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| Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves | 
 enlarge | Author: Sharon Begley
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  69 reviews
Sales Rank: 5917
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
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Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.6
ISBN: 0345479890
Dewey Decimal Number: 612.8
EAN: 9780345479891
ASIN: 0345479890
Publication Date: November 20, 2007
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Product Description
In this fascinating and far-reaching book, Newsweek science writer Sharon Begley reports on how cutting-edge science and the ancient wisdom of Buddhism have come together to reveal that, contrary to popular belief, we have the power to literally change our brains by changing our minds. Recent pioneering experiments in neuroplasticity–the ability of the brain to change in response to experience–reveal that the brain is capable of altering its structure and function, and even of generating new neurons, a power we retain well into old age. The brain can adapt, heal, renew itself after trauma, compensate for disabilities, rewire itself to overcome dyslexia, and break cycles of depression and OCD. And as scientists are learning from studies performed on Buddhist monks, it is not only the outside world that can change the brain, so can the mind and, in particular, focused attention through the classic Buddhist practice of mindfulness.
With her gift for making science accessible, meaningful, and compelling, Sharon Begley illuminates a profound shift in our understanding of how the brain and the mind interact and takes us to the leading edge of a revolution in what it means to be human.
“There are two great things about this book. One is that it shows us how nothing about our brains is set in stone. The other is that it is written by Sharon Begley, one of the best science writers around. Begley is superb at framing the latest facts within the larger context of the field. . . . This is a terrific book.”
–Robert M. Sapolsky, author of Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers
“Excellent . . . elegant and lucid prose . . . an open mind here will be rewarded.”
–Discover magazine
“A strong dose of hope along with a strong does of science and Buddhist thought.”
–The San Diego Union-Tribune
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| Customer Reviews: Read 64 more reviews...
 About the brain revolution January 30, 2007
351 out of 360 found this review helpful
Contrary to what the title may suggest, this is not a training manual for the brain. The book is a fascinating and convincing account of recent discoveries in brain neuroplasticity (i.e. its `pliability') even into old age, and the amazing implications of such discoveries. Sharon Begley states, "Yes, the brain can change, and that means we can change." For those looking for a magic bullet, she adds that it is not easy. "Neuroplasticity is impossible without attention and mental effort."
Those who have worked in fields such as psychology, education, gerontology and various social services will no doubt have observed unexplained and seemingly miraculous events with their clients and students. This book gives answers to their questions. For example, working as an occupational therapist in gerontology a number of years ago, I was stunned when an elderly (and chronic) stroke victim suddenly raised her paralysed arm to bat a balloon in a lighter version of volley ball. There was an "aha" moment when I read the chapter "New neurons for old brains."
This book also gives credence to the Superlearning trend of a decade ago, which met with a great deal of scepticism at the time. There were those, like myself, who used it anyway, purely on instinct, and met with amazing outcomes we could not explain. Anecdotal, of course, but Begley's book gives the following example some weight: While in my sixties, I decided to test out on myself what I had successfully used on the children. I undertook papers at university after forty years break from education, but reducing the study time by two thirds (using the Superlearning protocol.) It worked far better than I had dared hope; the 'grandmother' amongst students a third her age achieving the 90th percentile. (I later helped 'learning disabled' adults achieve the same percentile.) I couldn't say how it worked; just that it did. Now Begley gives scientific reasons why.
I am sure that other readers will find similar places of deja vu in this book and be assured that they can repeat, again and again, what they previously thought was mere chance. Whether you are a parent seeking hope for a dyslexic child, or an older adult who does not want to end up in mental decline like your parents did, there is solid evidence that "we can change what we choose to change."
Intertwined in Begley's reports of neuroplasticity research (cataloguing the unbelievable intransigence of the 'hardwired brain' traditionalists) is the story of an interaction that has developed over the years between the Dalai Llama and a group of enlightened Western scientists. This is a beautiful account of an interrelationship that has, without doubt, benefited the world, albeit with little media attention.
My only surprise is that, although Begley refers repeatedly to the scientists' rejection of mind-brain dualism, she does not answer this with any of the impeccable research available on non-local mind - such as that of William Braud (whose research is documented meticulously in "Distant Mental Influence.") However, Begley's "Train Your Mind, Change YOur Brain" was published in the same week as Lynne McTaggart's "The Intention Experiment," to create what is essentially a dyad in consciousness literature: while McTaggart shows how we can influence our outer world, Begley shows how we can influence our inner world. One way or another, we can be empowered.
A Remarkable Study of Neuroplasticity January 15, 2007
202 out of 207 found this review helpful
Although this book is based upon the Mind and Life Institute's 2004 Conference with the Dalai Lama, this is not a book about Buddhism, but rather a study of neuroplasticity; addressing the question of whether or not the brain is fixed or flexible in its structure and capabilities. For years, we have been taught that the development and enhancement of the brain stops at a very young age and that it is not possible to change it. Recent studies, however, have shown that the brain can be re-wired through various cognitive techniques. While some of this research deals with the impact of meditation on brain structures, there is also very interesting material concerning the ways in which the brain accomodates for various disabilities such as blindness or loss of hearing.
If you are interested in the latest developments for treating dyslexia and depression, or in ways to prevent mental deterioration brought about by aging, this is an excellent place to look. This book demonstrates that you can teach old dogs new tricks and that you can combat genetic determinism through cognitive methods, rather than psychotropic drugs (not something that the makers of Prozac want you to know). Although the subjects explored are complex, Ms. Begley does a great job of keeping the book interesting without oversimplification.
RE-WIRING `HARDWIRED DOGMA' THE BRAIN CAN CHANGE- OUTSTANDING BOOK! January 20, 2007
141 out of 156 found this review helpful
I must quote from this book which is a pivotal contribution to humanity.
"Hardwired Dogma"
". . . As late as 1999, neurologists writing in the prestigious journal Science admitted, "We are still taught that the fully mature brain lacks the intrinsic mechanisms needed to replenish neurons and reestablish neuronal networks after acute injury or in response to the insidious loss of neurons seen in neurodegen- erative diseases."
"Neuroscientist Fred Gage, one of the researchers invited by the Dalai Lama to discuss the implications of neuroplasticity with him and other Buddhist scholars at the 2004 meeting, put the objections to the idea of a changing brain this way: "If the brain was changeable, then we would change. And if the brain made wrong changes, then we would change incorrectly. It was easier to believe there were no changes. That way, the individual would remain pretty much fixed."
"But the dogma is wrong. In the last years of the twentieth century, a few iconoclastic neuroscientists challenged the paradigm that the adult brain cannot change and made discovery after discovery that, to the contrary, it retains stunning powers of neuroplasticity. The brain can indeed be rewired. It can expand the area that is wired to move the fingers, forging new connections that underpin the dexterity of an accomplished violinist. It can activate long-dormant wires and run new cables like an electrician bringing an old house up to code, so that regions that once saw can instead feel or hear. It can quiet circuits that once crackled with the aberrant activity that characterizes depression and cut pathological connections that keep the brain in the oh-god-something-is-wrong state that marks obsessive-compulsive disorder.
The adult brain, in short, retains much of the plasticity of the developing brain, including the power to repair damaged regions, to grow new neurons, to rezone regions that performed one task and have them assume a new task, to change the circuitry that weaves neurons into the networks that allow us to remember, feel, suffer, think, imagine, and dream. Yes, the brain of a child is remarkably malleable. But contrary to Ramon y Cajal and most neuroscientists since, the brain can change its physical structure and its wiring long into adulthood."
"A few findings suggest that brain changes can be generated by pure mental activity: merely thinking about playing the piano leads to a measurable, physical change in the brain's motor cortex, and thinking about thoughts in certain ways can restore mental health. By willfully treating invasive urges and compulsions as errant neurochemistry--rather than as truthful messages that something is amiss--patients with OCD have altered the activity of the brain region that generates the OCD thoughts, for instance.
By thinking differently about the thoughts that threaten to send them back into the abyss of despair, patients with depression have dialed up activity in one region of the brain and quieted it in another, reducing their risk of relapse. Something as seemingly insubstantial as a thought has the ability to act back on the very stuff of the brain, altering neuronal connections in a way that can lead to recovery from mental illness and perhaps to a greater capacity for empathy and compassion."
"The discovery that thinking something produces effects just as doing something does is a fascinating consonance with Buddhism," says Francisca Cho. "Buddhism challenges the traditional belief in an external, objective reality.
Instead, it teaches that our reality is created by our own projections; it is thinking that creates the external world beyond us. The neuroscience findings harmonize with this Buddhist teaching."
"Buddhist narratives have another consonance with the discoveries of neuroplasticity. They teach that by detaching ourselves from our thoughts, by observing our thinking dispassionately and with clarity, we have the ability to think thoughts that allow us to overcome afflictions such as being chronically angry. "You can undergo an emotional reeducation," Cho says. "By meditative exertion and other mental exercises, you can actively change your feelings, your attitudes, your mind-set."
"Indeed, Buddhism believes that the mind has a formidable power of self-transformation. When thoughts come to the untrained mind, they can run wild, triggering destructive emotions such as craving and hatred. But mental training, a core of Buddhist practice, allows us "to identify and to control emotions and mental events as they arise," says Matthieu Ricard. Meditation, the most highly developed form of mental training, "is about coming to a new perception of reality and of the nature of mind, about nurturing new qualities until they become integral parts of our being.
If we place all our hopes and fears in the outside world, we have quite a challenge, because our control of the outside world is weak, temporary, and even illusory. It is more within the scope of our faculties to change the way we translate the outside world into inner experience. We have a great deal of freedom in how we transform that experience, and that is the basis for mental training and transformation."
Although this is not a "Buddhist" book, I can genuinely personally attest from my study of Buddhism and the positive mind changes that I have experienced by incorporating "right mindfulness and loving compassion" which has significantly transformed what used to be depression, insecurity, and nervousness, into so much more inner peace. As a result, my brain (thinking) became more focused, and aligned with positive intention.
This is an OUTSTANDING book, and a deep, engaging read for anyone interested in positive transformation, and mind functioning at its peak. FANTASTIC in all regards!
Barbara Rose, Ph.D. author of If God Hears Me I Want an Answer! and Know Yourself
 Where's the payoff? March 11, 2007
122 out of 145 found this review helpful
The starting point of this book is a conference held in Dharamsala India under the auspices of the Dalai Lama in which leading Western scientists inform the Dalai Lama of their discoveries. The Dalai Lama has been eager to understand western science since he was the child we met in Seven Years in Tibet. The conference being reported on here was focused on neuroscience, and both the reporter/author and the Dalai Lama, as well as the scientists, are excited at the points at which Buddhism and science agree: that training the mind can actually make changes in the mind/brain.
What makes the story rather underwhelming, however, is that despite the fact that neurology supposedly just discovered this, almost everyone else has always figured that if you train your mind intensely, it, well, it gets trained. In other words, it changes. But, Begley reminds us over and over--we didn't know it could change the physical *brain*! Well what else would it change? Is it really revolutionary news that violinists who practice for 6 hours a day for 20 years have actual differences in their actual brains, and not just in some non-physical thing called the mind? Is it really a remarkable discovery that blind people not only pay more attention to aural input, but that this means that the part of their brain that pays attention to aural input is different?
The funny thing is, the scientists, being non-dualists, assume that the brain is where all the action is, while the Buddhists, being non-dualists, assume that the subtle mind is where all the action is. And the average westerner, being a dualist, is the only one surprised that something presumably non-physical (mental attention) can change something physical (the brain.) If either the scientists or the Buddhists is correct in their pre-suppositions, then there is no news. (The mind changes the mind. No surprise. The brain changes the brain. No surprise there either, is there?)
Begley also reminds us several times a chapter that her long detailed summaries are paraphrases of what was being directed at the Dalai Lama. But apart from the reminders of what he said occasionally (Yes, we also believe that), this is basically a review of the scientific literature on neuroplasticity. I am hardly an expert on this subject, but I had already read several of these reports previously. The story of the Silver Springs monkeys who were subjected to deaffrentation (nerve-severing) of an arm in order to demonstrate that their brains would change as a result has been told before (though probably not to the Dalai Lama. It was a bit of a shock to be told that a Buddhist would suggest that this kind of cruelty is acceptable as long as it benefits humans.) And I had already read Jeffrey Schwartz's work on using the mind to overcome OCD. So that research isn't exactly cutting edge news either.
I kept waiting for the payoff. Ok, so bizarre and basically cruel experiments were done on monkeys back in the 80s. And ok, only slightly less cruel therapies were done on stroke victims (tying down their good arm to force them to use their useless arm, in order to teach new brain areas to function. What fun that must be!) And ok, Schwartz thought that using your mind to overcome OCD is less cruel than forcing people to confront their phobias (He was squeamish about forcing germ-phobic people to touch dirty toilets--as well he should be!)
But now what? The whole point of Buddhists and their mind training is that we can become better than just normal. And the conclusion is--yeah, that should work. Well monks and meditators already knew that, and they have demonstrated it to their own sastisfaction for hundreds and thousands of years. The idea that you don't *really* know this to be true until you euthanize a bunch of monkeys and see the change in their brain cells is the problem with scientism.
Do we need brain scans and autopsies to believe that musicians use their brains in ways that are different from the ways basketball players use theirs? Do we have to measure brain waves before we can accept that a monk who meditates to generate compassion is going to react differently than a guy straight out of Marine boot camp?
This book is not only not a self-help book, as the title might suggest, it is not even a description of any actual therapeutic procedures. Its purpose is to convince us that what we do with our minds affects our brains. If you need convincing, have at it with this book.
The Intersection of Mental Discipline and Neurobiology January 23, 2007
94 out of 97 found this review helpful
In this lucidly written, very readable and compact volume, science writer Sharon Begley explores the recent convergence of learning about the mind and the brain through two very different approaches: Western science, in particular neuroscience and medical studies of the brain; and Eastern (Buddhist) philosophy, including mental training via meditation. As the book explains, recent research has documented changes in the brain that were once held to be impossible, changes wrought by conscious, focused mental effort on the part of the brain's owner. This emerging science has opened up wide vistas of possibility, ranging from mitigation of mental disorders that originate in brain (dys)function, such as OCD or the after-effects of stroke, to improving one's character by becoming more humane and compassionate. This book makes you think humanity may have a future after all, despite so much current evidence to the contrary, if we are wise enough to harness this powerful new knowledge to expand the common goodness of people everywhere.
The book's central message is a little like the old joke about how many psychiatrists it takes to change a light bulb--mind/brain change comes to an individual who really wants to change, and has the will to exert the needed effort. But techniques of mental discipline can be learned, and with proper motivation we can truly "re-wire" ourselves, potentially to eliminate violent or selfish impulses, for instance. The Dalai Lama is one leader who has already grasped the significance of the new science of neuroplasticity. Let us hope many others can follow in his footsteps. I highly recommend this book, which is readily understandable even for those with a minimal scientific background.
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