We have come across cases of the power of
positive thinking and the resulting success of any endeavour.Well
,the answer to this may be found in
Neuroplasticity .
Neuroplasticity , the brain’s ability to adapt ,was once regarded as fringe science . With the right training, scientists now know the brain can reshape itself to work around dead and damaged areas, often with dramatic benefits. Therapies that exploit the brain’s power to adapt have helped people overcome damage caused by strokes, depression, anxiety and learning disabilities, and may one day replace drugs for some of these conditions.
Socrates believed that people could train their brains the way gymnasts train their bodies. But in due course scientists began to attribute well defined, unchanging roles for each object, organ and even parts of an organ . It was these ideas that led to the notion of our brains being “
hardwired.”
Norman Doidge, a psychiatrist at the
University of Toronto and author of the New York Times bestseller,
The Brain That Changes Itself, says our ongoing belief that our brains are hardwired has held up medical progress.
“Our best neuroscientists thought our brains were structured like complex machines, with each part performing one function in one location. If you were born with a part that was defective, that was giving a learning disorder, it meant there was nothing you could do, you had to learn to live with it. Brain exercises made no sense, and even more fundamentally, human nature was as fixed as the brain from which it emerged,” he says.
Neuroplasticity recognises that if part of the brain is damaged, it can be possible to train other areas to take on, at least to some extent, the job of the lost brain matter.
In a case study he found that men who had spent so much time viewing pornographic images, became impotent with their partners, and some developed extreme sexual tastes. Doidge believes that neuroplasticity was at work here, with the men’s brains altered by an almost limitless supply of pictures, available any time at the click of a mouse. Most of the men recovered after being banned from using their computers .
Some psychiatrists suspect that a common technique called
cognitive behaviour therapy, which helps people to change their perspective on events in their lives, may work because of the brain’s plasticity.
In his book, Doidge uses ideas of neuroplasticity to promote ways of overcoming conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, and other common problems, such as persistent worries and anxieties. In some instances, he suggests that people force themselves to do a rewarding task as soon as they get the urge to worry. “When it works, it is very powerful,” he says.
Doidge says neuroplasticity will soon replace drug treatments for certain conditions. It’s economical and mostly low-tech.