Brain Mapping Though the Practice

Brain Mapping

Though the practice of medicine has been around for thousands of years, it is really only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that the inquiry and understanding of medicine became fully rooted in the scientific method, and began making large advances. Even so, it was not until relatively recently that our understanding of one of the most essential yet complex organs in the human body began to truly take off. This organ is, of course, the brain, the center for processing input, cognitive thinking, controlling motor function, and running almost every single mechanism of the body. The fifth chapter of Schwartz and Begley's The Mind & The Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force (2002) provides an overview of how the brain was mapped, to the degree that it is, and in the process reveals many interesting details of the actual wiring of the brain. Though the specific details discussed differ, Vilayanur Ramachandran's (2007) lecture on how the brain works supports and enhances the information presented in the textbook, including new directions in the exploration of the brain.

Both the Schwartz & Begley text (20o2) and Dr. Ramachandran (2007) use specific examples to illustrate the larger principles they discuss, and so a similar comparison of the information they present would be useful here. One of the most interesting and significant findings presented in the textbook is the cortical remapping that was seen to occur following the surgical joining or separation of digits in both adult owl monkeys and human beings. In the owl monkeys, pre-cortical mapping showed individual areas of the brain associated with independent digits; three months after two digits were joined, so was the area in the brain that responded to input from this new single digit. A reversed effect in the brain took place in human beings whose congenitally joined digits were surgically separated (Schwartz & Begley 2002).

This showed not only the mapping of the brain that was possible -- that is, the association of certain specific areas of the brain with certain function and/or sensations from certain parts of the body -- but also that the adult brain was capable of changing in response to new stimulation. This finding was taken to new heights by Dr. Ramachandran, whose work with amputees and mirrors showed how profound the brain's malleability can really be (Ramachandran 2007). As he describes in his lecture, many amputees experienced phantom limbs (as well as other organs), and a significant number of these had phantom pain due to a "paralyzed" phantom limb. With the simple use of a mirror, Dr. Ramachandran's patients were able to trick their brains into thinking the reflection of their healthy limb was in fact their phantom limb, alleviating the perceived paralysis and pain, and eventually (for some) even eliminating the sensation of a phantom limb (Ramachandran 2007). Not only is the brain able to change according to actual morphological changes, but can in fact change its beliefs" about the body.