Brain HQ<\/a> the brain training application helping people enhance their brain function and
\nhis most recent book is called Soft Wired \u2013 How the science of brain plasticity can change your life.<\/p>\nIn the interview, I will ask Dr. Merzenich about how Neuroplasticity can be used to support people that are recovering from brain injury and specifically after stroke.<\/p>\n
We also discuss the matter of how General Anaesthetic can create premature aging of the brain, particularly for people that have not had a brain injury as well as people with a compromised blood-brain barrier.<\/p>\n
Transcript:<\/p>\n
Bill: <\/b>[00:01:30] <\/span>I actually didn’t realize that you were Lebanese. <\/span><\/p>\nDR Merzenich: <\/b>[00:01:33] <\/span>Well I’m not Lebanese. I don’t know where I’m from Lebanon Oregon. And that’s a strange way of being Lebanese. Was named Lebanon because there were cedar grove trees down by the river which of course Lebanon is famous for. <\/span><\/p>\nDR Merzenich: <\/b>[00:01:49] <\/span>But my wife did spend two years at the University at American University in Beirut so I’m sort of Lebanese by adoption. <\/span><\/p>\nBill: <\/b>[00:01:58] <\/span>I found it very interesting when I was reading your bio. I thought it was a really funny thing to start the interview with a pinhole people call that thing. Okay so your early research apprenticeship was at the time with one of the world’s strongest auditory groups at the University of Wisconsin Madison. The at hand was to define the fundamental nature of functional organization of the central auditory and since somatto sensory nervous system. Back then what. Why do you feel that this was an important definition to achieve. What were the lead researchers thinking. <\/span><\/p>\nDR Merzenich: <\/b>[00:02:37] <\/span>Well I was interested in the agents of the higher functions of the brain and at that point the understanding of the basic way that brain systems were organized was so primitive that it was very difficult to understand how to get to the real questions which are the basis of perception the basis of sensation based cognition and so just to understand how the machine was working how the machine how the brain was operating encoding information and translating information into action was was so poorly understood that we knew we needed to have a better grounding and so these studies did lead to a better understanding of how the brain was actually taking in information from the ear from hearing or from the skin from Madison sation and translating it level by level and interpreting it and then basically using it to control its action the production of speech of the production of vocalizations and animals for the control of actions fed back from information from the body. In the case of semantic sensations so we did contribute to making that first level developing first level understanding of how the brain is actually organized to do what it does or very important and you know you can say some of the implications as a result of that work. <\/span><\/p>\nBill: <\/b>[00:04:02] <\/span>You know what that led to it is just amazing. It’s really fascinating to me that somebody was thinking about those things and trying to come up with solutions. It seems so obvious there but at the time it would have been groundbreaking right. <\/span><\/p>\nDR Merzenich: <\/b>[00:04:18] <\/span>It was wide open in the sense that science was very primitively developed. We really had to know how the brain was organized. For example, there was a fundamental misunderstanding about the plasticity of the brain. Historically it was imagined that the brain could change when you were a baby and it grew up and matured reached a mature state when you were maybe a year or two or three years of age and from that point forward it is like a computer on your desk it was hardwired every element was fixed in its function and the really only way it had changed from that point forward was to go downhill because it had grown to a mature state and it turns out that that that was an incredible error. So we now know that the brain and we see one thing that we contributed to the appreciation of the discovery of the brain is in fact continuously changing itself. In fact, it’s big it is continually remodeling itself as a function of how you live your life you engage it. But at that point, our understanding of it was so limited so primitive that we did not understand that. <\/span><\/p>\nBill: <\/b>[00:05:28] <\/span>Yeah. <\/span><\/p>\nBill: <\/b>[00:05:28] <\/span>Fair enough it’s such a great thing that the brain changes itself and we’ll get to that in a while. It’s just that it’s my big thing but I’m enjoying knowing about my brain. In the 70s and 80s, you led the research team that developed the early practical prosthetic device models that later evolved into a commercial multiple-channel cochlear implant. <\/span><\/p>\nDR Merzenich: <\/b>[00:05:53] <\/span>Right <\/span><\/p>\nBill: <\/b>[00:05:53] <\/span>When you helped to feel some knowledge gaps for the surgeon. Robin Mikkelson in his understanding of the coding of sound and speech in the inner ear or auditory brain and as a result hearing was recovered for deaf people. Were you aware that these achievements at the time were challenging the broadly held conclusion that the brain was hard wired or did that come later. <\/span><\/p>\nDR Merzenich: <\/b>[00:06:21] <\/span>Well we really did think of it in those terms what we were trying to do and I must say there were two other efforts in parallel. One was in Australia by scientist associated at the University of Melbourne and one was in Austria and in parallel we each develop different strategies to encode speech and our notion was that we could represent speech well enough so that we could have a primitive level of understanding. Mike might expect that if everything worked well but we were really trying to just deliver information into the brain the way the normal ear dead in an accurate enough way so that the individual would understand that information even though we knew that our ability to duplicate what normal intact ear delivers to the brain would was very crude. I liken it to playing Chopan with your fist. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:07:19] <\/span>And in fact people didn’t understand it initially and it took plasticity and the brain basically to make the devices work. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:07:27] <\/span>So they are often thought of as a sort of miracle of engineering but actually they’re a miracle of engineering in the plastic braid and the plasticity and right is absolute critical contributor to the successful application of cochlear implants because they don’t understand usually what that information is at all initially. And the brain changes in a way that confers understanding and so we began to appreciate as we are doing is these experiments the only way we can really account for what was happening in these individuals was if their brain was plastic throughout life on a large scale. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:08:08] <\/span>And we began doing experiments that demonstrated that other than other venues <\/span><\/p>\nBill: <\/b>[00:08:14] <\/span>Yeah Fabulous or is it neuroplasticity or neuroplasticity. <\/span><\/p>\nDR Merzenich: <\/b>[00:08:18] <\/span>Well you can go either way and sometimes we call it plasticity neuroplasticity and well it’s irrelevant <\/span><\/p>\nThe godfather of neuroplasticity<\/h2>\n
Bill: <\/b>[00:08:26] <\/span>Awesome you’ve been called the father or the Godfather of neuro neuroplasticity for good reason. I wonder who were some of the scientists and researchers that you learned from and based your research on. <\/span><\/p>\nMichael Merzenich: <\/b>[00:08:42] <\/span>Well actually it’s a little unfair because around you know if we look to the early part of the 20th century it in fact even in the late 19th century the predominant belief was that the brain was in fact changing itself as you acquired ability as you learned. And then we sort of lost sight of it in the mainstream of science. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:09:02] <\/span>But there was always scientist from physiological psychology from the psychology side of science that believe that the brain was plastic it’s just that in the medical mainstream that notion was abandoned because you know you can say when people are doing the most careful experiments they develop this religious idea that the brain was in fact hardwired. And so certainly we helped. You could say make this correction we did a very specific simple experiment that demonstrated the brain was changing itself if you manipulate its inputs in inputs from the scanner impulse from the ear that when you train an animal in any skill and it improves that ability that you account for this improvement by changes in its brain. So you know that led to the understanding that the brain was continuously plastic and we very early did experiments Bill in which we looked at animals near the end of life. Ok this this animal is expected to pass from this mortal coil within a few months or a year. It just as changeable or is it. And we found to our. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:10:16] <\/span>Delightful surprise that it was just as easy to modify its brain almost as easy as in an animal in the prime of life or an early and you just had to make the conditions appropriate for the brain the machinery of the brain because what happens when the brain grows up in early childhood is it matures in its ability to control that change and what it’s doing is it initially it doesn’t have that much control because it still primitive and once it has control you could say it can limit change to the conditions in which the change is going to be good for it but it’s still powerfully plastic throughout life. <\/span><\/p>\nBill: <\/b>[00:10:57] <\/span>I love what you said there is you’ve got to make the right conditions to allow for the right type of change to occur. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:11:03] <\/span>Right now no the brain only changes when it matters to it is a simple way to think about it and it changes it very much as a function of how you’re evaluating it and how engaged you are and how intent you are how how how important it is to you because that’s actually controlling the machinery of the brain which is controlling the rate of change and the extent of change. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:11:29] <\/span>So in the case of somebody recovering from deficits after a stroke if it’s not important to them to recover it’s likely that they’re going to have a longer more withdrawn drawn-out rate of recovery. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:11:42] <\/span>And it is one of the biggest problems they have because the brain is damaged and it weakens the information that is fed to areas that are controlling your motivation. So you could say you are commonly demotivated as a function of the injury. And so it’s a special struggle for such an individual they have to make a very special effort and you know we have strategies in which we’re trying to help them increase their motivation. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:12:15] <\/span>But it’s a struggle for them often to just get up for doing what they need to do to get better. <\/span><\/p>\nBill: <\/b>[00:12:21] <\/span>So I wonder if somebody had was able to be encouraged via things that they enjoyed doing so something that their heart was in so to speak right their heart being in a process of recovery or a version of their recovery if it was something that their heart was in <\/span><\/p>\nMichael Merzenich: <\/b>[00:12:39] <\/span>Right <\/span><\/p>\nBill: <\/b>[00:12:40] <\/span>That would sort of could that possibly overcome those areas or support those areas of the brain that were damaged on the motivational side. <\/span><\/p>\nDR Merzenich: <\/b>[00:12:49] <\/span>That’s a really important question. Well, people have discovered in rehabilitation in fact that if you go to things that are important to you maybe things that relate to your former life’s work may be things that relate to your the things in your family or in your extended relationship or friends that are the most important to you or you go to the hobbies that are the most important you most developed that this is a very favorable avenue for you to begin to restore your ability because and your reinforced by all of those other things that we’re contributing all of the richness of that historic experience and bringing power to bear you can say and trying to drive change positively. So yes that is a strategy that can be very helpful and can make a big difference and somebody trying to recover from brain injury. <\/span><\/p>\nBill: <\/b>[00:13:43] <\/span>Amazing. I wonder early on how was your research received by your peers early on in your career. <\/span><\/p>\nMichael Merzenich: <\/b>[00:13:50] <\/span>How was it? <\/span><\/p>\n[00:13:51] <\/span>I didn’t understand your question <\/span><\/p>\nBill: <\/b>[00:13:53] <\/span>So the research findings that you were publishing how around neuroplasticity how was that received by your peers? Was it a difficult area to gain recognition in? <\/span><\/p>\nMichael Merzenich: <\/b>[00:14:06] <\/span>Well initially there was skepticism because the overwhelming belief in neuroscience was that the brain was just not plastic and as it grew up and it was so deeply embedded in fact a Nobel prize had been awarded in the 1970s around this issue that it was regarded as one of the settled issues in science and it was broadly adopted in medicine. So in fact many neurologists today will tell you that plasticity is powerful in a baby and not powerful in an adult and they still misunderstand its powers. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:14:45] <\/span>I might say in their lack of understanding it in fact is harmful. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:14:55] <\/span>Many people could benefit from it but initially, there was dismay I mean you were a challenge at scientific meetings. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:15:02] <\/span>People are very skeptical that quite quickly the evidence came to be overwhelming and in fact, one of the easy experiments that do Bill in the universe of science is to engage a human or an animal in a learning progression in which they acquire a new ability or they improve that ability. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:15:24] <\/span>And if you do that all the appropriate expression of the brain has to change and it is if you do the exam in an appropriate way you will witness that change and the change will account for or relate clearly relate to the improvement of the ability. So it turned out that over a period of five-six seven years, the evidence became overwhelming and now it is pretty universally agreed that the brain in fact is continually changing itself and we understand the processes by which it changes itself in great detail. <\/span><\/p>\nBill: <\/b>[00:15:57] <\/span>Yeah, what’s really amazing is that I’ll talk about my experience with a brain hemorrhage as we continue as well was that when I went to rehab the nurses and the physios and all the people that were involved in my recovery. One of the first things they said to me was I, by the way, do you know about this thing called neuroplasticity. And if people didn’t which there were many that didn’t that was the first thing that they told you about <\/span><\/p>\nMichael Merzenich: <\/b>[00:16:26] <\/span>Yeah yeah,\u00a0<\/span>I found that a fascinating approach because it was four years between my first experience with a hemorrhage and surgery. So I had already read up on it and understood about it but I was really great to hear that that’s the approach they were taking when first coming across their new patient. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:16:46] <\/span>Right. No no that’s great. And that is, in general, there’s a general broad understanding that this is in play and this is a path to restoration and recovery now an increasingly intelligent understanding of how to drive change. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:17:02] <\/span>You could say to the benefit of a patient that an individual needs an individual struggling and that’s revolutionizing how we think about rehabilitated medicine. <\/span><\/p>\nBill: <\/b>[00:17:13] <\/span>In the early 1990s your research findings began to be applied to help neurologically struggling children and adults. What kind of challenges did you seek to apply neuroplasticity to in the early days? <\/span><\/p>\nMichael Merzenich: <\/b>[00:17:28] <\/span>Well we looked for a model we know first love we knew that this had broad practical implications for it that they were you know millions of hundreds of millions of people could benefit by the application of science. So we looked for a target. I met a wonderful psychologist who studied the deficits that children have when they struggle at school and she focused on deafness Paula Talau was her name and she’d focused on deficits and language and reading skills and she saw that most children that had that struggle to learn to read had deficits in language and that reading because reading is a translation of listening to the sound part of words that are meaning and works to their representation by letter. She appreciated that the majority of the children that struggled in school had inadequate representation in the listening domain and that needed to be clarified for further translation by letter and reading to make sense. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:18:30] <\/span>So being aware of her work there knowing that the kinds of deficits that she described as applied to these children could certainly be impacted by training. We develop the model training program that took a series of these children’s laboratories that were in New Jersey and trained them and these children are all you know not reading if they were reading it was way below grade level. They all had language impairments we trained them and after training all of them were normal or above normal. And we realized that this would have a very wide practical application of course. So I went to my university I said look we have something that can potentially up many millions hundreds of millions of children in the world. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:19:21] <\/span>So how do we get it to them in the world? <\/span><\/p>\n[00:19:24] <\/span>And they help me contribute to the foundation of the business and that business which is called scientific learning Corporation has now trained quite a few million children in the world who wouldn’t be effective readers in a way that an assured that they were effective readers and basically trained them as listeners and they’re listening accuracy. That was the beginning. So it was always imagined by us to be the beginning because we realized that there were many other applications of the science and that there were many people that struggled for all kinds of reasons with psychiatric illness. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:20:02] <\/span>People that had brain wounded, people were losing it as they got older for all kinds of reasons. By engaging your brain to drive changes in your brain to its benefit, how managing your brain health was possible by using these strategies and so that’s what I’ve been up to ever since I’ve been trying to understand how to translate the science to the benefit of people that struggle and God knows Bill there’s plenty of those, that’s about half the human race. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:20:39] <\/span>Yeah. <\/span><\/p>\nBill: <\/b>[00:20:40] <\/span>Look I think it’s amazing that specifically, the approach that you took was where you came from understanding that the brain is physically changing, and as a result of that it will adapt and allow for these new structures to occur and therefore anything that we need to enhance or. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:21:00] <\/span>or create for somebody or help somebody create in their own brain is possible. <\/span><\/p>\nBill: <\/b>[00:21:05] <\/span>So I think that was like a novel way to approach a problem like somebody can’t read in the past people like that were just given the pop them on the shelf kind of treatment. They’re never going to learn they’re always going to be that way. So it’s amazing that this approach of neuroplasticity got to that result. How did you track the progress? Obviously they went from not being able to read to being able to read etc. and communicate properly, but in the brain did you guys have access to FMRI at that time in the early 90s that could show the changes. <\/span><\/p>\nRecording the brain and how it operates – Michael Merzenich<\/h2>\n
Michael Merzenich: <\/b>[00:21:45] <\/span>Yes did Bill. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:21:47] <\/span>We recorded from brains in a number of ways and FMRI and using evoked response strategies and using positron emission tomography where you’re looking with radioactive tracers of activity and we could see the brain physically and functionally changing as we train it. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:22:05] <\/span>So this is, you know, we now know in a rich scientific basis that when you engage a brain and train it first of all you can define a assigned brain of someone struggling for whatever reason you can record their weaknesses their limitations in both behavioral terms and in terms of the physical and functional brain. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:22:27] <\/span>They can document the specific bases of their problems and then that defines a plan of attack for helping them for guiding them to be better and stronger again to move in a normal direction. And unlike medicine that’s dependent upon gross for example chemical manipulation or shocking the brain in some way which is a sort of high standard of current neurological medicine we don’t have very crude strategies they’re based upon the principle that you’re going to do something that distorts the brain in some way that will help you on the path to recovery and that’s crude in relation to identifying the faults and using this great natural asset the plasticity of the brain to drive the brain back in a normal direction. You can see if there’s ever a true cure for any logic or psychiatric condition. That will come from engaging your brain to naturally drive it in the correct direction. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:23:42] <\/span>So it’s not that this is easy to do. You might have to train a lot and maybe you can’t get the role to play in practical terms in every person. Certainly not when the brain is damaged but you can make large-scale differences in the corrective direction and almost every individual that’s struggling and this is what we’re trying to do inpatient cohort after patient cohort <\/span><\/p>\nBill: <\/b>[00:24:09] <\/span>It’s really amazing stuff I was in the hospital recovering from my brain surgery as a result of it when I woke. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:24:20] <\/span>My left side was numb. I had motor neurons on sincere and urine challenges. I had to learn to walk again and reuse and learn how to use my left arm again and in the time that I was waiting for the different rehab exercises to occur and to be called down to rehab I was watching videos of you delivering your speeches and I was watching Paul Bach-y-Rita and I was watching a whole bunch of other people. And it occurred to me that if I meditate and imagine myself <\/span><\/p>\n[00:24:58] <\/span>Walking and using my arm again will begin the process and it will be then not unfamiliar. When I get down to the floor and the walking <\/span><\/p>\nMichael Merzenich: <\/b>[00:25:08] <\/span>Right right. <\/span><\/p>\nBill: <\/b>[00:25:09] <\/span>How does meditation and imagining oneself walking actually change the brain? Does it actually change the brain? <\/span><\/p>\nMichael Merzenich: <\/b>[00:25:16] <\/span>Well it was a wonderful insight that you had Bill because actually the machinery involved is engaged by mental practice is no different from the machinery that she is involved in physical practice. It’s exactly the same machinery. I mean it just doesn’t lead in the end stage. In other words, if I practice I’m actually driving changes in my brain just as I practice them and when I’m in action people can imagine playing the piano and imagine playing a piano piece without ever moving their fingers. And then when they get down and put their hands on the piano keys they’re advanced because they have all of the benefits of that mental practice, people can watch somebody juggling balls in front of them and watching them juggling balls in front of them, of course, advances them substantially and actually picking up the balls and juggling. In fact, you get at least as much advantage in managing it as you do and actually playing, actually juggling. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:26:26] <\/span>So so people think that mental practice has the power of physical practice but it does of course I mean you’re sitting there you’re working on the solution of a problem you’re exercising your brain in a very systematic and simple way, of course, your driving changes in the brain and just in the same way you’re advancing it as if you’re engaged in any physical activity. <\/span><\/p>\nBill: <\/b>[00:26:54] <\/span>Wow. So it’s a great tool because it means it doesn’t cost anything. It means you don’t have to go anywhere to do it <\/span><\/p>\nMichael Merzenich: <\/b>[00:27:01] <\/span>Exactly. <\/span><\/p>\nBill: <\/b>[00:27:01] <\/span>All you have to go into your own mind and if you have somebody facilitate that in a guided meditation for example it’s even easier you can get one of those off YouTube for free. <\/span><\/p>\nMichael Merzenich: <\/b>[00:27:11] <\/span>You know actually one of the sorts of shocking things about brain training in whatever form is that it’s almost free so it’s because it’s supported by technology and you can sit in front of a computer in front of an iPad or a phone and you can and you can exercise your brain and brain HQ which is one of the programs that we apply widely in clinical populations. It’s so inexpensive that people don’t take it seriously. They say well you know you’re telling me that I can have this intensive training that could fix this for 30 bucks. you know so come on! if we said well this is 5000 dollar treatment we’d probably convince them that it’s really worth their time. But the fact is that it cost almost nothing to deliver it and it’s inexpensive to make and cheap to deliver. <\/span><\/p>\n[00:28:04] <\/span>
![\"rewiring](\"https:\/\/recoveryafterstroke.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/rewiring-the-brain.jpg\")