Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to...

Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform ... | Sharon Begley | Surprising science: new about neuroplasticity.

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Train Your Mind, C...

	Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform ... Sharon Begley Ballantine Books, 2007 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 70 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Change your Life

Reading this book will change your life by providing scientific proof that humans can change their brains through meditation. The book is readily accessible to the non-scientific/technical reader and the sections involving the Dalai Lama are fascinating. Those interested in neuroscience, meditation, improving one's quality of life, or in the mysteries of the brain will enjoy this book. Educators and parents will also will find this book as inspiration because it suggests a radical new approach to educating and developing young minds.

Surprising science: new about neuroplasticity.

For nearly a century, scientific dogma held that the brain is immutable, fixed by genes and early upbringing. Wall Street Journal science writer Sharon Begley recently visited the frontiers of neuroscience and returned with a news flash: The dogma is wrong. Researchers have discovered that the brain remains plastic, lifelong. This creates new frontiers: Stroke victims can rewire their brains using challenging exercises; deaf people can repurpose dormant auditory cortexes for other tasks; and blind people can begin to "see" patterns of Braille dots using a seemingly dead visual cortex. Suspecting that they were on to a general pattern, researchers soon looked for similar changes in "normal" brains. Working repetitively on your golf swing, playing the piano or learning a language, they found, also change your brain in lasting, important ways, as does practicing compassion toward others. Begley arrives with heavyweight friends: a foreword by the Dalai Lama and a preface by Daniel Goleman of Emotional Intelligence. If you want to understand how the brain keeps working, and how to make yours do more of what you want it to, we think you should start here. Your brain will thank you.

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believe you can change

I think most of us believe we can acquire new knowledge and skills throughout life. The hard part is believing we can change habits and emotional responses. That the mind can actually cause physical changes in the brain. This book does a good job of showing that the evidence is accumulating that change can and does happen. However, it is not enough to simply have an insight. The book also relates the actual process of change to the meditative (mindfulness) techniques of Buddhism. I use this information and techniques in my work as a school counselor. It really works! It can make changes in your life as well!

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Understanding our brain

Personal renewal through understanding how the brain works is a subject I am very interested in. This book gets you into the science behind this most promising area of new understanding. It is a subject we all need to know more about - science has learned so much about it in the last 15 years - and this book is a very good place to begin your study of this most important developing area of knowledge.

'Focus & Attention."

This book is based in part on an Oct.2004 meeting bewtween the Dalai Lama & a group of western neurologists & psychologists to discuss the mutability of the human brain. The main positives of this book are that it is meticulously researched, & yet concise.

But, despite the title it is not a self-help book. One should not expect any life altering experiences. This is a history of neuro-plasticity, a cerebral trait discovered by neuro-scientific experiments some twenty years ago. The books central message is that the brain/mind can change when we want it to. The techniques of mental discipline can be learned, & our negative traits reduced. Here eastern philosophy & meditation meets western neuro-science. When the reader is interested in the latest developments for treating dysfunction & depression, or in the mental deterioration brought by aging this is a good place to start.

Basically, the adult brain retains much of the plasticity of the developing brain, to change the circuitry that weaves neurons into the networks that allow us to think, feel, dream, remember, & suffer. Some findings show that changes can occur by certain mental activities: like learning a language, or playing a musical instrument. To a degree, the neuro-science does blend with the buddhist belief that our reality can be created by our own thoughts & projections.

I have learned that meditation can truly help alter ones feelings, especially in dealing with grief & depression. The book explains in detail how various experiments, training methods, & therapies can change the adult brain. It has shown a remarkable ability to cope with unexpected changes, like blindness, recovering from a stroke, etc. The crucial changes in the brain can willfully overcome neural problems like dyslexia, etc by changing its own circuitry.

However, the book does not actually answer all of the questions it poses. I was also a bit taken back that the Dalai Lama would condone animal testing? His statment that the larger human community would benefit from the experiments felt expedient to me. Still, this is a four star book for all the data it contains.

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