{"product_id":"train-your-mind-change-your-brain-isbn-9780345479891","title":"Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain","description":"In this fascinating and far-reaching book, \u003ci\u003eNewsweek \u003c\/i\u003escience writer Sharon Begley reports on how cutting-edge science and the ancient wisdom of Buddhism have come together to reveal that, contrary to popular belief, we have the power to literally change our brains by changing our minds. Recent pioneering experiments in neuroplasticity–the ability of the brain to change in response to experience–reveal that the brain is capable of altering its structure and function, and even of generating new neurons, a power we retain well into old age. The brain can adapt, heal, renew itself after trauma, compensate for disabilities, rewire itself to overcome dyslexia, and break cycles of depression and OCD. And as scientists are learning from studies performed on Buddhist monks, it is not only the outside world that can change the brain, so can the mind and, in particular, focused attention through the classic Buddhist practice of mindfulness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith her gift for making science accessible, meaningful, and compelling, Sharon Begley illuminates a profound shift in our understanding of how the brain and the mind interact and takes us to the leading edge of a revolution in what it means to be human.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“There are two great things about this book. One is that it shows us how nothing about our brains is set in stone. The other is that it is written by Sharon Begley, one of the best science writers around. Begley is superb at framing the latest facts within the larger context of the field. . . . This is a terrific book.”\u003cbr\u003e–Robert M. Sapolsky, author of \u003ci\u003eWhy Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Excellent . . . elegant and lucid prose . . . an open mind here will be rewarded.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003eDiscover \u003c\/i\u003emagazine\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A strong dose of hope along with a strong does of science and Buddhist thought.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003eThe San Diego Union-Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e“Excellent . . . elegant and lucid prose . . . an open mind here will be rewarded.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eDiscover\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “A strong dose of hope along with a strong does of science and Buddhist thought.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe San Diego Union-Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“There are two great things about this book. One is that it shows us how nothing  about our brains is set in stone. The other is that it is written by Sharon Begley,  one of the best science writers around. Begley is superb at framing the latest facts  within the larger context of the field. She also gives us the back stories that reveal  how human the process of science research is. This is a terrific book.”\u003cb\u003e—Robert  Sapolsky, author of \u003ci\u003eWhy Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Reading this book is like opening  doors in the mind. Sharon Begley brings the reader right to the intersection of scientific  and meditative understanding, a place of exciting potential for personal and global  transformation. And she does it so skillfully as to seem effortless.”\u003cb\u003e—Sharon Salzberg,  author of \u003ci\u003eFaith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“It is very seldom that a  science in its infancy is so skillfully unpacked that it reads like a detective novel.  The fact that this science includes collaborative efforts of neuroscientists, psychologists,  contemplatives, philosophers, and the full engagement of the genius of the Dalai  Lama is not only fascinating, but uplifting and inspiring. This book lets you know  that how you pay attention to your experience can change your entire way of being.”\u003cb\u003e—Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of \u003ci\u003eComing to Our Senses\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I have meditated for forty years,  and have long felt that the potential of mind training to improve our emotional,  physical, and spiritual well-being has barely been tapped. Thanks to Sharon Begley’s fascinating book, though, that is about to change.  As human beings, we really  do have inner powers that can make a world of difference, particularly if our goal  is not merely to advance our own agendas, but to cultivate compassion for the benefit  of all living beings.”\u003cb\u003e—John Robbins, author of \u003ci\u003eHealthy at 100\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eDiet For  a New America\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This is a truly illuminating and eminently readable book on the  revolutionary new insights in mind sciences. I recommend it highly to anyone interested  in understanding human potential.”\u003cb\u003e—Jack Kornfield, author of \u003ci\u003eA Path with Heart\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eSharon Begley\u003c\/b\u003e is the senior science writer at ST\u003ci\u003eA\u003c\/i\u003eT, the life sciences publication of \u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e. Previously she was the senior health and science correspondent at Reuters, the science editor and science columnist at \u003ci\u003eNewsweek,\u003c\/i\u003e and the science columnist at \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e. She is the author of \u003ci\u003eCan’t Just Stop: An Investigation of Compulsions \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eTrain Your Mind, Change Your Brain \u003c\/i\u003eand the co-author of \u003ci\u003eThe Emotional Life of Your Brain\u003c\/i\u003e (with Richard J. Davidson) and \u003ci\u003eThe Mind and the Brain \u003c\/i\u003e(with Jeffrey M. Schwartz).Chapter 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Can We Change?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Challenging the Dogma of the Hardwired Brain The northern  Indian district of Dharamsala is composed of two towns, lower Dharamsala and upper.  The mist-veiled peaks of the Dhauladhar (“white ridge”) range hug the towns like  the bolster on a giant’s bed, while the Kangra Valley, described by a British colonial  official as “a picture of rural loveliness and repose,” stretches into the distance.  Upper Dharamsala is also known as McLeod Ganj. Founded as a hill station in the nineteenth  century during the days of British colonial rule, the bustling hamlet (named after  Britain’s lieutenant governor of Punjab at the time, David McLeod) is built on a  ridge, where hiking the steep dirt path from one guesthouse to another requires the  sure-footedness of a goat and astute enough planning that you don’t make the ankle-turning  trek after dark and risk tumbling into a ravine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Cows amble through intersections  where street peddlers squat behind cloths piled with vegetables and grains, and taxis  play a game of chicken with oncoming traffic, seeing who will lose his manhood first  by edging his car out of the single lane of the town’s only real thoroughfare. The  road curves past beggars and holy men who wear little but a loincloth and look as  if they have not eaten since last week, yet whose many woes are neatly listed on  a computer printout that they hopefully thrust at any passerby who slows even half  a pace. Barefoot children dart out of nowhere at the sight of a Westerner and plead,  “Please, madam, hungry baby, hungry baby,” pointing vaguely toward the open-air stalls  that line the road.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e From the flagstoned terrace of Chonor House, one of the guesthouses,  all of Dharamsala spreads out before you. As soon as the sun is up, the maroon-robed  monks are scurrying to prayers and the holy men crouched in back alleys are chanting  om mani padme hum (“hail to jewel in the lotus”). Prayer scarves fluttering from  boughs carry the Tibetan words May all sentient beings be happy and free from suffering.  The prayers are supposed to be carried by the wind, and when you see them, you think,  Wherever the wind blows, may those they touch find freedom from their pain.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Although  lower Dharamsala is inhabited mostly by Indians, residents of McLeod Ganj are almost  all Tibetan (with a sprinkling of Western expatriates and spiritual tourists), refugees  who followed Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, into exile. Many of those  remaining in Tibet, unable to flee themselves, have their toddlers and even infants  smuggled across the border to Dharamsala, where they are cared for and educated at  the Tibetan Children’s Village ten minutes above the town. For the parents, the price  of ensuring that their children are educated in Tibetan culture and history, thus  keeping their nation’s traditions and identity from being erased by the Chinese occupation,  is never seeing their sons and daughters again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e McLeod Ganj has been the Dalai Lama’ s home in exile and the headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile since 1959,  when he escaped ahead of Chinese Communist troops, which had invaded Tibet eight  years earlier. His compound, just off the main intersection where buses turn around  and taxis wait for fares, is protected around the clock by Indian troops toting machine  guns. The entrance is a tiny hut whose physical presence is as humble as the guards  are thorough. From its anteroom, large enough for only a small sofa, dog-eared publications  in a wooden rack, and a small coffee table, you pass through a door into the security  room, where you place everything you want to bring in (bags, notebooks, cameras,  tape recorders) on the X-ray belt before entering a closet-size booth, curtained  at both ends, for the requisite pat-down by Tibetan guards.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Once cleared, you amble  up an inclined asphalt path that winds past more Indian security guards draped with  submachine guns and lounging in the shade. The sprawling grounds are forested with  pines and rhododendrons; ceramic pots spilling purple bougainvillea and saffron marigolds  surround the widely spaced buildings. The first structure to your right is a one-story  building that houses the Dalai Lama’s audience chamber, also guarded by an Indian  soldier with an automatic weapon. Just beyond is the Tibetan library and archives,  and farther up the hill, the Dalai Lama’s two-story private compound, where he sleeps,  meditates, and takes most of his meals. The large structure to the left is the old  palace where the Dalai Lama lived before his current residence was built. Mostly  used for ordinations, for the next five days its large main room will be the setting  for an extraordinary meeting. Brought together by the Mind and Life Institute in  October 2004, leading scholars from both the Buddhist and the Western scientific  traditions will grapple with a question that has consumed philosophers and scientists  for centuries: does the brain have the ability to change, and what is the power of  the mind to change it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Hardwired Dogma\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Just a few years before, neuroscientists  would not even have been part of this conversation, for textbooks, science courses,  and cutting-edge research papers all hewed to the same line, as they had for almost  as long as there had been a science of the brain. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e No less a personage than William  James, the father of experimental psychology in the United States, first introduced  the word plasticity to the science of the brain, positing in 1890 that “organic matter,  especially nervous tissue, seems endowed with a very extraordinary degree of plasticity.”  By that, he meant “a structure weak enough to yield to an influence.” But James  was “only” a psychologist, not a neurologist (there was no such thing as a neuroscientist  a century ago), and his speculation went nowhere. Much more influential was the view  expressed succinctly in 1913 by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the great Spanish neuroanatomist  who had won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine seven years earlier. Near the  conclusion of his treatise on the nervous system, he declared, “In the adult centers  the nerve paths are something fixed, ended and immutable.” His gloomy assessment  that the circuits of the living brain are unchanging, its structures and organization  almost as static and stationary as a deathly white cadaver brain floating in a vat  of formaldehyde, remained the prevailing dogma in neuroscience for almost a century.  The textbook wis- dom held that the adult brain is hardwired, fixed in form and function,  so that by the time we reach adulthood, we are pretty much stuck with what we have.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Conventional wisdom in neuroscience held that the adult mammalian brain is fixed  in two respects: no new neurons are born in it, and the functions of the structures  that make it up are immutable, so that if genes and development dictate that this  cluster of neurons will process signals from the eye, and this cluster will move  the fingers of the right hand, then by god they’ll do that and nothing else come  hell or high water. There was good reason why all those extravagantly illustrated  brain books show the function, size, and location of the brain’s structures in permanent  ink. As late as 1999, neurologists writing in the prestigious journal Science admitted,  “We are still taught that the fully mature brain lacks the intrinsic mechanisms needed  to replenish neurons and reestablish neuronal networks after acute injury or in response  to the insidious loss of neurons seen in neurodegen- erative diseases.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e That is  not to say that scientists failed to recognize that the brain must undergo some changes  throughout life. After all, since the brain is the organ of behavior and the repository  of learning and memory, when we acquire new knowledge or master a new skill or file  away the remembrance of things past, the brain changes in some real, physical way  to make that happen. Indeed, researchers have known for decades that learning and  memory find their physiological expression in the formation of new synapses (points  of connection between neurons) and the strengthening of existing ones; in 2000, the  wise men of Stockholm even awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the  discovery of the molecular underpinnings of memory.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But the changes underlying learning  and memory are of the retail variety—strengthening a few synapses here and there  or sprouting a few extra dendrites so neurons can talk to more of their neighbors,  like a household getting an extra phone line. Wholesale changes, such as expanding  a region that is in charge of a particular mental function or altering the wiring  that connects one region to another, were deemed impossible.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Also impossible was  for the basic layout of the brain to deviate one iota from the authoritative diagrams  in anatomy textbooks: the visual cortex in the back was hardwired to handle the sense  of sight, the somatosensory cortex curving along the top of the brain was hardwired  to process tactile sensations, the motor cortex was hardwired to devote a precise  amount of neural real estate to each muscle, and the auditory cortex was hardwired  to field transmissions from the ears. Enshrined from clinical practice to scholarly  monographs, this principle held that in contrast to the ability of the developing  brain to change in significant ways, the adult brain is fixed, immutable. It has  lost the capacity called neuroplasticity, the ability to change its structures and  functions in a fundamental way.A groundbreaking collaboration between neuroscience and Buddhism; Foreword by the Dalai Lama; Preface by Daniel Goldman, author of Emotional Intelligence and","brand":"Ballantine Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301991665893,"sku":"NP9780345479891","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345479891.jpg?v=1767742892","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/train-your-mind-change-your-brain-isbn-9780345479891","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}