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Can neuroscience give my brain the plasticity of a child's?

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Re: Can neuroscience give my brain the plasticity of a child's?

#41
post #5

A much better overview: http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics I am a bit torn about this subject. So, in my day job as a biomedical researcher, we would like to have a lot of evidence that something works before giving it to people. But the FDA/research system is not set up to deal with things like this, that are not to treat a disease per se, but rather to enhance a healthy human. Many MDs would see cognitive enhancement…

>But the FDA/research system is not set up to deal with things like this, that are not to treat a disease per se, but rather to enhance ... healthy, young or middle-aged normals.

So how did plastic surgery get through? Would that kind of procedure not be approved today under current standards? Would they be allowed to experiment at all, given the (in the FDA's view) limited benefits?

Re: Can neuroscience give my brain the plasticity of a child's?

#42
post #6

I don't get this "Child's brains are better" thing. A Child needs up to 10 years to speak, read and write correctly in their native language. An adult can do it in a couple of years, months sometimes (not my case!) I have a small kid and yes, their intelligence development is shocking and completely unlike any other creature on earth. But are there any proof that childrens are actually better/faster at anything than…

Ok scratch language. What about maths, or programming? My personal theory is that the only advantage kids have over adults its lots of free time. Not a small advantage, that is.

Re: Can neuroscience give my brain the plasticity of a child's?

#43

Considering the cat/kitten experiment, where the more plastic brain was able to permanently re-purpose brain cells from one task to another, it seems slightly dangerous. Suppose I take the pill, go to the music classes, and end up an excellent mountain dulcimer player---and then find out that I accidentally overwrote my programming ability? :)

Real life RPG! Take the pill and you get +15 music, -20 programming.

Re: Can neuroscience give my brain the plasticity of a child's?

#44
post #6

I don't get this "Child's brains are better" thing. A Child needs up to 10 years to speak, read and write correctly in their native language. An adult can do it in a couple of years, months sometimes (not my case!) I have a small kid and yes, their intelligence development is shocking and completely unlike any other creature on earth. But are there any proof that childrens are actually better/faster at anything than…

Most adults can never learn another language without an accent no matter how many years they practice. Children do it easily. Can you explain this?

Need proof of this. I've known several adults that have no accent. I'm not saying that disproves your statement, just that we need some research.

Re: Can neuroscience give my brain the plasticity of a child's?

#45
The brain is an absurdly complex, adaptive system that is the product of millions of years of evolution. We're not even really sure where personality and the "me" part of the self come from, other than that they seem to have a stronger genetic component than most people realize. We don't understand how it works remotely well enough to have a useful whole-brain model of its function (which means a lot of drug research is a primitive try-it-and-see-what-happens method, rather than the result of a detailed functional model of what SHOULD happen). We don't understand most of its more subtle pathologies (like depression) well enough to even properly evaluate treatments. Most treatments we do have for such things are of limited and short-term efficacy, and we don't even understand why they work. Maybe we're not nearly ready to start large-scale manipulation of its fundamental properties?

Re: Can neuroscience give my brain the plasticity of a child's?

#46
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. I get great results from Adderall and have heard good things about Modafinil. Tried it once with little effect, but it was from an Indian pharmacy and who knows how pure it was. I can't draw any conclusions whatsoever from this. Similarly, some people swear by racetams but I have adverse reactions to them (tired, eye strain, bad moods). The internet is chock full of anecdotes about various nootropics, but very…

I would maybe classify Modafanil as a nootropic, but Adderall is a stimulant - Amphetamine.

Almighty Wikipedia: nootropics are "drugs, supplements, nutraceuticals, and functional foods that improve one or more aspects of mental function, such as working memory, motivation, and attention"

Potentially a very broad category, which absolutely includes, but is not limited to, stimulants (within a therapeutic dose range). Also, as you can see on the same Wikipedia page, there is an entire category of nootropic stimulants, including the widely used caffeine and nicotine.

Re: Can neuroscience give my brain the plasticity of a child's?

#47
post #42
post #6

I don't get this "Child's brains are better" thing. A Child needs up to 10 years to speak, read and write correctly in their native language. An adult can do it in a couple of years, months sometimes (not my case!) I have a small kid and yes, their intelligence development is shocking and completely unlike any other creature on earth. But are there any proof that childrens are actually better/faster at anything than…

Ok scratch language. What about maths, or programming? My personal theory is that the only advantage kids have over adults its lots of free time. Not a small advantage, that is.

> My personal theory is that the only advantage kids have over adults its lots of free time.

And is your "theory" informed by the research results in neuroscience, or is it just idle speculation?

Re: Can neuroscience give my brain the plasticity of a child's?

#48
post #41
post #5

A much better overview: http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics I am a bit torn about this subject. So, in my day job as a biomedical researcher, we would like to have a lot of evidence that something works before giving it to people. But the FDA/research system is not set up to deal with things like this, that are not to treat a disease per se, but rather to enhance a healthy human. Many MDs would see cognitive enhancement…

>But the FDA/research system is not set up to deal with things like this, that are not to treat a disease per se, but rather to enhance ... healthy, young or middle-aged normals. So how did plastic surgery get through? Would that kind of procedure not be approved today under current standards? Would they be allowed to experiment at all, given the (in the FDA's view) limited benefits?

Most plastic surgery is not drug-based, so there is a lot less research that needs to be done on the molecular level to get it through. Much like nootropics, plastic surgery also has a use-case for "diseased" people: people born deformed or injured in accidents.

The big exception is Botox (aka botulinium toxin). Yes, the safety standards were a little lower in the 1960s, when it was being researched for therapeutic use. But also, botulinium toxin is very heavily researched because it is a useful molecular tool in other contexts, so we know quite well how it works, even though it is an extremely dangerous substance if used improperly. For many nootropics, we just don't know.

And if anything, the standards for something that is supposed to be operating on the brain are even higher than those applied to facial muscles, skin, etc.

Re: Can neuroscience give my brain the plasticity of a child's?

#49

Considering the cat/kitten experiment, where the more plastic brain was able to permanently re-purpose brain cells from one task to another, it seems slightly dangerous. Suppose I take the pill, go to the music classes, and end up an excellent mountain dulcimer player---and then find out that I accidentally overwrote my programming ability? :)

It's much worse than that. You'll erase everything, and likely won't be able to hold on to the new skills unless the plasticity was temporary.

Brain plasticity evolves in very specific ways. Simplified you could say that a young brain learns "short-term" things. It learns things (and learns how to cause things) that last tens of microseconds at and just after birth, then over the years moves to seconds, minutes, hours and longer.

But circuits are massively redundant. Until you lose about 90% of the part of the brain that fulfils a certain function, you won't notice a thing. Go over that, and ...

Every memory, every skill, everything in your brain is built on the basic premise that the shorter term neurocircuits work a certain way, that they have solidified. Every memory made when you were 10 years old is filtered through and interpreted by circuits established when you were 9. Memories made when you were 11, get filtered through the 10 year circuits, then the 9 year circuits, then ...

So if a neurocircuit changes that was built when you were 14 years EVERYTHING after that is gone. Every memory younger than when you were 14 years old gets filtered through the now-scrambled 14 year old circuits, which will transform it into noise, which the rest of the brain will promptly ignore.

This is why you regularly have demented people thinking they are much younger than they actually are, failing to remember they have kids, and so on. They suddenly start doing what they did at that age as well, leaving for work at 6am despite being pensioned for 30 years, in many cases to companies that have long since ceased to exist. Not recognizing kids (and especially grandkids). Note that this is usually emotionally very, very hard for those kids.

So if you successfully reset your brain to the plasticity it had when you were 14, every memory, every skill, every detail after that will disappear. The next day you will wake up, likely terrified, in a room you think you've never seen before, wondering where your mother is, not knowing what the hell a cell phone is. If there is damage that did not just do a one-time scramble of the circuit, but actually keeps it from re-solidifying, you will wake up like that every day of the rest of your life, not remembering the day before.

It also works in reverse : you can teach kids about long term effects (e.g. money) for months, and it just won't stick. Don't be fooled they'll be able to repeat the lesson back to you, but they can't apply knowledge that improves their long-term situation because it gets erased.

Re: Can neuroscience give my brain the plasticity of a child's?

#50
post #36

Has anybody shown that having an adult brain with non-child plasticity is a limitation? I find that my progress on guitar is a direct function of time , which is something else that children have in abundance but adults do not.

Try learning a language.

I have. Probably the hardest one for English speakers--Japanese.

Again, my progress is solely a function of time. If I could spend 8+ hours a day on it like a child, I suspect I would become very good.

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