"Train your mind, Change your brain"--a brief highlight

This past week I've been reading a book by Wall Street Journal science correspondent Sharon Begley entitled, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain. It's a fascinating work from 2006 which examines recent discoveries in neuroscience that point to the ability of the brain to change structurally in response to both outside stimulation and conscious thought.

I'm about half-way through the work, yet already Begley has described two series of experiments which provide evidence that the brain changes structurally in response to internal and external stimuli. As the book notes, up until about twenty or thirty years ago neuroscientists believed that the brain was absolutely fixed after a certain point early in childhood. Yet new research suggests otherwise. For example, people born blind show pronouced activity in their visual cortex while reading braile. When a magnetic device is used to tempoarily disable the visual cortex, the subject suddenly finds it difficult to read the raised dots which constitute the braile alphabet. Lacking visual stimuli, the visual cortex (comprising 35% of the brain) changed function and became active in the subject's language ability. Similar tendencies were uncovered in the auditory cortex of subjects born deaf, though rather than langauge ability, this brain structure improved the deaf person's peripheral vision. In short, contrary to the theory that the brain is fixed from childhood on, more recent research suggests that specific brain structures are capable of significant adaptation due to genetically unexpected stimulation (or lack thereof).

Yet external stimuli aren't the only ways in which the brain can become structurally altered. As it turns out, one's thoughts can also affect the brain. Experiments discussed in the book have shown that thearpies which assist a person to appraise of their thoughts differently can actually change activity of different brain structures over time. Conditions such as OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) and chronic depression have been treated with such thearpies with great success, and the evidence suggests that the chances of relaspe with these conditions is significantly lower with thearpy compared to seretonin uptaking inhibitors. In short, what's on your mind can profoundly affect your brain, which you can use seemingly for your own benefit or your own misfortune.

If this kind of stuff interests you, then give the book a read, it's very good. The implications of the reseach it discusses could be quite important for people of all sorts, especially those suffering from the ill-effects of modern technology. But we shall see.

Happy Saturday friends :)

Positive thinking

Sipping some tea on this hot and humid morning, I remembered part of a conversation I had with a friend several years ago. It is unclear why this particular conversation came to mind, as I haven't spoken to that friend (most unfortunately) in over a year, but so it happens sometimes.

The conversation centered on the learning of a new skill, or the accomplishment of a difficult task. I asked my friend how he seemed to be able to learn new things, such as languages, without giving up in frustration. And very simply, my friend replied, more or less, "Well, I just get it in my mind that I can do something, and I believe that until it becomes true." 

How about that. My friend went on to be very successful in high school and college, and will soon be serving in the US military as a second lieutenant of artillery, or so I believe (as I said, we haven't spoken in a while). At any rate, what is to be made of my friend's thought from so long ago? It is not uncommon, neither for myself, nor for many other people, to become frustrated while attempting to master some new skill or accomplish a difficult task. The inevitable time, practice, and focus required to perform at a high level can prove daunting and discouraging for those who would improve their craft, especially when signs of progress are not readily at hand. Many people feel this way, and maybe you do too. In fact, my friend actually admitted to feeling this way as well. Yet the thing that seemed to sustain him, aside from the usual combination of determination and good habits, was the belief that he could in fact accomplish what he set out to do. The task, to his mind, was completely possible, if he but applied himself to the business of doing it. Want to write a book? Grab a pen or computer and give it a go. Want to run a fast mile? Do some research, devise a plan, then rigorously apply one's talent and training to the task. And perhaps as importantly, remember to believe in yourself as you go.

A little belief, it seems, can carry one a long way. Genshin Fujinami is a monk at Mt. Hiei in Japan who successfully completed the 7-year Kaihogyo, a series of trials that saw Fujinami run/walk appproximately 27,705 miles, and go nine straight days without water, sleep, or food, among other things. Look it up if you're interested. At any rate, in an interview conducted sometime near the end of the trials, Fujinami said quite simply, "You must think positively. Thinking positively, I believe I can continue until the end."

And so, perhaps, can you, given a little positive thinking.
Happy Thursday, friends :).

Television heroes in drama today

One consequence of spending time at home, for a variety of reasons, is an increased exposure to the television world. Called the "boob-tube" by some (according to one source, the name comes from the early days of television, when some folks believed the television would prove unsuccessful, and only be watched by "boobs," or idiots), the television has become a major dispenser of modern culture, for better or worse. Consequently, it seems reasonable to think that what appears on the television in some way reflects the climate of opinion (or said another way, "the spirit of the age") of our particular time and place. The following observation is based upon this understanding.

I've noticed a number of dramatic programs on television today. It is but one of a number of genres you can find throughout television-verse, yet it is in drama particularly, I believe, that you can get a sense of what current society views as its "heroes," if the word may be used. What I mean by "hero" is a person whose actions, beliefs, personality, and lifestyle in some manner reflect members of society's desires for themselves. In short, characters in popular dramas today act, believe, think, and live in ways that many in society wish that themselves might act, believe, think, and live.  Perhaps "hero" isn't the right word to describe this idea, but it seems better than an alternative, such as "role-model," because as much as television characters may act or seem appealing, they live in a world that is different from our own.

The types of heroes you find on television seem likely the result of a contemporary society's taste; an unpopular character is bound not to last long in a television world seeking profit rather than flops. Given that, what do some of television's heroes look like today? Speaking from the dramas I've seen, they are often detectives, doctors, lawyers, spys, or highly-intelligent people who find their world expanding because their intelligence is in demand.

Consider the list. What do heroes do today? They're professionals, in highly-trained professional fields, performing highly-skilled professional work. Often times they are eccentric, or have eccentric friends. They have nice places to live, and are almost certainly not averse to expressing their ideas and opinions, which can of course heighten the drama when such views or ideas conflict with long-standing social norms.

What do these characteristics express of our present society? What of current taste? My sense is that society today in many ways revere the highly-educated professional class of people who deviate sufficiently from the establishment as to seem both professional and interesting all at once. They do their job competently, have an interesting personality, look half-decent, and rarely if ever gripe about taxes and politics.  Educated, cultured, good-looking, and professional; have these  become the characteristics of our television heroes today? Something to thing about perhaps, and if you're old enough, compare with the television heroes of the past. 

A little reflection may yield some interesting results.

Miss Saigon

Today, I went to Philadelphia with my dad to see the play Miss Saigon at the Walnut St. Theatre. The weather was cloudy on the whole, and cool as early spring, which made for a nice run later in the evening. Arriving 45 minutes early, as is my dad's usual custom, we explored the theatre a little before taking our seats. And so began the show.

If you've never seen Miss Saigon, I would recommend you do so if given the chance. The tale is a beautiful if sad story of sudden love creating a lasting impression upon two people who suffer from the tragedy of a long-distance relationship that goes poorly. A marine named Chris is in Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam in 1975, just before the end of the war. His buddy John hooks him up with a new prostitute at the "boom-boom" house at which they're drinking. Yet almost immediately both Chris and the prostitute, named Kim, develop a deeper understanding of one another than is common under such circumstances, and soon fall in love in a beautiful way. Chris decides to attempt to get Kim out of the country. The first tragedy ensues when Saigon is falling, and Chris is literally forced to leave Saigon without Kim, a tale that is told during the second act as a flash-back which strikes the audience as both moving and intense.

As it turns out, Kim leaves Saigon (now known as Ho-Chi-Mihn City) for Bangkok, and Chris returns to the United States, where after a year of desperate searching for Kim, he settles down and marries a woman named Ellen. He is plagued by nightmares, however, and his wife Ellen struggles to understand what troubles him.  As for Kim, she has given birth to a child named Tam, Chris' child, and she and the child live together in Bangkok. Through the intermediary of a self-interested friend of Kim's, Chris learns of her child and her present plight. He informs Helen of the child, who is clearly flabbergasted and confused. Nevertheless, both he and Ellen, along with Chris' friend John, head for Bangkok to seek out Kim and her child.

On hearing that Chis is in the city, Kim rushes to his hotel room, the excitement and naked joy written clear upon her countanence, an innocent, urgent, and unabashed love that is so rich with feeling and passion. Kim finds Chris' hotel room, only to find Ellen, Chris' wife, and no Chris, who was just then out searching for Kim. It is then that Ellen informs Kim that she is Chris' wife. Kim's reaction is riveting, a break-down at once both sudden and completely heart-wrenching. Kim is distraught, and leaves in a rush. Ellen then puzzles over the difficulty of her own situation, as she recognizes the love the Kim feels for her husband. The dilemma is palpable, and one cannot help but feel for Ellen's plight.

Ultimately, Kim gives her son up to Chris and Ellen's protection. Kim then retreats into her bed area, where she pulls from a box the pistol that John had given her three years before in Saigon so that she might protect herself, and proceeds to kill herself. She dies in Chris' arms, a moment of incredible pathos and sadness that is hard to describe with words.

The story spoke to me on a number of levels, not the least of which on those themes that have been a part of my own experience. Sudden love across wide distances is a remarkable thing, yet carries with it the enormous potential for tragedy. You will know what I mean if you have ever been blessed and cursed with this happy and difficult circumstance. I have now seen a play which speaks to this collection of experiences in a true and unique way. It very accurately highlights the manner in which something so beautiful can go so wrong.

Yet it needn't be. A tragedy, like a triumph, is a mirror in which we might observe the emtional trajectory of good-meaning people under quite unfavorable circumstances. In their thoughts and actions, we might observe elements of ourselves; those feelings and tendencies which may have a more or less universal quality to them. By these stories, we are meant to feel the very real pain that poor choices and poor circumstances may wreak upon poor humankind. And so we feel. Yet perhaps we might learn, giving ourselves over to reflection and self-examination. The tragedies of the heart, such as highlighted in the play, may seem intractable, and perhaps they are, yet it would seem foolish to absorb the story without a thoughtful consideration of it's emotional dimension. I urge you to feel the tragedy that is Kim's, Chris', and Ellen's, yet I urge you not to cease there, but to continue in one's exploration of those deep feelings of which the play highlights.

Much luck to you in this. And who knows; perhaps you will learn something of yourself in all this. Happy Sunday, kind readers :).

Emotional dilemmas in "Searching for Bobby Fischer"

This past week I found the film Searching for Bobby Fischer on my sister's movie shelf, and being in the mood for a new film, I popped it in and watched. The tale is a beautiful one if you've never seen it. It tells the story of Josh Waitzkin, who found he had an intense interest in and talent for chess. He starts off playing speed chess in Washington Square in New York City, and eventually is given professional instruction by a curious man with a slight accent named Bruce Pandolfini. The two characters exhibit a somewhat tensionful relationship, especially toward the middle of the film when Mr. Pandolfini attempts to cultivate a win-at-any-cost attitude in young Mr. Waitzkin, who throughout the film exhibits an innocent, kindly manner, even to those who would do anything to defeat him in the game. Throughout the film, young Mr. Waitzkin runs into this attitude not only among his opponents and teacher, but also among other adult role models, including his father.

The film becomes a dialogue on a number of emotional levels, showcasing the sometimes tortured course that the emotional intellect must navigate. Balancing the desire to win with the desire to live a normal life comes to the fore when young Mr. Waitzkin is moved to a private school where chess is taught, and when Mr. Pandolfini, his teacher, demands that he no longer play speed chess in the park, even though he very much enjoys it. Both changes appear to take a toll on Josh, and sets up a most unwholesome dilemma; live disingenuously and thereby maintain one's father's and teacher's love, or live one's values and thereby lose that love. All the while the fear exists for young Mr. Waitzkin that even if he does all that his father and teacher ask, he still might not prevail over the local rival being groomed to defeat him. Such is the case, both the father and the teacher see the danger of their ways by the end of the film, and defuse the terrible dilemma which their actions, no doubt unintentionally, fostered. Returning to speed chess, Young Mr. Waitzkin again comes to like playing, and embraces the creative play that originally made him a champion (a common theme throughout the film centers on the debate on whether to bring one's queen out early in the game or later, which I interpretted as an indirect way of discussing creative play vs. purely defensive play, such as you see in Futbol). In the film, the young Mr. Waitzkin prevails over his rival, who had embraced the win-at-any-cost attitude, and becomes a champion.

The story is a beautiful one, and the film has much else to lend itself to one's interest. Give it a look if you're interested :).

Looking for society's coaches

Lately the debate between nature and nurture in terms of particular skills has again come to fore, at least to my own mind. Discussion of Lance Armstrong's alleged use of steroids by former teamates has produced a flurry of print material on the subject. One such editorial appeared in the local paper today, stating essentially that elite athletes are freaks of nature, and no amount of steroid use could ever take an average person and make them an athletic elite.

My reading of Dr. Tim Noakes, the author discussed in yesterday's post, reinforces this interpretation by highlighting the role that genetic endowment plays in elite performance. It is a concept I have struggled against for several years, holding out that a top-level time for whatever level I was competing at (high school, college, etc.) was simply a matter of motivation. "Just train a lot" was the mantra for many years, during which I stopped swimming competitively, ran more than I had ever run in my life, and took to reading the major interpretations of distance training. The results were mixed, with some improved times, especially in the longer events (8km and 10km).

The genetic endownment side of things is countered, to my knowledge, by the environmental-factors school, which suggests that one's environment and habits constitute the most important element of elite performance. Sociologists appear to advocate this position more or less, and well as such popular authors as Malcolm Gladwell and Larry Gluck (authors of Outliers and The Talent Myth respectively). The thought in the latter two works is that so-called "smart" and "talented" people are overrated, and that practice and environmental factors are more useful in explaining the performace of the greats than their genetic endowment. In Gladwell's book Outliers, he points to specific opportunities and outside help that so-called "talented" individuals had on their way to success, and how that help allowed them to acquire the roughly 10,000 hours of practice necessary to acquire expertise with a cetain skill. In short, it was the environment that made the individual successful, and not a favorable biological endowment.

Little is clear to me on this at present, though I have embraced each school of thinking at the expense of other off and on for several years. The point is that both schools provide important insight into a fundamental interest for many people, which is maximizing one's potential in such activities and fields which that person enjoys. Indeed, it is in the collective interest of all of us that this goal be achieved, as it is not only the individual who benefits from a maximized potential, but all of society as well. The necessity of bearing genetic limitations in mind while developing a craft through rigorous practice would seem to require a special balance, the distribution of which depends on the peculiar personalities and environment of the individual.

The improvement of society by the maximization of individual potential require a specific group of people who can provide this service for people with a regularity that defies the highly individual nature of human beings. These "coaches," if we may use the word, can be found through all facets of society, though their quality is not always good. Perhaps we should look for these "coaches" if we wish to study the process of talent cultivation in society.

Bill Bowerman and the Central Governor Theory

Today was the Champions' League Final between Barcelona and Manchester United. For those who don't know, the Champions' League is a competition among elite European Football (or soccer) clubs, which compete in a tournament style until the final game, which was today. It was the first Champions' League final I'd ever seen, as this was the first year I had become more fully aware of the wider world of soccer, both in the United States and abroad. At any rate, Barcelona won the game 3-1, and did so without resorting to diving and play-acting.

While watching the game, I remembered a line from Kenny Moore's biography on Bill Bowerman, in which Bowerman describes in a few words one of the goals of his training methods; in short, he meant to "callous" a runner so that he could race well. The line had been interesting when I read the book last year, but it proved especially interesting today, given the soccer match on television, as well as some reading I've been doing by a doctor named Tim Noakes. Dr. Noakes wrote a long book entitled "The Lore of Running," which is a fascinating and very erudite examination of much of the literature on all aspects of running from the last century. One of the unique things about Noakes' work, for me at least, is his rejection of the usual aerobic/anaerobic explanation of running performance.

The standard model upon which most every running program I've ever studied are based is that the single greatest inhibitor to endurance performace is the ability of the working muscles to take in sufficient oxygen to continue working. I am not a physiologist, nor do I have extensive instruction in the field, so please bear with my rather simplistic explanation, if you will.

The cells in a resting muscle produce energy aerobically, because the amount of oxygen reaching those muscles is sufficient for the cells' oxygen needs. When running easy, this continues to be the case, and it is consequently called "aerobic" running. As one runs faster, the oxygen demands of the muscle become greater, until a point is reached where the oxygen demands of the working muscle cells become too great for the body. It is at this point that running becomes "anaerobic," because the muscles begin producing energy without sufficient oxygen. In some types of cells, the consequence of anaerobic respiration is alcohol. Were human cells to function in this way, it may be that the person who runs too fast for his or her muscles to function aerobically could become progressively more and more drunk; no doubt such an adaption has long been purged from the human gene pool, if it was ever there, by the predators (can you imagine running away from a lion while rapidly becoming more and more drunk?). At any rate, human muscles have a limited capacity to produce energy anaerobically, which is very costly and not very efficient. The orthodox goal of a running program, so I have learned, was to improve both of these systems so that one could run faster over the desired race distance.

Then I read Arthur Lydiard, a famous New Zealand coach who is very important in discussions on distance running training. If you've never heard of him, you won't have trouble finding information (and misinformation) about him. At any rate, his big idea was essentially that of the two ways of producing energy in the human body, the aerobic was the true limiting factor to endurance performance, while the anaerobic was limited, relatively immutable, and only important during the peak races of the year. His training philosophy sought to build up the aerobic capacity as high as possible, then maximize the limited anaerobic capacity just before the big race. The direction of training through most of the year, therefore, became the development of the aerobic capacity to exercise. 

Lydiard's system is very logical, though some of his explanations and training schedules can be confusing. He repeatedly writes that he does not like writing training schedules, since everyone is different and should figure out their own, but the schedules he does write are are sub-divided into a number of phases that can be hard to follow sometimes. At any rate, this particular paradigm serves a lot of people today, and has been tremendously influential in the running community and beyond.

Yet Dr. Noakes seems to have a slightly different idea in mind. I'm afraid my lack of physiology will do me even worse in describing it, but I will do my best. Essentially, Dr. Noakes believes that the aerobic/anaerobic model does not adequately explain how the body actually appears to respond to intense exercise. According to the evidence Dr. Noakes examines, it is not the amount of oxygen in the working muscles that determines performance, but rather the amount of oxygen in the heart (and picked up on by the brain), that determines performace. This idea forms one aspect of a complex theory called the Central Governor model, which holds that performance is determined by the brain desire to maintain a sufficiently safe homeostasis for the preserveration of life. In short, the sub-conscious brain governs how hard one is able to push the body in training and competition.

It's an interesting if complex theory, and it brings me back to the point made earlier about Bowerman's training philosophy of "callousing." Dr. Noakes speculates at times that part of the purpose of intense training before competiton is to attempt to "reset" the Central Governor to tolerate greater pain and physiological distress before forcing the body to ease up. These speculations seem similar to Bowerman's thought that certain types of training and racing could help "callous" a person physically and mentally, making them tougher during races, and able to push themselves closer to their true potential ability. To what extent the two ideas are congruent is not entirely clear, but it does seem possible that Bowerman's intuition had picked up on this function of training in a way that the usual aerobic/anaerobic paradigm of his day does not seem to have accounted. It is something to consider.