Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain by Sharon Begley

Books
This is your brain on a new track
Caroline Leavitt; Caroline Leavitt is the author of "Girls in Trouble." She can be reached at carolineleavitt.com.
Caroline Leavitt - Caroline Leavitt is the author of "Girls in Trouble." She can be reached at carolineleavitt.com. Boston Globe
970 words
3 February 2008
The Boston Globe
3
C.5
English
© 2008 New York Times Company. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All Rights Reserved.

BOOK REVIEW / Self-Help

Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves
By Sharon Begley
Ballantine, 304 pp., paperback, $14.95
Super Brain: 101 Easy Ways to a More Agile Mind

By Carol Vorderman

Gotham, 288 pp., paperback, $15
How Can I Talk If My Lips Don't Move?: Inside My Autistic Mind
By Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay
Arcade, 238 pp., $25

If you're like me, you probably exercise and eat right to keep your body healthy and buff. But what have you done for your brain lately?

For years, scientists have insisted that when it comes to the brain, we're hard-wired to do certain things in certain ways, and as we age, things like memory, hearing, and mood degenerate. Or do they? Neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to grow neurons and rewire itself, was once thought to be impossible. But in the fascinating "Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain," Sharon Begley delves into a new science that is disproving much of what we thought we knew about the brain.

Begley, science columnist for Newsweek, begins with a little history. In 2004, prominent scientists joined with the Dalai Llama at the Mind and Life Institute to investigate how we can indeed change our very brains, grow new neurons, and increase gray matter just by changing our ways of thinking and responding to stimuli. Buddhist monks and ordinary people were asked to meditate, and it was found that this practice permanently changed the chemical structure of the brain, particularly in areas that had to do with happiness and contentment. Most interestingly, the monks' brains continued to show this difference even when they were not meditating, much the way a new muscle, built up from exercise, will remain.

In another study, obsessive-compulsive patients were asked to meditate, reminding themselves that their thoughts did not mirror reality. When PET scans were done on their brains afterward, there were changes in the areas related to obsessive behavior, proof that the brain can be stimulated to build important new circuitry.

What's even more enthralling is Begley's fascinating glimpses of what's ahead. By "repeatedly changing the sensory input" received, a dyslexic brain can begin to read easily, and memory loss might be something that can be worked off the same way a few extra pounds are.

The perfect companion book is "Super Brain: 101 Easy Ways to a More Agile Mind," by Carol Vorderman. Vorderman is famous on British TV, known for both her sudoku finesse and her ability to memorize incredibly long series of numbers. Billed as a fitness handbook for the mind, "Super Brain" includes tips, recommended foods, and strategies to get your brain in optimum shape.

Divided into three sections, the book is a cornucopia of easy and fun exercises. You can boost focus by concentrating on a watch's second hand for two whole seconds (harder than it sounds) or stimulate your memory (studies have shown that remembering pushes the brain to lay down new connections) with a series of fascinating facts. Vorderman shows how breaking habits - even drinking from a different coffee cup in the morning - can change your brain, and how music can boost brain power the same way that whole grains, fresh veggies, and lots of sleep can. The book is really your own personal trainer, able to be opened anywhere, at any time.

But if the workings of the so-called normal brain are under investigation, what about the brain that is outside the norm? A lot has been written about autism, a good amount of it implying that the autistic person is locked away from us, barraged by sensory overload. Prepare to be astonished, because much of that appears wrong.

"How Can I Talk If My Lips Don't Move?: Inside My Autistic Mind," by Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay, should, to my mind, be required reading for any parents struggling with a diagnosis of autism for their child, or for any professional wanting to help. Hurry past the clinical foreword by the director of the Autism Research Foundation and dive into Mukhopadhyay's insights on his condition. He explains why he screams at length (to focus and stop sensory overload) and how he is able to solve many of his own problems without the help of professionals.

Autistic people tend to be obsessive, and he cures his fear of the power going out by giving himself the constant visual clue of fans whirring in every room. Writing gives him control of his world and a way to communicate, an "impossible" feat he began when he was 6. Helped along by his extraordinary mother, who insists that "people need to believe you," he diligently practices his writing and allows doctors to test him, and he soon becomes so famous, he's the subject of an award-winning documentary. When patronizingly told he's done a "good job" at some task, he snipes, "Do they not know that I have two books published and one translated into German?"

Struggling against stereotypes, Mukhopadhyay argues that he is not "sick," as autistic people often are classified, and he rails against anyone thinking him less of a person because he's autistic. Brave, bold, and deeply felt, this book shows that much we might have believed about autism can be wrong.

"What is a mind but a mysterious possession?" Mukhopadhyay writes, but as these three books show, the scope and power of our brains are just beginning to be discovered.