Marc Dominguez’s Reviews > The Mind & the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force > Status Update

It is attention that makes neuroplasticity possible

Paying attention allows your brain to physically enlarge portions of your brain to dedicate to what you're focusing on, and shutting off other areas you're not focusing on

The idea that there is a signal from the brain very shortly before you “decide” to do something or take an action is blowing my mind. The idea of free will versus predetermined action is very hard to grasp. Is our brain truly hardwired? Or is there truth in us having a choice in our actions or in the way we think or in the way our brain behaves?

Do we have free will? Are we not a sum of our conditioned responses? This book is asking great questions and I am thinking so much! Great read or listen.

Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy (CIMT) enabled stroke patients to regain function in their affected limbs in as little as two weeks, yielding a remarkable 97% improvement in functional recovery.

Vocab words, look these up:
- somatosensory system
- Cortical representation
- erogenous
- The Brain Map (Cortical Homunculus)

The brain can use areas of the brain and different synapses to re-wire them for different tasks. Even when a portion of the brain is removed, the tasks that portion of the brain is responsible for can be transferred to different areas to share the load. Wow!