The Backwards Brain Bicycle

[Forest]

I got the following video from Dr. Schubiner and I thought people might like it.

When healing from TMS, people often struggle with how long it can take. Once you have accepted the diagnosis, overcome your fear and resumed physical activities, there is often a long period as your body learns to become healthy again. Dr. Sarno taught us that there can be a long period of overcoming conditioning before we can resume certain activities (see, for example, pages 63-66 of The Mindbody Prescription for a primer. Marc Sopher's book also has a great introduction).

Pavlovian conditioning like this is a sort of learned nerve pathway. For example, in Pavlov's famous experiment, a learned nerve pathway was formed between the ringing of a bell and the presentation of food. Unfortunately, as this video demonstrates, it can take a while to retrain the brain. This is why it can sometimes take so long to heal: it takes a long time to "unlearn" the nerve pathways.

Dr. Schubiner wrote about the video that it is a "Great demonstration of neuroplasticity and how long it can take to train the brain. Very applicable to our work, I think and it can help to give people patience as they work through the unlearning/relearning process."

Here's the video:

 

[Zumbafan]

I love this video! I have been learning about neuroplasticity for the last 2 years. Thanks for posting this.

 

[Ellen]

I like this video too. It suggests that the younger someone is, the faster they are able to unlearn/learn the new skill due to having a brain with more neuroplasticity. I'm wondering if this is true of recovery of TMS. Do people think that the younger you are the faster you recover? I am thinking of our very own Walt, and how quickly he seemed to recover. Perhaps there are just too many other variables for age to be the predominant factor in recovery.

 

[Zumbafan]

I had not really thought about age and neuroplasticity, until now! The problem with our beliefs is, that we mistake them for facts, so the power of our imagination to directly create our future is huge, which is why we need to use it wisely. I find it all fascinating.

 

[Forest]

Excellent point, Ellen. I haven't noticed a strong connection between age and recovery time. Perhaps younger people recover faster on average, but not by much. I bet that there are a lot of factors that determine recovery time.

Perhaps there is a difference between learning new pathways (where kids have a big advantage) and unlearning old pathways (memory reconsolidation). Unlearning old emotional learnings is notoriously hard. Both the child and the adult had to learn how to ride the backwards bicycle, but given the relative ease with which Dustin resumed riding a regular bicycle in Amsterdam, it looks like he didn't "unlearn" the old pathways.

Perhaps in TMS, not only do you have to learn new pathways ("I'm safe," "my body is strong," "I'm fine the way I am"), but you also have to unlearn the old pathways related to the pain. It is undoing that conditioning and those thought patterns that can take a long time. Responding to symptoms with acceptance and uninterest rather than fear for example.

That's just a hypothesis, of course. I think that it is prudent to recognize that there are still some mysteries.

 

[Colly]

Love this video Forest!

Interesting point from Ellen. I think it depends on how deep the old pathway is, so a young person who has a deeper pathway will need perhaps more time for healing than an older person with a more shallow pathway.

Forest there's an amazing TV series on at the moment called 'Redesign my brain' - see if you can hold of a copy (ABC production).

Here's a trailer:

 

[Forest]

Oooh, that looks great. I checked it out and it's not available on NetFlix or Amazon where I am and I couldn't even view the promotional clips on the Australian Broadcasting Company because I'm from the US. It's a shame the way that digital rights can work.

I'm really glad that ABC is giving this great new science a wider audience, though. I'm really thrilled with what we are learning from brain science these days.

Plus, I found some links to some great other resources on the site for the show.

 

[BruceMC]

What the first video suggested to me is that if you hurt doing one activity, to reprogram your conditioned pain pathways (or whatever they are), a good strategy would be to do something very different for exercise that did not elicit the TMS pain response. Hence, if walking or running caused you to have TMS pain symptoms, it would be a good idea to swim or bike or anything else that didn't hurt. So, if you want to undo a cognitive bias that is keeping you stuck in a pain syndrome, it's important to break up your activities so that they don't reinforce your TMS programming.

 

[Forest]

They say that it is much easier to create a new connection in your brain than it is to erase an old one...

 

[BruceMC]

They say that it is much easier to create a new connection in your brain than it is to erase an old one...

Or as W.B. Yeats once put it so aptly, Forest: Does the imagination linger most on a woman won or a woman lost? Some programmed images you just can't get out of your head, I guess!

 

[Colly]

Hey Forest, you gotta see this Tod Sampson series! I watched the final episode last night and was blown away. I can get you a copy here and post it to you. Only thing is I can only get region 4, so hopefully you have a multi-region DVD player? Surely a nerd like you would have one of those!;-) I'm more than happy to send you a copy - it's brilliant!

 

[Forest]

Oooh, sounds fun! I checked with my GF (she's the multimedia maven; if it doesn't have a keyboard, I'm clueless) and apparently we only have region 1, though. I do have VLC on my PC, though, and it can open just about any sort of video file. Would that work?

 

[Colly]

I'll message you. Would love you to see this series