Neuroplasticity nirvana
English, Spanish, French, Mandarin, Russian–you may be fortunate enough to be fluent in more than one of these languages, however, your ability to learn all of them would certainly seem a daunting task. Yet studies have shown that babies born into multilingual families, some bombarded with more than two languages including those of parents, grandparents and others, are able to easily shape and compartmentalize their minds to distinguish one language from the next–setting a natural course to understanding and speaking many languages with ease.
A decade ago, soon after the results from such linguistic studies were published, parents, with the urge to capitalize on this seeming unique putty like quality of an infant’s brain, ran out to purchase language tapes in the hopes of producing born savants. New research, by Patricia Kuhl, a professor at the University of Washington and a leading expert on early language development, demonstrates why this technique failed the enthusiastic parents. Kuhl’s research strongly suggests that emotional connections are required to shape the pliable minds of infants.
Her study put nine month olds in a room with Mandarin speaking adults who showed them toys while talking to them. After 12 sessions, she found that the babies were able to detect subtle Manderine phonetic sounds that could not be heard by a separate group of babies who were exposed only to English. Kuhl found a more revealing contrast when comparing the initial group with a group of infants exposed to Mandarin solely through the use of sound recordings and videos, without emotional interactions. This group, like those exposed to only English, failed to pickup the subtle phonetic sounds of the language. It has become clear based on this and other research that emotional interaction is required in early intellectual development; so, while an infant may seem stimulated watching Blue’s Clues, it may not have much more of an effect on their cognitive growth than running a vacuum for thirty minutes.
In a broader sense, these studies suggest that our ability to adapt our brain to the environment around us is not contingent upon the environment itself, but rather, our emotional connection to it. This is particularly important given that it is now widely accepted that our ability to shape our brain is not limited to our first few years of devolvement but in fact continues throughout our life. The challenge as we get older is finding new emotional learning experiences, which often become fewer and farther between as our world begins to shrink under the weight of past experiences and cynicism–so don’t bother with the crossword puzzles and Sudoku, they’re not going to help.
Our quest to keep our brains responsive to the changing world around us may not be bound to the world and our experience in it. A piece in Friday’s Wall Street Journal explored the mind’s ability to actively shape one’s brain. The ability to adapt to the changing world and ideas around us, without having to wait for an external emotional source, looks to be a real possibility given the latest studies surrounding the emerging science of neuroplasticity. The article explores a question the Dalai Lama asked while observing a brain surgery at an American medical school: Can the mind shape brain matter? That is, in addition to the brain’s giving rise to the thoughts, hopes, and beliefs that incarnate the human mind, the mind may create physical, manipulative changes to the very matter that created it. Mind over matter…what a thought! The question, however, is not that outrageous when you consider that the Buddhist tradition honors the transcendental happiness which Siddhartha Gautama achieved in becoming Buddha; he reshaped his state of being and unlocked the true nature of reality through a deep state of meditation.
When the Dalai Lama posed this question ten years ago, it was met with a quick and firm rejection: only physical states can give rise to mental states, and a causation from the mental to the physical is impossible. Indeed, it has been found that the brain can physically alter itself based on input from the outside world; for example intensely practiced movements can alter the motor cortex of stroke patients, allowing them to move once paralyzed appendages. Today, however, it seems that the Dalai Lama was on to something.
In an attempt to see how meditation alters activities in the brain, the Dalai Lama allowed neuroscientists to observe whether the internal act of meditation leaves an enduring impact on the brain in Buddhist monks. The study conducted by the University of Wisconsin included eight adept monks (those with over 10,000 hours of meditation experience) and ten volunteers who had a crash course in meditation. The results were astonishing. Not only did the monks have a surge in gamma rays that far surpassed the novas volunteers, but the surge did not subside, even between meditation sessions. Moreover, the more meditation training a monk had, the stronger and more enduring the gamma signal. These gamma rays are believed to be responsible for weaving together far flung, neural activates used to differentiate features of objects such as look, feel, and sound. The study indicated that mental act of meditation, void of environmental stimulation, can leave a lasting alteration on the brains structure and abilities.
The potential for our state of consciousness to physically alter our brain’s composition is great news for all those fearing that it is too late to learn new tricks. It appears as though our ability to adapt is not restricted to our external environment and the shrinking number of novice emotional learning experiences we encounter as we age, but it is unbound by the limitless potential of ourselves.
As we design approaches for sharing and adapting knowledge, it is important that we do not underestimate our seemingly limitless potential to mold our minds to new ways of thinking, not only in a metaphorical sense but a real physical sense as well. It is also important to recognize the importance of emotional connections, whether generated from our interactions with others or internally generated through experiences like meditation.