Interview of Sandra Blakeslee: Revisiting "Conflict: Is it all in your head?"

In the post Conflict: Is it all in your head?, I talked about the book The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better. You may listen to an interview of the book's coauthor Sandra Blakeslee at The Brain Science Podcast.

Also at that site is an interview of Sharon Begley, author of Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves and coauthor with Jeff of The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force

While you are there, you may want to listen to an interview of Dr. Norman Doidge in which he discusses neuroplasticity. Doidge is the author of The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. The interviewer Dr. Ginger Campbell says,

Dr. Doidge and I agree that neuroplasticity is the most important discovery about the brain that has been made in several hundred years. In his interview Dr. Doidge talks about some of the obstacles that delayed this discovery including what he calls the “plastic paradox,” which is the fact that plasticity itself can contribute to the development of rigid behaviors, including addictions and bad habits.

And I will add that neuroplasticity can result in the development of rigid conflict styles. Neuroplasticity is a double-edged sword. It can give you great power to change—and it can carve deep ruts of habitual behavior.

Note (added January 11, 2008, 12:50 PM Mountain): Brain Science Podcast now includes an interview with  Dr. Edward Taub.

Comments

[Ginger Campbell, MD]

Thanks for the links to my Brain Science Podcast.

I totally agree that neuroplasticity is a two-edged sword. This is brought out quite a bit in Dr. Doidge's book.

I think the dual aspects of neuroplasticity will be of increasing importance as we attempt to apply it to practical problems both as clinicians and as human beings.