That's it. I'm doing it. You can put up with just so much in this life. This brain of mine has been telling me what to do, or, worse yet, what I should have done, long enough. "You should have done this, not that..." It's always asking questions, too. "Why did you say that? Why didn't you do this?" Come to think of it, my brain mostly offers hindsight, anyway. If it is so smart, predicting some of this would have been helpful. But no, all it offers is hindsight. I guess that's normal, but still...
And bossy? Let's not even go there. Every little thing I do, my brain has to be in on it. I can't move a muscle without it. Even the things I do unconsciously, without thinking, the brain takes credit for. "Oh, that's your unconscious brain that controls that..." Now, at this stage of my life, it's starting to show some wear and tear. It doesn't remember things like names or words that I have to grope for. It's way slower than it once was. It fails to perform simple tasks or even hold still like it should. So, when I heard a neuroscientist talking the other day about changing your brain, I made up my mind.
No, it's not like changing your clothes, or changing the batteries in your flashlight. This one will take a while. It's not a transplant either. I don't think anyone would know where or even how to hook up the wires for that one. It will, however, involve something like rewiring. It will mean creating new circuitry to replace some that has stopped functioning the way it should. I know, I know, some of you probably believe mine never has functioned normally. Normal is overrated anyway.
So, how do you change your brain? We're learning from mice and monkeys. Well, not exactly. It seems experiments being performed on mice and monkeys are teaching us about how brains can be changed. Somewhere, there is probably someone fretting over what was being done to mice and monkeys, but I'm not. We wouldn't know half of what we do today about ourselves without animal experiments. Until recently, changing the circuitry in the brain seemed out of reach.
But, contrary to what science believed for centuries, you can change your brain. There are also people who believe this can be accomplished just by thinking about it. Count me among the skeptics on that one, it seems too much like wishful thinking. But back to changing your brain--for centuries, scientists believed the brain was a machine, one that had miraculous capability, but a machine nonetheless. The notion of brain as machine included certain assumptions about how the brain worked or works. Among them, the assumption that everyone's brain worked in roughly the same way, in that certain regions of the brain performed certain functions in every brain. Here's another one--that shortly after the teenage years, the brain stopped producing new cells--there's a notion for you, the pinnacle of brain development occurred when you were a teenager. Other assumptions included the notion that a brain could not repair itself if it was damaged, say in an accident, or by a stroke.
But reality finally intruded on this concept of the brain as machine and not a growing, changing organism. Evidence mounted that some brains changed, grew, moved critical functions that had taken place in regions of the brain lost/damaged in an accident or stroke to another part of the brain entirely. It was found that exercise had an impact on brain function, although it was proven to last only as long as the exercise regimen. This view of the brain as malleable seemed to be mostly anecdotal--you'd hear a story. something miraculous, but where was the proof? Then behavioral psychologists got in on the act and established that kids (and even seniors) perform better when they have regular exercise. Kids' scores on standardized tests increase when they have regular exercise. People are even thinking about having two daily recesses in school (I think the teachers will probably put a stop to that--too much playground duty). Seniors dealing with memory issues improve their performance when they begin an exercise program.
And now, there is neuroscience that establishes that animals change the circuitry in their brains with vigorous aerobic exercise. I am in need of new circuitry (come on, aren't we all?). It turns out the requirement is something like forty-five minutes a day, four or five days a week at 80 to 90% of theoretical maximum heart rate (220 minus your age, times .8 = 80% of theoretical maximum). That takes some doing. I spent a couple of hours reading the literature, trying not to choke on the big words, mice and monkeys have created new circuitry in their brains doing this. If they can do it, I can do it. I know there is no guarantee these circuits will be better, but the old ones aren't so special these days anyway. I'd like to stay and talk about this some more, but I'm going to the gym.
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