Neuroscience: our brain can heal itself

The brain is not a computer: it has the capacity to transform itself. In his first book, The Amazing Transforming Powers of the Brain (Belfond, 2008), best-selling in Canada, Canadian psychiatrist Norman Doidge revealed to the general public the plasticity of our brain.

For his latest book, Healing through Neuroplasticity. Remarkable discoveries at the forefront of research on the brain, (Belfond, 2016), this one went to meet the medical teams who use this astonishing faculty - in particular by using sounds, movements and light – to treat or even cure certain pathologies that were thought to be incurable, such as the damage caused by certain strokes or cases of autism.

How can the brain heal itself?

Thanks to its neuroplasticity which allows it to change its structure and functioning in response to mental activity and experience. Every human being has this ability. It is not one of the faculties of the brain, it is its mode of operation, its modus operandi! Every time we learn a skill, every new thought crosses our minds, every time we have a new sensory experience, we change connections in our brain. This means that our own thoughts modify our brain.

But this ability to create and constantly recreate neuronal connections is the source of a new form of healing. For eight years, for my book, I went to meet patients following innovative therapies based on neuroplasticity. I met almost a hundred of them whom I followed over several years to see their progress.

Most of these therapies use energy, in the form of light, sound, vibration, electricity or movement to awaken this self-healing capacity of the brain. Surprisingly, many patients who were told they would never get better saw their condition improve greatly with these approaches, so much so that it seemed like a miracle.

You mention the case of a doctor who succeeded in permanently eradicating his own chronic pain thanks to precise brain training. How can this be possible?

This is Michael Moskowitz, a psychiatrist specializing in the treatment of pain. A few years ago, a water sports accident caused him pain in the back of his neck which over time traveled to his shoulder and head, sometimes reaching an intensity of 8 out of 10 on the scale. pain.

Gradually, it became chronic. However, chronic pain is a perverse effect of neuroplasticity: each time the nerves stimulate the areas of pain in the brain, the latter improves its ability to record it, by creating new neuronal connections there. There are thus a dozen areas in the brain that register pain. These areas are not specific to it and have at least one other function.

The amygdala, for example, deals with pain, but also with emotions. When you are in pain, the space devoted to pain tends to take up more space. The two functions then compete for their space. This explains why it is so difficult to concentrate, to think or to move when you are in pain. In case of chronic pain, the area devoted to pain invades the space up to 20%.

How can we rewire the brain to overcome chronic pain?

For thirteen years, Michael Moskowitz tried many alternative medicines without success until he decided that he could probably mentally force the brain regions concerned to process something other than pain.

In other words, to help the other function to compete with suffering. For this, he then chose to use visualization, or our ability to form images by thought, because this faculty is processed by a large part of the brain.

He could have imagined anything, but he chose to visualize a brain whose parts devoted to the treatment of pain are atrophying. Every time his chronic pain returned, Michael Moskowitz resisted the urge to rest and began visualizing that brain. And it worked ! Gradually, through daily mental practice, he reconfigured and rewired his brain and the pain diminished permanently.

Of course, this did not happen overnight. It takes time to undo neural connections and form new ones. After a year, he was able to stop the drug treatments. Since then, many patients have benefited from his approach.

Does this mean that in case of strong migraine, it would be enough to do this type of exercise to calm the pain?

It depends on whether it is chronic pain or not. Because we must not forget that this, even strong, plays an important role. It warns you that something is wrong. You get a bad cut on your foot because you walked barefoot in the forest: the pain is there to warn you that you have to go home, disinfect yourself and rest.

This is not pathology, but the normal functioning of the human body. A migraine can mean that you eat poorly, for example. It is when it becomes chronic, that is to say when it develops neuroplastically, that this type of exercise can help.

You mention the effectiveness of sound therapy in cases of autism. How does it work?

We are currently in a noisy cafe where many people are talking to each other, which creates a hubbub. Now look around and try to focus on one particular conversation. You realize you have auditory zoom: you can hear a focused conversation in a noisy place. Some autistics do not have this ability. Add to this what I call the “noisy brain” phenomenon.

We tend to think that a neuron is either on, so alive, or off, so dead, which is wrong. When the brain is damaged, the neurons actually light up at the wrong frequency (wave), which causes the "noise", like the crackle of a radio. This phenomenon partly explains why people with various brain problems can no longer regulate their sensations. They are too sensitive to external stimuli or, conversely, insensitive.

However, several million years of evolution have equipped human beings with automatic and involuntary "preset" reactions of the nervous system in order to prepare them for the dangers of their natural environment, such as the attack of a predator. One such mechanism is the brain's “fight or flight” mode, which primes the subject for action by pumping blood to the heart or muscles.

Many patients with brain disorders are in a fight or flight state: unable to cope with events, they feel cornered, in danger and hyperanxious. In these conditions, you cannot have a social activity, create links with the people around you.

More precisely, you report the spectacular results of the sound method of Frenchman Alfred Tomatis on both autism and learning disabilities.

Paul Madaule, a French psychiatrist trained by Alfred Tomatis (1920-2001), an otolaryngologist who gave birth to a rehabilitation method through listening, today uses electronically modified music to which he adds maternal voice to help children with autism exercise their “auditory zoom”.

Like gymnastics. By doing this, they train their brain to recognize the human voice. Gradually, thanks to neuroplasticity, these children correct the distortions that exist between their brain and the world around them and regain calm. But beware, autism is a very complex pathology and no two cases are alike.

It's not just a disease of the brain, but a condition that affects the body as a whole. In my book, I mention two children who have undergone this sound therapy: one is no longer autistic and the other is much less so. This method also works well for cases of attention deficit or language disorders.

Therapeutic sounds combined with certain movements even seem to have good results on babies who refuse to eat or sleep...

A large proportion of children who refuse to eat, including babies who have colic, actually suffer not from gastrointestinal disorders, but from a sensory processing problem, which makes them very picky. Eating is not simply about taking in food, but also sensory input.

A newborn must thus process them in cascade: the contact of the breast, the texture of the milk, its sweet taste and its heat, the contractions linked to digestion, etc. A child with sensory processing disorder experiences all of this as an overwhelming surge of sensations from inside and out. Doctors at Sensory Therapies and Research in Denver use a therapy that mixes both sound and movement, to help these children better process the information sent by several senses at the same time.

How can movement have a therapeutic effect on the brain?

I mention in my book the case of John Pepper, a Parkinson's patient who reduced the symptoms of the disease thanks to conscious walking. Walking is thus part of the complex automatic actions that we acquired in two stages. First of all, we learn them by being very attentive to the smallest detail. This conscious learning phase involves prefrontal (behind the forehead) and subcortical (inside the brain) neural circuits.

It is only after the child has integrated all these details that he associates them in an automatic sequence thanks to the basal ganglia (a core of nerve structures buried deep in the brain). When the latter are injured, as in Parkinson's disease, the execution of these complex motor sequences and the acquisition of new automatisms become very difficult. To be able to walk without staggering, John Pepper had to pay extreme attention to his every move, like a child learning to walk.

By doing this he kind of bypassed the basal ganglia. Gradually, through neuroplasticity, her brain began to automate her new way of walking, freeing her conscious mind for other activities. Conscious movement, as practiced by John Pepper, comes from a very specific therapy, the Feldenkrais method.

Another source of healing that you mention is light. How can light rays heal the brain?

Our bodies are much less opaque than we think. Certain light ray frequencies that penetrate under the skin can heal. This is what we discovered with jaundice in newborns, when we realized that natural light could cure this liver condition.

The sun's rays also have effects on tuberculosis and certain infections. When lasers were discovered in the 1960s, scientists first used hot, flesh-burning lasers for surgery. Today we know that low intensity lasers can heal wounds.

In women, they even grow hair! (They don't have the same effect in men because of their testosterone levels). Scientists wondered if these low-intensity lasers could not also heal damaged brains. Today, in Toronto, approximately 2,000 patients who have had, for example, a stroke or a concussion are undergoing low-intensity laser sessions with very good results. Exposure of the brain to certain light frequencies thus makes it possible to rewire the dormant neural circuits.

Be careful, there are very different brain lesions, no two brains are alike and it doesn't work for everyone. But 2,000 people is already a lot. Especially since these are people to whom the doctors had told that they could never get better.

Your book was published in January 2015 in the United States. Have there been new discoveries since?

The search goes fast. I discovered after the publication of the book other innovative therapies. In Utah, for example, a clinic specializing in spinal cord injuries is applying the principles of neuroplasticity to spinal injuries. When I started writing, doctors would tell people with brain damage that yes, they had an 80% chance that their condition would improve, but they would add that if they didn't, they wouldn't be able to progress the future.

Some scientists thus remain stubbornly clinging to the idea that the brain is immutable, that it is a machine. But no, the brain is not a computer! A hard drive cannot rewire itself! The brain is more like a tree whose branches are constantly renewing themselves.

In the end, in my book, I describe nine therapeutic experiments that can be tried on diseases affecting the brain or brain damage. So we've gone from zero supply to many possible therapies. We are living through a medical revolution.

Norman Doidge is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and researcher at the University of Toronto and at Columbia University in New York, where he teaches. He is also a columnist for the Canadian daily The National Post.

Our sources: The Amazing Transforming Powers of the Brain, Norman Doidge, Belfond, 2008. Healing through neuroplasticity. Remarkable discoveries at the forefront of brain research, Norman Doidge, Belfond, 2016. When Listening Comes Alive. A Guide to Effective Learning and Communication, Paul Madaule, Moulin, 1994. The Ear and Life, Alfred Tomatis, Robert Laffont, 1977.

This article appeared in Sens et Santé in May-June 2017.