I had the fortune of studying and teaching under the direction of David Bresler Ph.D and Marty Rossman M.D. Both are pioneers in the field of MindBody Medicine. They founded The Academy for Guided Imagery, a teaching academy for health care professionals to provide treatment using individualized one-on-one imagery for health and wellness.
By now you already know that Peggy and I rant and rave about the power of our minds – not to dwell on the negative, not to focus on what we can’t do but on what we are capable of. When I came across this article by Dr Rossman I wanted to share.
Shifting Your Attention Can Change Your Brain
from The Worry Solution
by Martin Rossman, M.D.
“Repetitively shifting your attention to positive outcomes may actually result in growth in areas of your brain that start to do this automatically. My colleague, neuroscientist Dr. David Bresler, always says that “what you pay attention to grows” and research proves him correct.
“Neuroscience journalist Sharon Begley wrote in a 2007 Wall Street Journal article, “Attention, … seems like one of those ephemeral things that comes and goes in the mind but has no real physical presence. Yet attention can alter the layout of the brain as powerfully as a sculptor’s knife can alter a slab of stone.”
“She describes an experiment at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in which scientists “rigged up a device that tapped monkeys’ fingers 100 minutes a day every day. As this bizarre dance was playing on their fingers, the monkeys heard sounds through headphones. Some of the monkeys were taught: Ignore the sounds and pay attention to what you feel on your fingers…Other monkeys were taught: Pay attention to the sound.”
“After six weeks, the scientists compared the monkeys’ brains and found that monkeys paying attention to the taps had expanded the somatosensory parts of their brains (where they would feel touch) but the monkeys paying attention to the sounds grew new connections in the parts of the brain that process sound instead.”
“UCSF researcher Michael Merzenich and a colleague wrote that through choosing where we place our attention, “‘We choose and sculpt how our ever-changing minds will work, we choose who we will be the next moment in a very real sense, and these choices are left embossed in physical form on our material selves.’”
I won’t say, “We told you so.”
(jw)
Originally posted on Curious to the Max on
Thank you for this post. It is fascinating and I am reading what I get hold of on the subject of neuroscience. Keep teaching us some we can do for ourselves.🦋😊
Miriam
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Miriam,
So happy you have gotten interested in neuroscience!! Judy and I have been fascinated with it for years.We love to share ways to do things for oneself!
Peggy
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Hmmmm, as of today I’ve managed to lose 2 pounds toward my 2018 15 pound weight loss goal, so if I just pay attention to skinny things, blades of grass, 1960’s photos of Twiggy (e.g. not food except perhaps for string beans)…
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Duffy’s Dad,
YES! (except for Twiggy cuz you are a manly man)
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This is fascinating information. I didn’t know I had so much control over how I can develop my own brain.
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