Holy Rewired - "Wiring the Brain" (part 2)

In the second part of this chapter on wiring the brain, Phillips reiterates that the brain is very resourceful. However, this "plasticity" isn't all good news. "While it has the power to produce a wonderfully flexible organ, the brain's plasticity can also work to create behaviors that are more rigid. Once a particular plastic change takes place, it can inhibit other changes from occurring, thus hindering or preventing functional and structural modifications that allow behavioral change."

Experiences of our environment make changes in the brain; the richer the environment, the greater the level of stimulation and complexity, and this enhances learning and growth. "Stimulation and challenge are necessary for brain plasticity because they keep the brain from functioning only via its automatic processes."

Those with limited life experience find change and adapting difficult. For example, children that have a wide range of experiences are able to relate more easily with wide and diverse groups of people than those who have limited life experiences because the brain of those with limited experiences has functioned via its automatic processes rather than be forced to change because of a different environment.

How does the plasticity of the brain relate to the mind, the thinking area? ..."in recent years, scientists are discovering that the mind, the rational, thinking areas of the brain, can affect the brain."

Tests have been done with people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder who are terrified that harm will come to them or someone they love. For example, a person like this may have great fear of germs and will worry compulsively about germs, seeking to get relief from the worry by focusing on dealing with the germs (such as constantly washing hands any time he/she feels they might have been contaminated. This action allows them to feel they have removed the threat). But the reality is that the more she/he thinks about the germs, the more worried she or he becomes.

The brain of such a person won't allow him to move past feeling regret and guilt when making a mistake and so he obsesses about his mistake. There are three areas of the brain involved in obsessions:

• The orbital frontal cortex - the region of the brain where mistakes are detected.
• The cingulate gyrus - a part of the limbic system involved with forming emotions and with processing, learning and memory. As soon as the "orbital frontal cortex" detects that something is wrong, it signals this part of the brain which triggers the anxiety feeling that something bad will happen if the mistake isn't corrected.
  
• The caudate nucleus - this part of the brain allows thoughts to progress from one to the next.
  

In the case of an OCD patient, the caudate becomes stuck. This is referred to as a brain lock by scientists.

A man named James Schwartz developed a treatment to help such patients release this brain lock, and his approach creates a new brain circuit which "gives pleasure and triggers the release of dopamine which 'rewards the new activity and consolidates and grows new neural connections. The new circuit can eventually compete with the older one, and according to 'use it or lose it' theories, the pathological networks will weaken. With this treatment, we don't so much 'break' bad habits as replace bad behaviors with better ones.'"

So Schwartz has his patient do two things: first, each time he feels an oncoming compulsion, he decides to think differently about worrying by relabeling the worry. He pauses to think that, rather than this being an attack of germs, it is an attack of OCD and that it is because of a faulty circuit in his brain. Then, the patient refocuses his thoughts on something positive and pleasurable. In this he is growing and strengthening new circuits and altering the caudate. "'By not acting on the compulsion (to wash their hands, for instance), patients weaken the link between the compulsion and the idea it will ease their anxiety.'"

This has had much success in Schwartz' patients; his conclusion was that "...this was the first study to show that cognitive behavior therapy has the power to systematically change faulty brain chemistry in a well-identified brain circuit."

David Phillips concludes this chapter with the following observation: "Repeatedly doing an action builds and reinforces neural circuits in the brain that control behavior. This makes it difficult to change our behavior because we have to break how these neural circuits are wired by creating and reinforcing new circuits leading to new patterns of behavior. Accomplishing this means we have to heal our emotions so as to change our thinking. Since we act, however, out of our identity which is formed from our experiences and relationships, we essentially have to re-experience life. Wholeness requires that we set aside our old way of thinking, feeling, and acting while at the same time experiencing a new way of thinking, feeling, and acting. Doing so changes our identity, continually re-forming us into the image of Christ, in whose image we were created."