>

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Mapping brain activities - cause or effect?

Brain Map

Click on an area of the brain to learn more about its functions


Cerebellum Temporal Lobes occiptal lobes Parietal Lobes Frontal Lobes Brain Stem Brain Stem Temporal Lobes Cerebellum Frontal Lobes Parietal Lobes occiptal lobes

This is from part of this site that approaches traumatic brain injury. You can click on each part of the brain to understand it's function.
Many studies and ways of searching the brain are being developed and it gives the idea that this knowledge is the answer for the causes of many diseases. I'm still concerned with effects.
When the amygdala is activated during one of this tests what does it really says? Is it cause or effect? What does such findings: "subjects with Borderline personality disorder showed significantly greater left amygdala activity than normal control subjects" really means?
I dunno. But it seems researches understand it all.
Still from the site of the picture:
"Obtaining a general understanding of the brain and its functions is important to understanding the rehabilitation process. It is very important, however, to understand that the rehabilitation professional is concerned with the whole person. The identification of individual problems gives the rehabilitation team areas in which to focus treatment plans. All of these plans are designed to work toward the rehabilitation of the whole person. Each problem area affects other areas and many times resolving one problem has a major impact on other problems. For example, reestablishing postural balance and eliminating dizziness greatly enhances concentration and attention which allows for improved cognition and problem solving."
I guess it makes a lot of sense.

6 comments:

Mark Krusen said...

Hello Ana.

Ana said...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Thank you Mark!
This is very important too me.
Hello Mark!
Ana

skywind said...

Human brain is very mysterious. On the possession of the soul of humanity in the brain. :)
What is Really Healthy-Health Blog
Humor & Fun World-Funny Blog

Ana said...

I'm still not sure if the mind is created by the brain.
:)
Ana

Anonymous said...

I have never been a big fan of these tantalyzing brain scans of people with mental illness, regardless of whether it is clinical depression, BPD,SZ, whatever.

There is a meditation teaching the tells us, 'what we do the most of, we become'.

We know when a person has a particular passion for and some natural skill with something like a sport or an art form or even computer programming that become one with what they do. It becomes an extension of them and it is them because it is what they do.

With human brains and thought processes, almost everyone has at some point in their life one symptom or another that resembles a symptom of a DSM disorder.

The symptom, if not destabilizing or extremely deviated or disabling is not really clinical, in the clinical sense of a symptom.

Some folks perpetually think thoughts that are deviated enough to seem clinical or disabling.

What you think about the most, wires your brain a certain way.

If you spent long periods of time with some kind of thought process going on and you stay that way and you fall into an imaging device which photographs your brain firing off while you are troubled all the scan shows is the activity of your mental wiring and does not in any way actually inform anyone as to how it got that way in the first place.

The only way for those scans to be really effective is to use them on someone who is 'normal' for life.

Scan lots of people like that all the time. Then when some come down with Bipolar, SZ, BPD symptoms you can see the changes in the brain as it happened.

Then you can ask the person what they were doing, feeling, experiencing and thinking about as they were becoming symptomatic and that is when the real proof that, what you think about, you become, will be realized.

That becoming can for all intents and purposes only be ascertained if we know what a solid baseline and we can monitor the changes as it happens.

Science will eventually prove what the sages have known all along. You cause your own 'chemical imbalance' and brain changes by the things you think and feel if you think and feel them long enough.

Correlation is not causality.

I'll share a Zen koan on the nature of causality that you might enjoy.

"A wise man sought to find the true nature of reality. He meditated daily in front of the fence surrounding his humble dwelling. He would look out at the world through a missing slat in the fence. Beyond his yard was a green pasture with a small herd of cattle. Every morning the cows would walk past the fence in single file on their way to graze. Every evening they would return, again in single file. As each beast passed by the wise man, he would first glimpse the snout through the missing slat, followed by the head, body and finally the tail.

One morning after the herd had passed him, the wise man sat in deep contemplation. Suddenly, as he was struck by total infinite understanding - he arose and proclaimed, "The nose causes the tail!"

Ana said...

Jane!
I'm missed you. Saw you from time to time at Furious Seasons.
I loved the Zen koan.
:)