Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain

I clearly remember my college psychology professors introducing me to the "nature versus nurture" dilemma. Can experience alter the essential traits of human beings? Are we doomed to the limits of our genetics (as Watson and Crick's "Central Dogma" would have us believe)? Newsweek's science editor Sharon Begley's book, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves dares to take a look this controversy from two very interesting perspectives. Inspired by the annual Mind & Life Institute meetings between His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, other senior Buddhist monks, and top Western neurologists, philosophers, and psychologists, this book's central theme is that the human mind can change. And, it postulates that once changed, the mind can change the biological organ we know as the human brain.

Drawing largely from the rather radical and long over due neuroplasticity discoveries of Michael Merzenich, PhD of the University of California, San Francisco, Edward Taub, PhD, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, MD, of the Harvard Medical School, Jeffrey Schwartz, MD, of the University of California at Los Angeles Medical School, and many others, Begley, leads us down an unquestionable path highlighting irrefutable evidence that our mind can change our brain. By discussing how experience changes both the brain's composition and it's organization, the citied authorities produce example after example of how we can combat neurological disorders such as brain trauma, Alzheimer's, and stroke.

Although I tackled this volume in one thrilling session and found much with which I agree, I must admit that I felt rather slighted. The book is billed as documentation of a "groundbreaking collaboration between neuroscience and Buddhism". However, it was actually focused about 95% on the former and gave limited lip service to the Buddhist contribution. Much of the neuroscience portion is already covered extensively in other brilliant books, some of which I have recently reviewed for the Institute. What I was looking for was more linkages between modern neuroscience and Tibetan Buddhism, which has its roots not only in 2,500 year old Buddhism, but also in the other Tibetan traditions, such as Bon-po, which has a 20,000 year history. Indeed, ancient Buddhist scholars, such as Atisha, Naropa, and Shantideva, and the transmigration beliefs of the Bon-po scholars have had much to say about how to change the human mind. I had hope that the book would have spent more time comparing and contrasting the Western discoveries so thoroughly manifested in this volume and the centuries-old realization of one of the most treasured transformational traditions. Hopefully, as the Mind & Life Institute dialogues continue that book will finally be written. Nevertheless, I remain a big fan of the neuroscience, psychology, philosophy and Buddhist dialogues.

For clinicians and the laity who have yet to grasp the implications of neuroplasticity on the healing professions, I highly recommend this book. Even the glimpses into Buddhism from this perspective are welcomed. And, as always I am literally blown away at the insight and wisdom of the Dalai Lama, who is much more than a spiritual leader and man of peace. His down-to-earth insight into the human condition and the high regard which he gives science serve as an inspiration to us all.