Friday, July 12, 2013

Your thoughts leave traces...

"New research shows that spontaneous waves of neuronal activity in the brain bear the imprints of earlier events for at least 24 hours after the experience has taken place."

Prof. Rafi Malach

This is profound! The implications of this new research are quite life changing and life enhancing. Let me explain.

I just came across this amazing new research in an article in Science News entitled: 'Past Brain Activation Revealed in Scans: Brain Activity Patterns Preserve Traces of Previous Cognitive Activity' and knew I had to read about it and share it. In the experiment, Prof. Rafi Malach and colleagues at the Weizmann Institute Neurobiology Department had volunteers undertake a training exercise that would strongly activate a well-defined network of nerve cells in the frontal lobes. To test whether the connections created in the brain during this exercise would leave their traces in the patterns formed by the resting brain waves, the researchers performed fMRI scans on the subjects before the exercise, immediately afterward, and 24 hours later.


Their findings, which appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience, showed that the activation of the specific areas in the cortex did indeed remodel the resting brain wave patterns. Surprisingly, the new patterns not only remained the next day, they were significantly strengthened. These observations fit in with the classic learning principles proposed by Donald Hebb in the mid-20th century, in which the co-activation of two linked nerve cells leads to long term strengthening of their link, while activity that is not coordinated weakens this link. The fMRI images of the resting brain waves showed that brain areas that were activated together during the training sessions exhibited an increase in their functional link a day after the training, while those areas that were deactivated by the training showed a weakened functional connectivity.

Think about this, we know that the brain exhibits neural-plasticity, the ability to grow new connections, new neurons, new dendrites, new synapses, and to strengthen the functional plasticity of existing connections. We know that the process of thinking changes the structure of the brain. And now this new research shows in part how this is occurring. When you think thoughts, when  you activate neural circuits, the activation and the pattern of activation continues to fire and run even 24 hours after the initial activation. Your thoughts echo and linger in the physical structures and circuits of your brain long after you've stopped consciously attending to them. And these thoughts and thinking patterns change the structure of your brain.

The implications of this, are as I said above, profound. This means that thoughts aren't mere thoughts, not fleeting ideas or notions that once come and gone are actually gone. Thoughts leave traces that can be viewed with an fMRI up to 24 hours later. Thoughts are like stones that leave ripples on the pond of your mind. They create ongoing propensities and priming of the neural circuits. So you need to be the guardian of the thoughts and neural activation occurring in your brain. Make sure you think thoughts and hold ideas that serve you. Make sure you are throwing into your pond, the sorts of stones that will create ripples that add value to your life. The ripples eventually become new brain structures. And this causes your brain to evolve new structures and patterns that lead to propensities for thinking and feeling in certain ways.

You become what you focus on. Your thoughts and feelings leave traces. You are either enhancing your life with your thoughts or doing the opposite. So make certain to focus on positivity, on love, on the Highest Expressions of Compassion, Creativity and Courage. And you can be certain that this propensity of neural networks to continue to activate neural circuit patterns is NOT just happening in the head brain. It will also be happening in the heart and gut brains too! You are the gardener of your multiple brains, you are the one who plants the seeds of thinking, feeling and activation in your head, heart and gut brains. You can choose to focus on those ways of mBraining (of using your multiple brains to do cool stuff) that bring your human spirit alive, and as you do now, you'll have been finding that this way of being and doing continues to leave traces and echoes for way longer than just 24 hours.

You can evolve your brains and your world! And that is truly truly life enhancing.


with positive joy and smiles
Grant

8 comments:

  1. I've always believed this, Grant. And I like picturing myself throwing into the pond the sort of stones that will create the right kind of ripples. It's good to see the science behind the things we know.

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    1. Hey Jean, it's a great image isn't it, it works for me and helps me organise my ongoing life decisions. What I like about the science and research is that it both validates what we intuitively know and it is a strong focuser and convincer for us to ensure we follow through on what we know, but not everyone does.

      Thanks again for taking the time, energy and connection to share your comments and thoughts. I truly appreciate every comment.

      smiles, Grant

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  2. Grant - this is an excellent piece of research and blog. I know for myself I feel the digestion process of new material and old material!! I thank you for blogging about this research.

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    1. Heya Karyn, thanks for the thanks, and for the insightful comment. You're right, if you attend carefully you can feel the patterns of processing new learnings at a 'gut level' as we digest new learnings. So these processes of integration and reverberation definitely are happening across the multiple brains.

      smiles, Grant

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  3. Thank you, Grant, for sharing this article. My thoughts have been my saviour whenever i am distressed, just snapping out of that state of mind and concentrating on the positive things really brings about palpable change. Thank you again, for the scientific proof, now it'll get embedded even deeper..

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    1. Hi Manan, thank you for your great comment, you've said it well, the scientific proof gives us all the extra conviction and impetus to embed the importance of this even deeper.

      smiles, Grant

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  4. Very interesting. I'm wondering what the scans would look like 48 hrs later. I'm just beginning a brain stimulation program for my developmentally delayed son guided by The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential. They stress a smaller daily program is better than irregular grand gestures. I suppose this is why, that learning on top of learning makes the most waves in the pond so to speak.
    And thanks for sharing. All your posts are helping me add more teeth to working with my son.

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    1. Heya Paulina, I agree, smaller daily programs and actions are going to build the neural circuits much better than occassional grand gestures. Indeed, I've seen a video on one of the courses I attended this year, on the latest reseach on 'neurons, synapses and brains' and it showed, using 2-photon microscopy in a live brain, the dendrites growing over a period on one day and then going away again a day later if they didn't make a connection with another neuron. So daily practice, will fertilize in a sense the growing garden of the brains. I wish you wondrously well with working with your son and know it is going to make a truly generative difference with him.

      hugs, Grant

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