Our brains are excellent at storing new and accurate information. We just need to get it in there. Then we can think and act differently than when we didn’t have that knowledge. We simply need to want growth, maturity, and intelligence. Our brains will accommodate us in every way. I first got interested in brain science in my early forties when healing from early childhood trauma. I set out to learn what I could in the emerging and fascinating topic of understanding our brain.
The brain functions by electrical currents, called synapses, moving through pathways of cells called neurons. It is like the game we played as children called “Connect the Dots.” Once we followed the numerical order of the dots, a picture would emerge. Our brains do that, but with billions of dots (neurons) ordered, not by numbers, but by language, culture, and physical experience and learning. The “pictures” that emerge to us from our brains can be narrow and repetitive or expansive, unique, and creative depending on levels of “neuroplasticity.”
Neuroplasticity is defined as the constantly forming, strengthening, or breaking of neurological synapses to adapt to new information. This concept was first labeled “mazeway resynthesis” by Anthony Wallace in 1956 and Peter Worsley in 1957. These anthropologists used the term to describe people’s cognitive shift to a new cultural or value system triggered by major trauma, causing a “mazeway disintegration.” The trauma couldn’t be processed by the existing brain patterns, necessitating new patterns of perception and thought. Scientists and technologies have evolved since then, giving us more knowledge and understanding of the miraculous human brain. Modern brain scan technologies allow us to watch live brain activity in real time. Brain area maps are being refined to identify specific regions of mental activity such as reasoning, personality, perception, and emotions.
Our sensory organs (eyes, ears, nose, skin) convert physical energy (light, sound, pressure) to electrical signals to the brain. One part of the brain (thalamus) acts as a switchboard, sending signals to specific brain areas that interpret vision, hearing, smell, and touch. The brain then combines input from multiple sensing organs to form a unified, accurate, and useful perception. The brain also uses prior knowledge and expectations to interpret sensory input. It is the brain’s use of learned cultural expectations and values that can easily disrupt accurate interpretation of immediate, real-life sensory input from eyes and ears. These learned values create pathways that allow us to believe what we are told by authorities rather than what we see and hear with our own eyes and ears. The conflicting interpretations of what happened in the recent shootings of citizens by ICE in Minneapolis are examples. Through their agenda and ethics, DHS immediately and without investigating labeled Rene Good and Alex Pretti “domestic terrorists.” Some people preferred to believe that assessment, even though multiple videos and witness accounts showed very different facts. Paradigm expectations overruled eyes and ears.
An infant’s brain is different than an adult’s. A newborn has no prior knowledge or expectations. Everything in the world they are born into is new and must be learned. During their first three years, a child’s brain creates over a million new neural connections (synapses) per second, more than at any time in the rest of their life. Those microscopic electrical connections are the foundation of their specific language, cultural and environmental information, learned behavior, and response to their specific circumstances. Think about that—a newborn human child can emerge into any cultural context anywhere in the world and learn what is necessary to thrive there. That is extraordinary!
By the time a mature brain is formed in their late 20’s to early 30’s, most of that enormous synaptic potential is lost in favor of fixed pathways. Think of those fixed pathways in the brain as the superhighways on a road map. They are the routes the brain will use most often. Sometimes, the state highway routes are used. The brain synapses represented by the lesser-used city streets, county, and forest service roads have fallen into disuse, becoming latent potential in the brain. Latent, but still available to hold new information.
This habituated brain activity is how we can express and recognize in others our regional similarities and differences. Brain habits allow a musician to learn and perform a song. The “muscle memory” of a gymnast is possible due to a specific and complex set of electrical impulses in their brain. A learned activity like driving a car, playing card games, cooking a favorite meal, etc., is possible due to fixed brain pathways. Each of these learned pathways has some flexibility to learn a new song, drive a different car, or cook a new recipe. Neuroplasticity is that flexibility.
Neuroplasticity is being studied in the aging brain and various forms of dementia. Researchers have discovered that learning something new in later life creates new neural pathways. These new pathways serve as “alternate routes” of cognition when age and dementia make the “superhighway” routes less useful. New learning does not include a cook learning a new recipe or a musician learning a new song. The neurological benefit is only realized in learning to cook or learning a musical instrument if having never done so. These are examples. Benefits are contained in any new hobby, game, physical activity, educational activity, or subject that requires the brain to wake up those latent synaptic pathways. Many individuals would benefit by acquiring a deep understanding of our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the rule of American law.
Being a “life-long learner” is a commitment at any age, but particularly in old age. Our modern world funnels our knowledge base into algorithmic “silos” of narrowly defined work-life, home, religion, and politics. To a carpenter, everything is a nail. To an economist, everything is a dollar. To a politician, everything is a constituent. This narrow focus creates very strong neurologic pathways but limits neuroplasticity. The old quote “a jack of all trades is a master of none” is often completed with a modern understanding, “but oftentimes better than a master of one.” This reflects the strength of versatility on a physical level but requires neuroplasticity in the brain to possess that strength. I believe wisdom resides in the “Jack/Jill of all trades” because of the learning necessary to be capable and knowledgeable in many areas. That means more synapses in the brain, more dots to connect, resulting in expanded possibilities.
It appears to me that the flexibility of brain activity and versatility of mental thought required for wisdom to reign supreme are in very short supply in American leadership. I wonder if a form of cultural dementia has beset our political sphere. There is a clear lack of wise resolution of legal battles. The focus on citizens’ economic issues is very narrow and ineffectual. Chaos is subverting clarity. Mean-spirited lawlessness is like a plaque forming in the brains of policy makers and power mongers. Can Americans use their latent brain potential to take up new knowledge, activity, and peacemaking to bring about a new era better than our current mess? Is there enough cultural plasticity, or will American dementia, our own “mazeway disintegration,” be institutionalized to the care of other world powers?
