Enhancing the plasticity of the brain: Max Cynader at TEDxStanleyPark youtube

Healing of brain damaged/Recovery of brain - Neuroplasticity.

[Pairofboots]

I would take this with a pinch of salt. Everyone has different recovery path's depending on severety and area damage. Certainly the brain is adaptable, and parts will take over certain actions or processes, but how far the recovery goes is a bit of hard work and a lot of luck.

[pinkvision]

I have been mixing activities with mindfulness techniques since last summer and have overcome many issues. You have to work at it to repair, bypass or bridge a problem area. It works. The only limiting factor is yourself, your will to do it.

The thing that sticks out in my mind is the saying 'the mourning of the former self' that many people express. The former self was the hard wiring of neurons and brain injury has damaged them so the former self is damaged, is gone in many ways. You will never be that person again because you will never experience the same sensory and emotional stimulation. Through the plasticity method though you can develop a new self, even better than the former self.

There is plenty of science behind this from all over the world, it's big in sports psychology and in business mentality and in therapy for brain injury. A friend of mine, Paul Pritchard, had a climbing accident years ago and his story is an amazing one. He is an ambassador for disabilities now and is well known. He has written a few books, check out Totem Pole.

[pinkvision in reply to pinkvision]

ukclimbing.com/articles/fea...

There are many links.

[Pairofboots in reply to pinkvision]

I'm glad you have found a positive from this, but the science you talk of is not gold standard, much is subjective. As I previously said, everyone is different.

I have tried mindfulness before it was fashionable, by the end of the session there were more people out of the room than there were left in the room.

I was persuaded to attempt mindfulness meditation post injury, well if you wanted an assassin, then it did work, if you wanted a calm mended person then it wasn't for me.

I would not dismiss mindfulness, in the same way I would be careful in promoting a particular treatment or process to aid recovery.

I, although I do have a medical background, can only speak of my own recovery and what has or has not helped me. Others can ask, and they can choose what they take.

[pinkvision in reply to Pairofboots]

What's your medical background

[Pairofboots in reply to pinkvision]

RN(MH) retired Lead Nurse Specialist. I know for some mindfulness can help some, but not for all.

[pinkvision in reply to Pairofboots]

I went a bit potty during my mindfulness based cognitive therapy course but I stuck with it. I think there are subconscious elements that surface, there was nothing bad no 'assassin' characters, just confusion and memories of the early days after the BI which I was told was trauma.

All of this was a kind of shifting of the psyche which eventually settles down and you become to know who you are. The point is to see it through and continue with the practice and rather than chaos there is order and understanding. I used to think living life in a lucky dip fashion was exciting and now I know that it was all a waste of time.

I think it is a powerful tool and I have moved further into the meditative world and now also practice a focused based meditation. It locks your attention onto a single object, I have found that my concentration has improved dramatically. It's important to mix the meditation to an activity, especially one that you have never done before. This is where the 'neurons that fire together wire together' comes into it, the plasticity element. Say for example you learn to play table tennis, imagine that you have never done it before, then the act of trying triggers a neuron firing response. Do this a few times and your brain wires itself to play table tennis. The more you practice the more fixed the wiring and new elements of neural connection form as you get better and improve. It's the same with any activity you try. From fmri scans the areas of the brain show this new area of neuron connection. What has also been found is that by just thinking about, meditating on, the practice you can improve this neural network formation by 30%. This is concrete evidence, 'gold standard' as you put it.

I have found that the health system seems to be about containment, there are no practical measures to improve BI. Mind you my health authority is in crisis management and has been for the last 4 years. There are no services for BI unless it's acute and can be physically seen. Out of sight out of mind, it can be passed off as a mental health issue. I changed my GP practice and my new GP is brilliant and says that if I hadn't tried to find a way out then I'd still be stuck in a mess and probably on anti depressants by now. He takes a keen interest in these methods I am trying because he can see that they are working.

[Pairofboots in reply to pinkvision]

I appreciate the practice. Most health services are in a mess, they are in their own plasticity.

Gold standard would be RCT, with repeatable, measurable outcomes that stand up to peer review.

I am glad it works for you. I came across mindfulness in the late 80s.

The neuropsychologist that I was seeing tried several times for me to try it. Each time I just became very agitated. It's like whale music, or bird's twittering to a babbling brook just send me nuts.

All this does depend on the individual, and the part of the brain that is damaged.

I went through in my early recovery about nine months where my brain was rammed with wild thoughts, none made sense, I couldn't catch them, they ran 24/7. I now know that was my brain trying to reroute thoughts, like a massive traffic jam.

My damage as it was described to me, if you look at a computer, and break the core processor, then the computer cannot get the information in the right place. Well it was the processor that was the part of my brain damaged.

I had a brilliant rehab team where I lived, all the services were interlinked, all communicated with eachother. Unfortunately I moved away, and found that services were at best disjointed, but mainly non-existant.

Maybe the assassin analogy was a bit extreme.

Also from my training subconscious is a psychological construct. There is consciousness or unconsciousness. Freud and Jung used the subconscious to make sense of things that they could not explain, modern psychology has come a long way.

There is a place for mindfulness, CBT, DBT, and medication, each will by right for someone, but some will not be right for others.

All I suggest is to keep an open mind, use self reflection, and check that you are not prescribing, we are all very different.

Namaste

[pinkvision in reply to Pairofboots]

What is RCT?

[Pairofboots in reply to pinkvision]

Random controlled trial.