Feldenkrais Method

Somatic practitioners routinely witness the "plasticity" of the human brain. That is, we and our clients can change the movement patterns and how those movements are  experienced, sometimes fairly dramatically. We routinely facilitate the transformation from parts that don't work together well into well-integrated organisms that can live unavowed dreams. But what about when the parts don't belong to the organism, aren't permanently attached? Does the plasticity extend to these relationships?

Andy Clark thinks so and writes eloquently about it in Natural-Born Cyborgs. Clark is the Director of the Cognitive Science Program and Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University, where Esther Thelen also does her work. In his book, Clark talks about "cognitive prostheses and how plastic brains can learn to treat well-designed new tools as if they were parts of the person."

Clark cites how the dexterity of typing with the thumbs develops with text messaging on those tiny cell phone keypads. Perhaps more relevantly, he talks about a performance artist name Stelarc. In an interview you can listen to on Australian Radio, Clark says, "Stelarc ...has sometimes performed with a third hand attached, the third arm attached to his biological arm and in order to move that what he has to do is to give commands to his abdominal muscles because you know theyíre the muscles that are then wired up to control the electronic arm. But he says that now it doesn't feel like giving a command to his abdominal muscles. It just feels like telling the electronic hand to move. Other interesting quotes:

There are some things that are distinctive of the human race here. We've got a lot of cortical plasticity, a lot more than any other animal on the planet, we have a long childhood, longer than any other animal on the planet and in addition to that we've got language. And somehow I think the combination of those three things has set us on a track that no other animal has been able to go down.

Haptic touch is a kind of sense whereby you can take a tool, and you can very quickly come to treat it as if it was part of your body. For example, you can take a rake and during the raking motion, if they record from cells in the monkeyís brain the cells that would normally represent the fingers of the hand can very quickly come to map the area of the tines of the rake. So in a way, immediately on the spot the body mage of the monkey has been adapted to encompass the tool.

- Posted by Tom Landini - 10:59:27 AM -