The Mind & the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force

SF Library Audiobook - 4 stars

“Cells that fire together, wire together”

I wanted to challenge myself to read something educational (and take a break from romance). Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to form new neural connections. I’ve become interested in this topic as a way to cope with migraine but also as a way to fight brain diseases (eg Alzheimer, dementia) because the ability to make new brain connections and create new circuitry is one way to not be stuck when old wiring breaks down.

Through the author’s work with OCD patients, he found that self-directed neuroplasticity is real, and it takes a lot of effort (mental force). This book takes us on his personal journey as he tries to find the science behind why this works and the people he met along the way. I enjoyed reading about the success of helping dyslexic children, who knew it would stem from a hearing issue??

This book provided background to the different scientific theories throughout history, but I can’t recall any of the scientist names nor their theories now, only in vague terms of materialism, behaviourism...philosophy and free will, it’s hard to not cover these areas when talking about the mind and the brain. I’ll have to research these another time.

There were very in-depth chapters in regards to the mechanics of the brain itself. Again, very interesting, but challenging to keep up at times, having had only studied first year psych in university. I was listening to this at x1.5 speed, but slowed it down to x1.25 when it started talking about quantum physics and quantum mechanics. Over. My. Head.

The areas that interested me the most was the practical applications to help those who suffer from OCD, depression, dyslexia, Tourettes and stroke. I found myself sharing these anecdotes with my husband. It was interesting to find out that the Silver Spring Monkeys experiment brought about PETA.

The anecdote of the concert pianist who practiced for hours a day and lost the ability to play the piano was fascinating. The concept that neurons that fire together, wire together, meant that her excessive piano playing resulted in her brain grouping fingers together, making her unable to play singular notes. She was able to re-train her brain to separate the sensory input for each finger.

Key take-aways
* Cells that fire together, wire together.
* ATTENTION is important for neuroplasticity.
* Internal mental states can shape the structure and hence the function of the brain.
* Areas you dedicate attention to in your life, take up a greater portion of your brain.
* Intention governs attention.
* Exercise helps with the ability to acquire memory (due to increased blood flow to the brain).
* Thoughts are not facts  important for those with suffering from OCD, anxiety, depression

This book explains the ability of the mind, or the will, to influence the brain. This has application for language learning. We can and do influence the ability of our brains to develop new neural circuits to cope with new languages. Language learning is more a matter of attitude than aptitude, I have always felt. This book supports this view.

This is a great what is possible book. Looking at the human mind and what it is possible of is fascinating. The author offers a great scenario that the mind, so powerful, is capable of many things. How we use it is up to you. I have long believed we could use our minds to do many things, including healing ourselves and more extraordinary things. We have great minds, why not use them?

Neuropsychiatrist Jeffrey M. Schwartz’s work The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force is, overall, a masterpiece. He shows that a correct understanding of neuroscience and quantum physics, confirmed by his clinical experience, leads to the conclusion that we have free will.

Chapter 2 of this book explains how Schwartz began developing his approach in the late 1980s and 1990s with the diagnosis and treatment of patients who had obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Neuroimaging showed that the OCD symptoms were caused by malfunctions in the brain’s orbital frontal cortex and basal ganglia circuitry (74). A brain region called the striatum plays an important role in the development of habits (70). The habits connected with OCD could be changed by a four-step process, by which patients consciously learn to relabel, reattribute, refocus, and revalue OCD urges. After repeated habituation in this four-step process, the patients’ neuroimaging results showed that their brains had significantly changed in a positive manner: “Done regularly, Refocusing strengthens a new automatic circuit and weakens the old, pathological one—training the brain, in effect, to replace old bad habits programmed into the caudate nucleus and basal ganglia with healthy new ones. When the focus of attention shifts, so do patterns of brain activity” (90–91). This neuroplastic brain change corresponded to the patients’ being able to overcome their formerly strong OCD urges.

These results led Schwartz to a conclusion relevant to the question of free will:

The results achieved with OCD supported the notion that the conscious and willful mind differs from the brain and cannot be explained solely and completely by the matter, by the material substance, of the brain. For the first time, hard science—for what could be “harder” than the metabolic activity measured by PET scans?—had weighed in on the side of mind-matter theories that . . . question whether mind is nothing but matter. The changes the Four Steps can produce in the brain offered strong evidence that willful, mindful effort can alter brain function, and that such self-directed brain changes—neuroplasticity—are a genuine reality. (93–94)

As Schwartz observed, “This was the first study ever to show that cognitive-behavior therapy—or, indeed, any psychiatric treatment that did not rely on drugs—has the power to change faulty brain chemistry in a well-identified brain circuit. What’s more, the therapy had been self-directed, something that was and to a great extent remains anathema to psychology and psychiatry” (90).

Schwartz concludes that “mental force,” not reducible to the physical brain, arises from “willful effort”: “What mental force does is activate a neuronal circuit. Once that new circuit begins to fire regularly, an OCD patient does not need as much effort to activate it subsequently; the basal ganglia, responsible for habitual behaviors, take care of that” (95).

Schwartz argues that “the paltry 35,000 or so genes in the human genome fall woefully short of the task of prescribing the wiring of our 100-trillion-synapse brain” (366). Elaborating on the technical (and less accessible) accounts of his quantum physicist friend Henry Stapp, Schwartz explains how quantum mechanics makes free will possible. He illustrates this proof with the example of an OCD patient—a scenario quite familiar to him from his own clinical practice. On pages 362-63, he reproduces a chart that clearly depicts his (and Stapp’s) theory: mental effort controls the otherwise indeterministic release of neurotransmitters in synaptic firings of relevant neurons. The associated discussion near the end of chapter 10 explains the details; see also chapter 8 (“The Quantum Brain”).

This work of more than 400 pages also discusses many other matters, including the relevant histories of physics and neuroscience and patient case studies. I’m not sure about Schwartz’s thematic discussion of Buddhism, though I understand the point he is trying to make about the importance of focus and attention. Still, such a hard predeterminist as Sam Harris also invokes Buddhism in support of the exactly opposite conclusion. It appears that there are different versions of Buddhism, and I am not knowledgeable about these various interpretations. I also could nitpick at a few details in the book. These minor reservations aside, I regard this book as an outstanding contribution to the fields of free will, quantum physics, neuroscience, and neuroplasticity. I highly recommend it.

Alan E. Johnson
Independent Philosopher and Historian
June 23, 2021 (revised June 24, 2021)

Note: Portions of the foregoing review are excerpts from my forthcoming book (scheduled to be published in 2021) Free Will and Human Life.

Poorly organized presentation of questionable "science".

This was an epic tour-de-force of some of my favourite topics - neuroscience/neuroanatomy, philosophy of free will, the psychology of attention, willpower, & concentration, quantum physics, and the Buddhist & secular roots of mindfulness meditation. If yr a fan of any (or all) of these topics, then do yrself a favour and give it a whirl on yr headphones!

Neuroplasticty is real. This book does not impart any kind of actual understanding of what that actually is.

This is such an optimistic book about the brain. It gives shows that habits can be derailed and describes the interplay between the mind and the brain comprehensively, demonstrating how there is almost a dance between the two that eventually brings about our state of character and, therefore the essence of our lives. As someone who has partially healed a brain disorder, this book offers no end of hope.