I should probably elaborate things to mean the potential of neurogenesis to treat mental impairments, the ability to rework perception, and the practical application of these technologies.
There's a fascinating layman's book on neuroplasticity I recently read. "The Brain that Changes Itself" by Norman Doidge. Interesting stuff.
My perception is that its becoming steadily more recognized that the brain is fairly plastic, and our patterns of thought can have a physical effect (if they couldn't, behavioural therapy would not work as good as drugs). I wasn't aware of a new age stigma in this line of research...
- Tracy
You know, i believe that book is in my line up, has been on my amazon wishlist right now for the summer
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The stigma was awhile ago, it's gotten better. When neurofeedback first started out they had held a meeting, among the attendees were hippies (they were hippies, I don't mean it as a negative term) and scientists. The scientists were probably interested in the prospects of neurogenesis and the ability to in a sense reshape the brain's impairments, while the hippies were interested with the reports of alpha-training on the brain; they saw it as a tool towards spiritual enlightenment for its ability to provide help in meditation towards the same "brainwaves" as gurus and monks. These days neurofeedback is seperated into two different trainings from what i remember, one is the alpha training, the other SMR. As you can imagine the more conservative use SMR, while the more liberal use Alpha. Now to get to become a practitioner in biofeedback you really only need a bachelors from what i recall, and if you think about it this machine is a money maker. The therapy looks more high-tech and people love that. There are still reports of weird occurrences using alpha training, remote viewing for instance. Of course these are anecdotes rather than actual studies.
Anyways that's isolated to neurofeedback, the area is still rather flaky from what i heard but neurofeedback had been my introduction to neurogenesis and there's a lot of information being transmitted that people are overlooking this area of science as a medical possibility. Of course, i suppose you can say it's speculation. A good book to read is "Symphony in the Brain" by Jim Robbins. The book does have a high ratio of anecdotes to scientific studies, aside from a couple during the time of neurofeedback's early start and goes to state the lack of funding as a reason why this field never took off. They do however show how eplipetic seizures has had success using neurofeedback, while one of the methods of treating this is by removing the corpus callosum, any person who has any knowledge of neurology should see how stupid that is. They even demonstrated an A-B-A type experiment, treatment - bring back condition - treatment again; how the process took away, then returned, and then brought back the seizures (yes unethical and maybe grammatically sketchy lol).
Anyways, the way people have introduced neurogenesis it always reports how little people believed in this phenomenon until recently, especially when you read the studies done on Buddhists monks. I hope it has been getting better.
Edit: increased clarity
Edited by mysticpsi, 06 June 2008 - 02:27 AM.
