed [Music]
Michelle Mack is a woman who was born
with just half a brain
I was born missing the left hemisphere
of my brain my parents um
um
weren't given enough information because
at that time there were no MRI machines
and that my brain would only progress
Carol brought Michelle to the National
Institutes of Health in Maryland because
she'd read an article by Dr Jordan
grafman that contradicted everything she
had learned about the brain and been
told about Michelle's prognosis it's
dramatic it includes not only the cortex
but her left Thalamus it's all missing
Dr grafman had worked with people who
had had severe brain damage including a
lot of Vietnam vets and was able to show
that brain development could take place
after a trauma and it's important to
merge the sort of brain anatomy picture
Michelle's brain works much in the same
way that our brains might work but the
functions that are available to her are
somewhat more restricted some of the
things she has trouble with are when
anything that's not concrete
grafman's Theory provides a compelling
explanation as to how Michelle's right
hemisphere took over so many of the
functions that are normally governed by
the left [Music]
[Music]
we know that now that she can perform
certain skills that the left hemisphere
ordinarily subserves they must now be
located in the right hemisphere so we
know she's had some dramatic plasticity
to enable her to have normal verbal
skills normal verbal memory you also
have a number of special skills what are
some of those memorizing dates do you
remember when I came here last yes when
was that that was in June of 2003. do
you remember what day that was yes that was
was
June Thursday June
5th let's say we had a family reunion in
Colorado Sunday July 9th to Sunday July 16th
16th
2000. how about July 17 1989. [Music]
[Music]
what was a Monday
hello how you doing well we've learned
from her these general concepts about
plasticity and I think now what we're
going to try to do is to study them in
more detail you have part of your brain
missing from that area but you talk
pretty much like I do right exactly so
we want to see what the limits are of
this plasticity and whether under some
restrictions we can influence the
plasticity in some way to promote
certain functions that the family and
I want
I function on a normal
some things that that I'll never be able
to do
when I think of Michelle it's hard to
imagine a better test or illustration of
the resilience of human neuroplasticity [Music]
[Music]
it may be easy for some people to
dismiss these fantastic case studies as
anomalies that have little bearing on
the lives of the rest of us
many people react by saying but that's
just one patient it's an N of one but my
usual rhetorical response to this is to
say well look supposing I bring a pig to
this Podium and I said this pig can talk
you'll say really and I wave my one and
it starts talking what would your
reaction be you're not going to say well
that's just an N of one show me another
Pig you would say my God that pig is
talking and yet
the reaction of some of my colleagues is
to say show me another talking pig
to understand that we have within our
hands this incredible power to drive
changes in the brain
accounts for our behavior that is in
fact the very basis of what we are of
the person that we are
you know what a gift [Music]
[Music]
the brain that I met in my travels turns
out to be both the more resilient and a
more vulnerable brain than we had imagined
imagined
by being more resilient it stirs up an
incredible amount of Hope for people
with all sorts of brain and
psychological problems
what we have been introduced to here
first generation of neuroplasticians
they are just beginning to elaborate and
elucidate the limits and what
[Music]
[Music]
thank you [Music]
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