Super Brain Read Free Page A

can be attributed to better medications and to the upsurge of trauma units, since strokes are ideally dealt with as soon as possible. Quick treatment is saving countless lives, compared to the past.
    But survival isn’t the same as recovery. No drugs show comparable success in allowing victims to recover from paralysis, the most common effect of a stroke. As with the discouraged children, with stroke patients everything seems to depend on feedback. In the past they mostly sat in a chair with medical attention, and their course of least resistance was to use the side of the body that was unaffected by their stroke. Now rehabilitation actively takes the course of most resistance. If a patient’s left hand is paralyzed, for example, the therapist will have her use only that hand to pick up a coffee cup or comb her hair.
    At first these tasks are physically impossible. Even barely raising a paralyzed hand causes pain and frustration. But if the patient repeats the intention to use the bad hand, over and over, new feedback loops develop. The brain adapts, and slowly there is new function. We now see remarkable recoveries in patients who walk, talk, and use their limbs normally with intensive rehab. Even twenty yearsago these functions would have languished or shown only minor improvements.
    And all we have done so far is to explore the implications of two words.
    The super brain credo bridges two worlds, biology and experience. Biology is great at explaining physical processes, but it is totally inadequate at telling us about the meaning and purpose of our subjective experience. What does it feel like to be a discouraged child or a paralyzed stroke victim? The story begins with that question, and biology follows second. We need both worlds to understand ourselves. Otherwise, we fall into the biological fallacy, which holds that humans are controlled by their brains. Leaving aside countless arguments between various theories of mind and brain, the goal is clear: We want to use our brains, not have them use us.
    We’ll expand on these ten principles as the book unfolds. Major breakthroughs in neuroscience are all pointing in the same direction. The human brain can do far more than anyone ever thought. Contrary to outworn beliefs, its limitations are imposed by us, not by its physical shortcomings. For example, when we were getting our medical and scientific training, the nature of memory was a complete mystery. Another saying circulated back then: “We know as much about memory as if the brain were filled with sawdust.” Fortunately, brain scans were on the horizon, and today researchers can watch in real time as areas of the brain “light up,” to display the firing of neurons, as subjects remember certain things. The Astrodome’s roof is now made of glass, you could say.
    But memory remains elusive. It leaves no physical traces in brain cells, and no one really knows how our memories are stored. But that’s no reason to place any limitations on what our brains can remember. A young Indian math prodigy gave a demonstration in which she was asked to multiply two numbers, each thirty-two digits long, in her head. She produced the answer, which was sixty-fouror -five digits long, within seconds of her hearing the two numbers. On average, most people can remember only six or seven digits at a glance. So what should be our norm for memory, the average person or the exceptional one? Instead of saying that the math prodigy has better genes or a special gift, ask another question: Did you train your brain to have a super memory? There are training courses for that skill, and average people who take them can perform feats like reciting the King James Bible from memory, using no more than the genes and gifts they were born with. Everything hinges on how you relate to your brain. By setting higher expectations, you enter a phase of higher functioning.
    One of the unique things about the human brain is that it can do only what it