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

I'm a board-certified cognitive behavioral therapist and I recommend this book to my fellow therapists as well as the book TRAIN YOUR MIND TO CHANGE YOUR BRAIN. Both of these books give a wider-horizon overview of the power of the mind to make physical changes in the brain than my own book BRAINSWITCH OUT OF DEPRESSION which is more specific to depression. I've had great success training people to re-wire their brains to quickly get out of the pain of depression by using simple mind exercises to switch their neural activity from the feeling part of the brain (the subcortex) to the thinking part of the brain (the neocortex). So I can personally attest to the feasibility and practicality of neuroplasticity in changing out of painful habitual neural patterns.

The author uses his personal experiences as a human being and as a physician treating OCD patients to explore the mind body problem. There are many "isms" associated with what stance a particular philosopher may take on the mind body/brain problem. In my limited mind I see two extremes with a continuum between which has not been fully explored. One can believe, as most neuroscientists do, that the mind is nothing more than a consequence of purely physical process'. In it's most extreme form we have functionalism which repudiates any concept of mind outside the physical realm. As we move away from this concept we see various "isms" rear their head depending upon what modifications one can make to this thesis. If you believe that mind exists but has no influence on brain then you believe in epiphenomalism. Of course if you believe in the functionalist viewpoint and state that you truly do not know if mind exists outside body you subscribe to agnostic physicalism. Alternatively, if you concede that mind emerges from the brain and can affect the brain but cannot be wholly explained by physical phenomena then you are an emergent materialist. Going a bit further if you subsribe to the notion that the mind and brain are seperate entities and can affect one another then you hold on to dualistic interactionism. The discovery of newtonian mechanics was a revolution which explained the unexplainable. Newtonian physics let to various deterministic outlooks in every field including biology and neuroscience. The discovery of quantum physics shattered the belief in deterministic systems and replaced it with probabilistic systems. Here we see a paradigm shift in physics from studying what "is" to what we can know about what "is". In the authors words a shift from ontology to epistimology. It is the inertia of newtonian thinking which persists in neuroscience today. Like the author I subscribe to a mind independent of brain which can influence the brain. Whether quantum mechanics can explain this is an exciting question. The author uses research in OCD, stroke patients, and the Silver Monkey debacle to argue that directed attention/mental force can alter brain circuitry/processing and that this mental force is not simply a physical process or byproduct of the brain itself. He clearly explains basic concepts of neurophysiology, neuroanatomy and basic quantum mechanics so the unseasoned reader requires no background knowledge. He incorporates the ideas of non-locality, quantum zeno effect, anti-realist implications of quantum mechanics and the mysterious collapse of the wave funtion during observation into a theory of mind over brain. His thinking is that the choice of what to focus on ( Heisenberg choice ) leads to many outcomes of a probabilistic nature ( anti-realist implications of QM ) and that by directing attention one is able to select one possibility from the many ( quantum zeno effect ) which is then actualized ( collapse of the wave function )

This book is on the leading edge of thought in the worlds of Consciousness and Neurology. In fact, the book's thesis is quite contrary to Classical Western Thought , which is descended from a Newtonian worldview dealing only with measurables;it is broadly termed "materialism" - and posits that there is no such thing as a "mind" , and the whole subjective world can be completely reduced to firing patterns of neurons in the brain. That is - "free will" is an illusion, and all behaviours are either conditioned responses OR are completely subordinate to the dictates of genes and other congenital limitations. Schwartz, a practitioner of Buddhist meditation and inventor of the 4-step behavioral/congnitive method of OCD treatment, resoundingly says "NO!". His experiences with mindfulness (a buddhist concept) applied to OCD reveal the stunning plasticity of the brain. Plasticity (of a brain)- being able, even in mature adults, to re-map and re-wire itself in response to experience and stimulus. This ability is harnessed in OCD treatment, to laboriously create alternate pathways in the brain, so that patients eventually overcome their "compulsive" behaviours. Plasticity of the brain finds many humane applications - one great example in the book is a cure for dyslexia in children. Schwartz makes the logical conclusion - with numerous examples of nerological studies, including the infamous Silver Spring Monkeys deafferentation experiments - that human will or volition , or "mind" acts upon the "matter" in the brain and causes radical reorganization to reflect the kinds of stimulus. He makes a strong case for the role of experience and stimulus in shaping our brains from gestation, infancy, childhood, and indeed, for the rest of our lives ! He then volunteers the help of quantum physics to come up with a hypothetical "mental force" that acts upon the neurotransmitters and calcium ions in the synapses of our brains, thus either enabling, or disabling certain actions and thoughts. He proposes that the "explanatory gap" that yawns between Mind and Matter be dissolved by a quantum physics explanation. Giving us a quick tour of quantum theory - Schroedinger's wave equation, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the collapse of the wave function ; and a quick tour of the human brain and tying these together with a lot of circumstantial evidence, Schwartz does a convincing job. A considerable debt is owed, in years of inhumane treatment, disfigurements and drastic surgical procedures, to the non-human primates who "volunteered" their lives for advances made in this field. To me, an outsider, it seems like every important step forward came at the expense of a monkey's skull being split open.

I've always been fascinated by the workings of the brain, so I knew I had to read this book after reading a brief excerpt in "The Wall Street Journal." The idea that mindful attention to the workings of the brain can cause physical changes in the brain is a radical departure from recent scientific thinking. For many years, it has been believed that the brain is "hard-wired," a process completed early in childhood, and the adult brain can not be rewired in any significant way. The work of Dr. Schwartz and his colleagues demonstrates that the brain can be retrained to overcome the effects of illness or injury, at any age.I am not a scientist, so I'll admit that some of the scientific explanations caused my brain to do some heavy lifting. And, there were parts of the chapter on the Silver Spring Monkeys I found too disturbing to read. That aside, this book excited me about the possibilities to retrain the brain. Dr. Schwartz's work has been primarily with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) patients, but the implications for other mental disorders, as well as victims of stroke and brain injury, are monumental.This book also got me excited about learning other subjects it touches on, such as quantum physics and Buddhism. (Really!) If you are ready to expand your thinking on this important subject, you will certainly want to read "The Mind and the Brain."

I was having a bit of a philosophical crisis when I went looking for a book on free will and determinism -- I had discovered that deep down, I really didn't believe in free will. That was a surprise, since consciously I thought the idea of fate was absurd. I always thought that my brain had been programmed to be the way it was through my genes and the way I was raised, and that the best I could do was to not get too upset about the way I am, do whatever came to me, and hope for some life-changing experience to make things better. After some research on the internet I decided to do what William James and Abraham Maslow did and "act as if" I had free will, and see if I got the same extraordinary results they did (both had been depressed determinists and were "cured" once they gave free will an active try). I still wanted intellectual confirmation though, and I came across this book at the bookstore and bought it on a hunch. This book has blown my mind. Schwartz' cognitive-therapy work with obsessive-compulsive patients leads us to ask the question, "How is it that a strictly mental process can result in measurable brain changes as shown on PET scans?" Is it caused by another part of the brain? Even if it is, that just postpones the question, because what caused that part of the brain to be any different this time? He makes the case that conscious experience isn't reduceable to anything more fundamental -- try having a colorblind researcher truly understand the color "red" by tracing physical and chemical changes in the brain. Combine that with the fact in quantum mechanics that observation affects which reality it is that shows up, and he proposes a kind of fundamental "mental force" and does a much better job of explaining it than I've done here.One problem is that in the middle of the book there is a lot of scientific history of particular studies that would support his theory, but they aren't really necessary because they don't say much more than what he's already said, and there's lots of detail that isn't necessary for making his point. It can get dry and uninteresting in those parts, and it seems more like he's just trying to give these unsung scientists their due.That can't negate, however, how great the rest of the book is. It has a very powerful argument against strict materialism, especially for this atheist/materialist who didn't believe in free will last week. (I can't *believe* how many things this book explains with regard to spiritual claims.) So, don't get discouraged by the scientific history if you get bored by it, and see the book through. And have fun.