The Super Brain Credo.

That era was just on the verge of exploring genes, and advanced theories about how new synaptic connections are formed lay decades in the future. Both represent dramatic advances in knowledge. You can’t see genes at work, but you can observe neurons growing new axons and dendrites, the threadlike extensions that allow one brain cell to connect with another. It’s now  known that the brain can form new axons and dendrites up to the last years of life, which gives us tremendous hope for preventing senility, for example, and preserving our mental capacity indefinitely. (So astounding is the brain’s ability to make new connections that a fetus on the verge of being born is forming 250,000 new brain cells per minute, leading to millions of new synaptic connections per minute.)

Yet in so saying, we are as naïve as newspaper reporters waiting eagerly to tell the world that  Einstein possessed a freakish brain— we still emphasize the physical. Not enough weight is given to how a person relates to the brain. We feel that without a new relationship, the brain cannot be asked to do new, unexpected things. Consider discouraged children in school. Such students existed in every classroom that all of us attended, usually sitting in the back row. Their behavior follows a sad pattern. First the child attempts to keep up with other children. When these efforts fail, for whatever reason, discouragement sets in. The child stops trying as hard as the children who meet with success and encouragement. The next phase is acting out, making disruptive noises or pranks to attract attention. Every child needs attention, even if it is negative. The disruptions can be aggressive, but eventually the child realizes that nothing good is happening. Acting out leads to disapproval and punishment. So he enters the final phase, which is sullen silence. He makes no more effort to keep up in class. Other children mark him as slow or stupid, an outsider. School has turned into a stifling prison rather than an enriching place.

It’s not hard to see how this cycle of behavior affects the brain. We now know that babies are born with 90 percent of their brains formed and millions of connections that are surplus. So the first years of life are spent winnowing out the unused connections and growing the ones that will lead to new skills. A discouraged child, we can surmise, aborts this process. Useful skills are not developed, and the parts of the brain that fall into disuse atrophy. Discouragement is holistic, encompassing brain, psyche, emotions, behavior, and opportunities later in life. For any brain to operate well, it needs stimulation. But clearly stimulation is secondary to how the child feels, which is mental and psychological. A discouraged child relates to his brain differently than an encouraged child, and their brains must respond differently, too.

Super brain rests on the credo of connecting the mind and brain in a new way. It’s not the physical side that makes the crucial difference. It’s a person’s resolve, intention, patience, hope, and diligence. These are all a matter of how the mind relates to the brain, for better or worse. We can summarize the relationship in ten principles.

DEVELOPING YOUR GREATEST GIFT
A SUPER BRAIN CREDO HOW THE MIND RELATES TO THE BRAIN

1. The process always involves feedback loops.
2. These feedback loops are intelligent and adaptable.
3. The dynamics of the brain go in and out of balance but always favor overall balance, known as homeostasis.
4. We use our brains to evolve and develop, guided by our intentions.
5. Self- refl ection pushes us forward into unknown territory.
6. Many diverse areas of the brain are coordinated simultaneously.
7. We have the capacity to monitor many levels of awareness, even though our focus is generally confi ned to one level (i.e., waking, sleeping, or dreaming).
8. All qualities of the known world, such as sight, sound, texture, and taste, are created mysteriously by the interaction of mind and brain.
9. Mind, not the brain, is the origin of consciousness.
10. Only consciousness can understand consciousness. No mechanical explanation, working from facts about the brain, suffices.

These are big ideas. We have a lot of explaining to do, but we wanted you to see the big ideas up front. If you lifted just two words from the first sentence— feedback loops— you could mesmerize a medical school class for a year. The body is an immense feedback loop made up of trillions of tiny loops. Every cell talks to every other and listens to the answer it receives. That’s the simple essence of feedback, a term taken from electronics. The thermostat in your living room senses the temperature and turns the furnace on if the room gets too cold. As the temperature rises, the thermostat takes in that information and responds by turning the furnace off. The same back- and- forth operates through switches in the body that also regulate temperature. That’s nothing fascinating, so far. But when you think a thought, your brain sends information to the heart, and if the message is one of excitement, fear, sexual arousal, or many other states, it can make the heart beat faster. The brain will send a counter message telling the heart to slow down again, but if this feedback loop breaks down, the heart can keep racing like a car with no brakes. Patients who take steroids are replacing the natural steroids made by the endocrine system. The longer you take artificial steroids, the more the natural ones ebb, and as a result the adrenal glands shrink.

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