The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 432 pages
• Published by: Harper Perennial October 14, 2003
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0060988479
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0060988470
• Book Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 1.2 inches
• Weighs: 12 ounces

From Publishers Weekly
Schwartz (A Return to Innocence), a UCLA psychiatrist and expert on treating patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), teams up with Begley, a Wall Street Journal science columnist, to explore the mind/brain dichotomy and to discuss the science behind new treatments being developed for a host of brain dysfunctions. Building on the work presented in Schwartz's first book, Brain Lock, the authors begin by demonstrating that OCD patients are capable of rechanneling compulsive urges into more socially acceptable activities and that, by doing so, they actually alter their brains' neuronal circuitry. By presenting a wide array of animal and human experiments, Schwartz and Begley show that similar neuroplasticity is possible in stroke victims, often leading to a return of function previously thought impossible. The medical results and treatments they summarize are exciting and deserve widespread attention. In a chapter entitled "Free Will and Free Won't," the authors turn to the philosophical, looking at the implications neuroplasticity might have on the differences between mind and brain; they also discourse on the existence of free will. Unfortunately, their integration of quantum mechanics and Buddhism into a search for a mechanism to explain the patterns scientists have been discovering is too superficial to fully engage readers. Nonetheless, a great deal in this book is sure to motivate discussion and more research.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
Schwartz's undergraduate major was philosophy, and that interest as well as Buddhism has broadened his outlook and makes this book potentially attractive to more readers than those habitually interested in "brain science." Psychiatrist Schwartz pioneered the use of positron-emission tomography in studying obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The behaviorists' therapeutic use of the often-harsh exposure and prevention method with OCD struck Schwartz as brutal and unproductive. Searching for a new approach, he gradually developed the four-step method that he and science writer Begley thoroughly describe here. Employing the Buddhist idea of willful mindfulness, Schwartz and his colleagues enjoyed considerable research and clinical success. A long, informal collaboration with physicist Henry Stapp enabled Schwartz to overcome the problem of free will and moral action, and one of his major achievements was proving the neuroplasticity of the adult brain, thanks to which the formation of new transmission routes coincides with that of new neurons. Schwartz and Begley bring to life the thinking and work of many original investigators in a book that thoughtful readers will enjoy. William Beatty
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force (Hardcover) Obsessive-Compulsive disorder and other mental problems, the history of philosophy as it touches upon the will and consciousness, dualism and materialism, Buddhist mindfulness, animal experiments, neurology, psychology, quantum physics, mysticism--this book has something to say about all these topics. No matter which of these topics are of interest to you, I think you'll find the linkages the author makes to the wider picture understandable and meaningful. He could have left out a lot of the details about experiments on monkeys, and not lost much. Some of what he says sounds like common sense, so much so that he quotes Schopenauer's dictum that the truth is first reviled, then disputed, and finally embraced as self-evident. The common-sense view that the adult brain can physically change in response to input and mental effort has been anathema in neuro-psychology, apparently. What is most interesting about this book, to me, is the bottom line--that quantum processes control the brain, and that quantum processes mean that physical reality is dependent on mind or consciousness . I think this accords more with universal mysticism than with a fundamentalist view of God creating the universe as external to Himself. In this quantum view, Consciousness not only creates matter but also inheres in it. Or at least that's where Dr. Schwartz's view leads me.