Rethinking the Brain

My professional intention is to help you re-think how you think about your Brain.

What does that mean?

Most people think about their brain as a collection of tissue, an organ sitting inside their heads that generates thoughts and emotions and actions through the.interaction of its anatomical bits and chemical connections.

Many think of the brain as being like a computer -- "processing" its "input", generating "output", running "programs" that determine how we think and feel and react and act. They wonder whether some part of them is "hardwired" or whether it might be changeable.

And even though they "know" it's just a metaphor, they get frustrated when their brain doesn't perform as expected or desired. They feel like it needs "fixing", "upgrading", "re-wiring", or "re-programming".

But my mission is to help you get past the anatomy and the computer metaphor.

I want you to understand your Brain as a living, constantly evolving reflection of how you live your life.

I want you to understand that it isn't machine-like in any way. Unlike computers, your Brain is always regulating itself, organizing itself, and evolving itself. We'll look more at how this happens and what it looks like in Real LIfe.

But let's start with how your brain can be self-repairing.

Here's a great TED talk by Jocelyne Bloch that describes very cool research that shows that even an injured brain can know how and where to repair damage as long as it has the primary materials to work with. Take a peek at this 11-minute talk on the Self-Repairing Brain

Through treating everything from strokes to car accident traumas, neurosurgeon Jocelyne Bloch knows the brain's inability to repair itself all too well. But now, she suggests, she and her colleagues may have found the key to neural repair: Doublecortin-positive cells.

Let me know what you think or wonder about after seeing it!