One of the books I'm studying as research for Sunder is titled The New Brain by Richard Restak. I'm not terribly far into it at the moment, but it's a fascinating read. One of the major concepts at its core is something called "neuro-plasticity" which in layman's terms simply means the brain's ability to adapt over time to most of the circumstances we put ourselves in. The brain can physically rewire itself, a notion that was scoffed at not that many years ago. One of the examples that Restak uses is learning to play an instrument and mastering the associated finger movements. He says that at first the finger movements may feel awkward, even uncomfortable, and that is because the brain has not created any permanent neural pathways to coordinate the movement. However, as a student practices, the brain recruits more and more neurons to form evermore stable neural "circuits" to make the movements more efficient.
This discovery of neuro-plasticity was made quite recently thanks to the development of functional MRI technology and it has all sorts of practical applications in everyday life--not just for music and sports, but in our work and even in cognitive therapy to get our emotional lives under control.
In my case, and in particular with writing, I think neuro-plasticity is beginning to free up my imagination, that is if the material I produced tonight is any indication. These new ideas are inventive and suspenseful and they stand a better than even chance of making it into the final version of the book. My point is this: whatever mysterious cluster of neurons that is the all-holy seat of the Imagination, it is getting a helluva workout and it's paying off. I'm very happy.
I'm also very tired. Time to go home and go to sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment