Working in Movement

I've often referred to brain plasticity in my posts here. Simply put, plasticity is the lifelong ability of the brain to reorganize neural pathways based on new experience. Movement education disciplines like the Feldenkrais Method look toward encouraging changes primarily in the sensory-motor systems, though it is thought that other areas are affected. Changes in sensory-motor functioning can happen pretty quickly. But, like most learning-based disciplines, it usually takes a fair amount of time for lasting changes to "stick," to become more than fleeting phenomena.

The desire to "reorganize neural pathways" isn't restricted to movement education, of course. All sorts of problems and approaches come to mind here; memory disorders and diseases, mental illnesses, that sort of thing. And not all approaches to reorganization are learning based. The various flavors of science, most notably neuroscience, are discovering knowledge and methods for applying it at an accelerated rate. Two of the most notable of these methods are drugs and neuroimaging technologies. Can there be a pill that erases memory deficits before they get serious? Could imaging technology be adapted to treating mental illness? Maybe. But what about people without such complaints; can these technologies reorganize their neural pathways to make them smarter and more capable?

Where is all this stuff going? Do we really want to go there? Probably no one really knows for sure. A blue ribbon panel of experts tackled some of these issues last June. The National Science Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences sponsored the panel. Brain Boosting on the ABC News site had a good article, although you have to wade through a lot of advertising to read it. A more scholarly summary is available on Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

What I've taken from these articles is that no one really knows where these technologies will ultimately lead.

"Neurocognitive enhancement involves intervening in a far more complex system, and we are therefore at great risk of unanticipated problems," the panel warns. No one knows at this point if taking Ritalin during finals will result in a more rapid mental decline in old age. [Brain Boosting]

This is an interesting and somewhat disturbing topic. But it's at least little comforting that concerned folks are talking about it seriously.