Blog post #2

I found the Secrets of the Mind very interesting and mind boggling. I did not quite understand how the doctor felt so sure of his findings after so little experimentation.  Especially in the case of the man with pain in the phantom clinched fist.  I wondered why Dr. Ramachandran did not possibly consider this to be some type of placebo effect. Did the pain disappear due to his experiment actually working or because the man was under a false impression that it would heal him?

  It was surprising to find that the sensors in the brain are not mapped in a particular order as our bodies are put together and when a limb is lost the sensor is re-mapped to the one closest. This explained why the man felt pain in his phantom arm when he shaved, the lost limb sensor was absorbed by the nearest sensory which happened to be his face.

I think that we can rewire our brains.  Through positive reinforcement we can retrain ourselves to react positively to a situation that we would normally have reacted to negatively. With continued effort we can become more positive and happy individuals by changing our thought process. I think for this to happen you have to be very strong minded individual and believe that the change is actually possible because in the end most people do not change.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSYloa6QqJo