Livewired Brain#1: "Livewired"

It is well known, as David Eagleman says in Livewired:

“We drop into the world with a brain that’s largely incomplete. As a result, we have a uniquely long period of helplessness in our infancy.”

So why are we human babies born that way?

“That cost pays off, because our brains invite the world to shape them.”

The technical term for all this is “plasticity”. As in plastic: it can be molded into any shape, and even better, it can hold that shape.

 

However, as we know all too well from experience, for certain topics:

“(This reshaping of the brain happens) during a rapidly closing window of time. One the window is missed, it is difficult or impossible to reopen.”

The good news though is that the time-window constraint doesn’t apply for all topics. Long after baby- and toddler-hood, the brain can still reshape itself:

“The shape shifting of brains is not like the glacial drifting of continental plates, but can instead be remarkably swift.”

 

For example, researchers scanned the brains of several adults soon after they lost their vision. They identified areas of the brain that “activated” in response to sounds. Within a few weeks, they found a noticeable and remarkable change: areas of the brain associated with sight were gradually responding to sound for these recently blinded folks! It was as if the different faculties of the brain were “taking over” the now-useless regions meant for sight…

 

How fast does/can such a switch happen? In another experiment, they blindfolded participants for 5 days. Those guys couldn’t see anything for 5 days, and they were asked to start learning Braille, the language of the blind via touch. Within just those 5 days, there were measurable changes: parts of the brain assigned to sight were now responding to touch! Yes, in just 5 days…

 

But wait. In another study, they blindfolded people and asked them to repeatedly perform a touching task that “required fine discrimination with their fingers”. This time, researchers found measurable use of the visual areas of the brain for touch activities within (hold your breath) “a mere forty to sixty minutes”!

“The shock of these findings was their sheer speed.”

 

To summarize: (1) The brain obviously changes its “software”, (2) But it also changes its “hardware” structuring and usage, (3) Areas can be reconfigured for anything (sight to sound, sight to touch), and (4) It can all happen at a blinding speed… even in adults.

 

With machine learning algorithms, computers do this kind of change in software, but the hardware remains untouched. No wonder then that Eagleman uses a new term for the brain: “liveware” as both hardware and software change. We just entered the rabbit hole, Alice, buckle up for Wonderland in future blogs…