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BIID and Neural Pathways
Written by Sean on Saturday, November 7, 2009
Is BIID psychological? Or is it neurological? There is evidence of neurological aspects to BIID, as found by Ramachandran and McGeoch. Does it mean that BIID is congenital, or is it acquired? Is it hard-wired? These are questions that happen often enough in discussion between transabled folks.
One consensus among us seems to be that if it is something acquired in our young age, it is firmly embedded and unlikely to be dislodged. I tend to agree with that line of thinking. Recently, a psychotherapist offered an explanation to me as to how neural pathways are formed. He said, more or less, that when a child thinks of something often enough, it creates a neural pathway. Bit like walking in a forest, taking the same way all the time, eventually, there’s a path there where the grass doesn’t grow anymore. The longer the path is trodden on, the harder it is to get vegetation to grow over it again. It makes sense.
So the therapist seems like he might have a point: BIID might very well show neurological aspects, but not be congenital at all. Does it mean that because we’re "hard wired", there’s no way to undo it? After all, if you stop using that path in the woods long enough, nature will take over again. Would it work the same for BIID? How do you stop using that metaphorical path? How do you stop thinking about the need to be paralysed, or an amputee, or blind, or deaf? Once one’s identity is formed, can it really be *undone*? And if it can, at what cost?
So I found something interesting about the formation of neural pathways. It was on a University of Maine page:
Connections among Brain Cells
At birth, the human brain is in a remarkably unfinished state. Most of its 100 billion neurons are not yet connected in networks. Forming and reinforcing these connections are the key tasks of early brain development. Connections among neurons are formed as the growing child experiences the surrounding world[...].
In the first decade of life, a child’s brain forms trillions of connections or synapses. Axons hook up with dendrites, and chemicals called neurotransmitters facilitate the passage of impulses across the resulting synapses. Each individual neuron may be connected to as many as 15,000 other neurons, forming a network of neural pathways that is immensely complex. This elaborate network is sometimes referred to as the brain’s “wiring” or “circuitry.” If they are not used repeatedly, or often enough, they are eliminated. In this way, experience plays a crucial role in “wiring” a young child’s brain.
Source: Shore, R. (1997). Rethinking the Brain: New Insights into Early Development. New York, NY: Families and Work Institute, pp. 16-17.
So there! That makes a bucketload of sense. On that basis, it is entirely possible that we’ve formed our own hard-wire circuitry without knowing we were doing it.
Sooo, what next? How do we disconnect the neural pathways? Wire-cutters? I wish it were that simple. The therapist I’ve been speaking to seems to think it is possible to just reframe our thinking, and if we don’t manage to disconnect the pathway, at least we can smooth it out so it won’t hurt so much. It most certainly is appealing to think it might be "that simple". But it’s one of those things that may be simple in concept yet difficult in execution, if at all possible.
Another site talks a bit about rewiring neural pathways:
The good news however, is that we can change those neural pathways; first, by realizing that we can, second, by wanting to change the brain’s thought processes, and third, by choosing to adopt different (more positive) ways of perceiving “reality”. The only way to change those repetitive thought processes, and to create new neural pathways, is to let go of the mental concepts that one currently thinks are “true”. In doing so, energy starts flowing throughout the brain in different directions to different parts of the brain, thus contributing to new neural pathways and new ways of thinking and perceiving. The more we purposefully think in a different manner, the easier it becomes, and eventually that becomes the brain’s new way of automatically thinking. With this understanding it becomes quite apparent why Buddha said “What we think, we become”.
When we focus on the negative, we perpetuate the negative. When we focus on the positive, we perpetuate the positive.
When a person says “that’s just the way I am” or “I can’t help it, I am what I am”, that’s not quite true. They are who they are because of what they are currently aware of, and because of the way they choose to think and perceive. Absolutely everything is a choice, but people don’t realize it. The problem is that they simply aren’t aware that they can change the mind’s way of thinking, and that’s because they identify those thoughts as being “me” or “important”, when they’re not.
Oooh boy. Isn’t that nice? Again, this bit makes some theoritical sense. But it’s empty fluff for me. It smells of someone who decided to write an article that sounded nice, and they might even believe in the stuff they wrote, but don’t have experience in the real world.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I believe that the Buddha got it "right", I believe he truly was enlightened. But the path to enlightment is not an easy one. And most people don’t get there. Even buddhist monks that have worked on it a lifetime don’t get there! So how are we, poor "insects", expected to succeed there?
Besides, anyone can put anything they want on articlebase. They don’t check sources. In fact, this particular article doesn’t seem to cite anything. It is what I would consider a non-reliable source. But it sounds nice, doesn’t it?
So, back to our problem. Here we are, we’ve formed this neural pathway that tells us we should have a physical impairment. We don’t know *why* we have that pathway. And I think to a point it’s irrelevant why we feel the way we do.
Where am I going with this? Hmmm, not sure. I have major doubts about the possibility to disconnecting the formed neural pathway, or to even smooth it out enough as to eliminate the pain related to not being in the body I should be in. I don’t think I will be working with that therapist. One might argue that I am unable to see it because it is outside my paradigm and I need to change that. A bit like for people in the middle ages, their paradigm was that the world was flat, and they had to change their paradign that the world was round. It can’t have been easy for them to make the switch.
And why *should* we work so hard at changing paradigm, on the off chance that we might start getting results in changing our neural pathways? Why should we be denied surgery, a solution that works? Ok, so some of us aren’t denied surgery, it is available for some on the black market, but at such a high cost that it is akin to denial. Mind you, surgery isn’t the solution for everyone, and a less invasive "solution" is also needed. But…
Anyway, what do you think of all this? Do you have good references to build an argument in favour, or against this idea of "change the way you think, you’ll change the way you are"?
Tags: BIID, Buddha, Change, Neural pathway, Neurology, Research, Therapy
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4 Comments
2 On 7 November, 2009, Phil said:
Maybe I’m repeating myself here: The brain is not a computer. It changes, we change it – by what we do, think, want, feel, and it is changed by what is around us. Yes. Of course we can change a lot.
But at the same time we cannot change a lot, too.
In one of the cited articles, the author says we can change by WANTING to change. Now that’s where BIID is so difficult to grasp and to understand, for in my eyes it is a disease of the will itself, if it is a disease at all. Sometimes I wish to change, to get rid of BIID. Sometimes I cannot want it. What I WANT is to be a double above knee amputee – most of the time.
There are times where I manage to concentrate on other things, on functioning. Relaxing my body, being with really nice people, having meaningful work to do – this all helps a lot.
But not always.
It is still the ultimate wisdom to PRAY (not only to find out or think hard enough about) this prayer:
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”
(Reinhold Niebuhr)
I never have seen a gay man who was able to “reframe” his thinking – feeling – wanting to love women.
There are dreams of ultimate and universal feasibility on one side – and of ultimate and universal predestination on the other side. Both are obviously wrong.
And I want to add one more thing. Who says that it is all happening just by chance? The child thinks about something – and the brain is designed in a way so that the same thoughts can happen more easily, quasi automatically. That’s all? Maybe the brain is only an instrument of the “I”, of the soul, of the person?
Plus one last thought: Even if it was possible to change one’s brain – why should one change one’s brain instead of changing one’s body? Both is part of me, both is part of my body, and why should my legs be worth more than my brain is?
Who can say which kind of change is good and which not?
Recently I read that freshly born babies have a certain way of crying – in their mother tongue, so to speak. (http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,659684,00.html). Does anybody really think that later on they can change their mother tongue?
I think all important questions remain open. Like they are since man has started thinking about himself.
So, i only smoke cigarettes because of my neural programminng – yes i know its illogical and yet i still do it anyhow… because i am hopelessly addicted!
My logical brain knows that smoking is very damaging to my health – but my logical brain would also know that being paralysed would also be similarly detrimental – but there are enough other parts to my brain that keep me doing and thinking that i want to do this regardless of what my logical brain thinks.
I’m with Chloe – i’d really like to reach the stage where i dont care what made me this way – i just am this way. full stop, period, end of sentence.
I know i’m not quite there yet – but i hope to be soon.
And to draw this long-winded comment back to Sean’s original point, i think the paradigm we should be looking to shift is the one in which our society declares that being differently abled is a bad thing.
I find it so sad to hear about all the ways that “disabled” folks are put down – our entire society needs to realise that there are so many different ways of being – and that being physically “perfect” is not the be all and end all of a happy life.
@Zoe: In my opinion your last two paragraphs really hit the nail on the head. There are still so many people in society who view “Different” as being synonymous with “Inferior” or “Wrong” or “Bad”. This applies not only to physical variance but also to gender variance, mental variance, sexual orientation, ethnic variance, etc etc. For my own part, my life is made richer by having friends who are variant in different ways.
I hope I project to people that I do not feel inferior on account of being in a wheelchair. I hope this can cause a shift in their perceptions.
By the way Zoe, on a selfish note, I appreciate you being back with your insightful comments.
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1 On 7 November, 2009, Chloe said:
I no longer have much of a desire to find out how I got this way. I am me. End of story.
Why would I wish to be cured? Is there really anything wrong with me? What does it mean to cure a self identity?
I have gradually come to realise that for me the most pleasant path is the one of self acceptance, such that I have no need to spin my wheels in search of cause or cure. I just spin my wheels. In the long term only paralysis will give me peace.