Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force - The Mind and the Brain

This book makes two controversial points; that we as humans have free will (the less controversial), that we humans have a mind (soul) that is connected to but seperate from our physical brain. It does a great job with the first point, and a pretty good job with the second (which is part of the reason I give it a 5/5)

In the sciences today there is a trend towards academic fatalism (the belief that we as people don't really have freewill but are the victims of our genes and upbringing).
In showing that we have freewill the author shows that our brains (which control our automatic behavior) have the amazing ability of neuroplasticity. And that the actual structure of our brain changes with the tasks that we give it, thus the structure of a skateboarder's brain is different from the structure of a gymnastist's brain, and even the difference between a homosexual and straight person's brain can be accounted for by changes in structure allowed by personal choice via neuroplasticity.

He goes on to show how the capacity of neuroplasticity has been underestimated by academic elites in the scientific community for ages and how they have been repeatedly prove wrong in regards to the limits of neuroplasticity (ie "it only applies to children", "only to a few select parts of the brain",etc). He shows the results of his own remarkable research that shows how neuroplasticity can even be used to treat psychological disorders such as obsessive compulsive disorder (using their freewill his patients were able to literally use their minds/awareness/souls (by making conscious willful discussion to not act on certain impulses) thus reconfiguring and reorganizing/changing their brain structure and thus not be victims of fate (in this case biological forces which predestined them to OCD).

He shows how this approach can be expanded to other psychological disorders and replace our society's ridiculous habit of pushing pills to treat psychological problems such as ADD, OCD and depression.

There is obviously alot more than I am mentioning in this book that is worth reading (heck this book is so good that will probably get a kick out of reading it multiple times). Thus I give it a 5/5.

The author uses his personal experiences as a human being and as a physician treating OCD patients to explore the mind body problem.

There are many "isms" associated with what stance a particular philosopher may take on the mind body/brain problem. In my limited mind I see two extremes with a continuum between which has not been fully explored.

One can believe, as most neuroscientists do, that the mind is nothing more than a consequence of purely physical process'. In it's most extreme form we have functionalism which repudiates any concept of mind outside the physical realm. As we move away from this concept we see various "isms" rear their head depending upon what modifications one can make to this thesis. If you believe that mind exists but has no influence on brain then you believe in epiphenomalism. Of course if you believe in the functionalist viewpoint and state that you truly do not know if mind exists outside body you subscribe to agnostic physicalism. Alternatively, if you concede that mind emerges from the brain and can affect the brain but cannot be wholly explained by physical phenomena then you are an emergent materialist. Going a bit further if you subsribe to the notion that the mind and brain are seperate entities and can affect one another then you hold on to dualistic interactionism.

The discovery of newtonian mechanics was a revolution which explained the unexplainable. Newtonian physics let to various deterministic outlooks in every field including biology and neuroscience. The discovery of quantum physics shattered the belief in deterministic systems and replaced it with probabilistic systems. Here we see a paradigm shift in physics from studying what "is" to what we can know about what "is". In the authors words a shift from ontology to epistimology. It is the inertia of newtonian thinking which persists in neuroscience today.

Like the author I subscribe to a mind independent of brain which can influence the brain. Whether quantum mechanics can explain this is an exciting question.

The author uses research in OCD, stroke patients, and the Silver Monkey debacle to argue that directed attention/mental force can alter brain circuitry/processing and that this mental force is not simply a physical process or byproduct of the brain itself.

He clearly explains basic concepts of neurophysiology, neuroanatomy and basic quantum mechanics so the unseasoned reader requires no background knowledge.

He incorporates the ideas of non-locality, quantum zeno effect, anti-realist implications of quantum mechanics and the mysterious collapse of the wave funtion during observation into a theory of mind over brain.

His thinking is that the choice of what to focus on ( Heisenberg choice ) leads to many outcomes of a probabilistic nature ( anti-realist implications of QM ) and that by directing attention one is able to select one possibility from the many ( quantum zeno effect ) which is then actualized ( collapse of the wave function ).

This new way of viewing the brain has many implications not just in philosophy but in clinical medicine, economics, sociology and in fact any science in which one has thinking participants. This has been alluded to in the past by George Soros in applications to market trends.

The main dilemma of course is: who or what is directing the attention in the first place? The author holds that it is free will/soul.

The author argues pesuasively for abandoning Newtonian explanations for brain function in favour of quantum mechanical explanations. However, the argument provides a mechanism for showing how such a mind-brain interface may work but assumes a priori that there is a distinction between mind and brain.

The materialists could argue that the quantum mechanical explanation of brain function and functionalism/materialism are not mutually exclusive. They could simply argue that quantum mechanics is simply another physical process, probabilistic not deterministic, but this does not imply there is a will or soul.

Like other great mysteries ( existence of god, life after death, etc )free will remains an enigma and you either believe in it or you don't.

Unlike like our predecessors we now have an explanation of how such a mind-brain interface may work.

Dr.Schwartz's book is an essential reading for the serious student, researcher and scholar of consciousness. Psychologists, psychiatrists, neuroscientists and philosophers of mind will find in this book hard scientific evidence from studies in neuroscience suggesting a new approach to consciousness, the causal efficacy of the mental force, and the therapeutic use of that force to positively enhance the well-being of patients with some psychological disorders.

Cognitive psychologists and professional psychotherapists will find this book as a very useful reading to understand how to help their patients in a better way, and the philosophical and scientific foundation of that new approach.

This book should to be complemented with Henry Stapp's book "Mindful Universe", because part of Schwartz's theoretical argument to explain the scientific findings discussed in his book, get its force (and theoretical framework) in the interpretation of quantum mechanics as developed by quantum physicist Henry Stapp.

However, Dr.Schwartz's book stand in its own merits as an important contribution to the scientific literature on consciousness and philosophical reflections about the mind.

this book is great in terms of psychology- full background on studies that support the authors point of view, can read as repetitive, but then again, isn't repetition key for retention?

the book isn't as bad as the negative reviews have it, nor as miraculous as the positive reviews do. it's great for the psychology of learning and neuroplasticity...

however, as for it's metaphysical content, post introductory run-down of the various viewpoints of philosophy of the mind (materialism, epiphenomenolism, etc.) in the beginning, the rest of the book is mysteriously void of the corresponding qualia debates (although i suppose the author is an M.D., not a Phil. Ph.D.). but if he would like to claim that mind is something other than matter, it would be nice to touch on this (especially concerning causal efficacy of non-material mind). i'll agree with other reader/reviewers that invoking quantum mechanics has become somewhat fashionable, but those parts were interesting reading, even if it didn't seem clear how he meant to invoke immaterial mind into the equation.

at least it makes you think about all these issues- to the negative reviews, no one book should be your single source anyway- schwartz has a captivating theory, which (just like anyone else's) should be taken with a grain of salt, open to interpretation and evolution...

Neuropsychiatrist Schwartz and award-winning science writer Begley have teamed to make brain science accessible to the intelligent lay reader audience, in the spirit of Brian Greene's accessible discussions of String Theory in such books as The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos.
Readers who are looking for self-help or light reading will not find it here.

Schwartz details his how his undergraduate study of philosophy led him to consider Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder as a research model to explore the interaction among mind, brain, and consciousness.

In this exploration, he developed a practical four-step Cognitive Behavior Modification approach to manage the unwanted obsessions and compulsions of his UCLA clinic patients:

o Relabel thoughts, urges as false signals, attributable to faulty brain circuitry

o Reattribute thoughts, urges to faulty brain circuitry

o Refocus attention away from disturbing thoughts, urges onto constructive behavior

o Revalue disturbing thoughts, impulses to eliminate intrinsic value, inherent power

This widely-applicable process can be used by anyone to increase self-management of unwanted or unpleasant thoughts or emotional reactions.

Begley has written additional titles in the same theme, with somewhat less dense content:

* Begley,S. Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves

* Begley, S. The emotional life of your brain: How its unique patterns affect the way you think, feel, and live --- and how you can change them.

I add my thoughts to the other 59 reviews, almost all of which I have just read. Overall this is a remarkable book, worth the effort at times of struggling through some of the details, but definitely a book to read and reread. I agree that Dr. Schwatrz and writer Begley do not fully succeed in convincing most readers that there is something going on in the Universe and within individuals that "proves" the reality of Spirit.(See: Larry Dossey,MD's several books on the power of words, the power of prayer, and many other non-physical phenomena).
Most of the findings and descriptions of the role of mind and/or thinking on neurophysiological functioning, both pathological and enahncing, is exciting and encouraging. As a psychiatrist for the past 61 years, and a feader since the age of 6, I find this a highly meaningful piece of writing, notwithstanding all its warts and blemishes. I agree that the details of animal abuse could have been left out without diminishing the rest, but who is perfect? I hope Dr. Schewartz will do more writing and sharing.

I'm not too invested in the ideas presented here, I think the authors have an agenda and are finding reasons to believe it which is a annoying; but mostly my low rating is due to the absolutely tedious and redundant writing style. It's like they take an idea that could be explained in three sentences, find five ways to write each of those sentences, then cycle through them for an entire page. I don't need to read the same idea rehashed into different words that many times. Jesus

I agree with the more thoughful customer reviews of this very interesting book. Some chapters are very educational, thought-provoking, and enlightening. Those chapters are at the beginning and the end of the book. They describe obsessive-compulsive disorders and treatments, the history of the mind vs brain debates, quantum physics, volition, and how these topics explain the mind.
The middle chapters about animal experiments serve little purpose, are confusing and are depressing.
Furthermore, this book desperately needs editing. Too much of the text is obviously dictation, and there are silly and unnecessary analogies throughout. The chapter on free will is interesting, but the cited experiments are ridiculous.
Having said all this, I recommend this book, but advise selective reading.

Schwarz outlines scientific evidence of "neuroplasticity", the ability of the neurons in the brain to form new connections. Neuroplasticity is the result of "Attentiveness", or Mental force, and in illustrating this concept, Schwarz clearly designates between the Mind and the Brain. The Mind can change the Brain. Schwarz ties neuroplasticity to quantum mechanics, and thus tries to create a Unified Theory of Consciousness. This is an excellent book to challenge determinists (like Rita Carter) who insist that there is zero free will and we are entirely the result of biochemistry. Schwarz uses examples of scientific and psychological experiments to prove his point--this is not just abstract philosophical argumentation like so many other "Brain-philosophers" getting published today. The author addresses the infamous Libet experiment that apparently proved epiphenomenalism (the idea that consciousness has no casual impact on the brain, and the neurons work first before the mind "decides"), and this is one of the most important aspects of the book, as Libet's experiment is trotted out repeatedly to prove determinism.
However, Schwarz's free will is not idealized. His interpretation of the mind is more like a sleepy sailor on a mini-sailboat. The sailor is the mind, the boat is the brain, and the wind is nature. If the sailor isn't alert, the wind will guide the boat wherever the wind takes it. However, if the sailor is attentive, he can guide the boat however he wishes. Focus and attention are necessities--when we act rashly or go w/ our immediate reaction, we are just being guided by the wind. Schwarz is a Buddhist, but his conclusions can be applied to any philosophy or religion. His more "weird" conclusions are the result of confronting the "weird" realities of Quantum Mechanics and non-locality.
If there are any weaknesses in the book, it's two: 1.) the middle section on the monkeys is unnecessary, repetitive, and disgusting. He proves his point w/ human research, no need to bring this depressing garbage up of tortured monkeys, you can skip these chapters, and 2.) He is a little too hard on Descartes, as much modern day philosophers are. Is not the division between Mind and Brain, between Quantum wave fluctuation and Newtonian particles, merely updated versions of Cartesian duality? The lines may be blurred between the Mind of Volition and the Matter of classical physics, but they remain distinct on some level, if not in form than in purpose. Schwarz's dualism is far more Cartesian than modern-day postermodernism or deterministic biochemistry. "Cogito Ergo Sum" is reinforced by "Mindfull Attentiveness", not undermined.

I read this book for my neuroscience class and found this book to be an easy read as well as very informative.

The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force has taught me more about will power and the power of the mind than I thought ever existed. This book was written for people with little biological and neurological understanding and was actually an easy and interesting read. Although the book was longer than I expected, I found each chapter enjoyable. Each chapter added more in depth understanding of the idea of consciousness and will-power.

The author describes how most neuroscientists did not believe in plasticity of the brain and the idea that the brain could change once created. This book trails the changing ideas of neuroplasticity (changes in the brain) and of the mind versus the brain. The author explains how scientists believed the brain could not change, that it could change in adolescent years, that it could change in adult years, and that it is what we call the mind that can change it.

This book, although at times detailed and repetitive, was very interesting and informative. It was written for someone with little neuroscience or even biology background. The author keeps the storylines interesting and writes in a plain conversational language. The book is broken up into ten chapters and goes in chronological order of neurological findings throughout the years. Each chapter has more interesting information and as each chapter goes on, you find more of the answer to the question of mind versus brain.

The book begins by discussing the evolution of the ideas of neuroscience. Scientists originally thought of the brain as solely a mechanistic part that cannot change. The change to the idea that the brain has plasticity and can be changed and that the mind can control the brain was a revolutionary idea that is still battled to this day. It seems that scientists are as stubborn as everyone else. Even with the evidence right in front of them, they did not think it was possible.

The author goes on to explain that the past patients with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder were forced to touch dirty toilets, even animal feces and forced to go hours without washing their hands. When he learned about his type of therapy, he thought there had to be another way to help treat patients without putting them through these disgusting tasks. Over the years, different scientists began to study OCD patients' brains and found out that certain parts of their brains were damaged. They had an over-activated pathway that deals with emotions in decision-making. The author realized that once he told this to the patients and they realized it was not their fault, they could finally deal with their disorder and begin to move on. He described his experience, "We were changing the lives of people who before had been almost totally paralyzed by their OCD." It took a long time for the scientists to realize exactly why these patients were acting the way they did. This answer helped them tackle the disease from the most elementary part by asking why, instead of just trying to make them stop having the disease.

The brain is a very complicated and detailed organ. From birth, the brain begins the same; however, over time it changes due to ones life experiences. Because the brain has plasticity, whatever neural pathways are used more, the more likely they are to persist. If the pathway is not used, it will essentially die. For this to make sense, I think about memory. I can remember very few things from when I was five years old, but why can I remember some and not others? Those moments in my life were more important to me, and I thought about those memories more often. This reinforces the pathway and allows that specific pathway to exist.

It was found using monkeys and other test animals that if you remove a sensory organ such as removing a toe, or cutting the nerve to the arm that the region in the brain that use to control this sense organ has now been replaced by a different place on the body. This, again, is proof of the idea of plasticity. If a pathway is not used, then it will not continue to survive. Another pathway that is used more will take its place, rather than that pathway never being used again. At this point in the book, I began to get very interested and felt like I finally understood neuroplasticity as a basic science and wanted to keep reading more.

As more and more studies came out, the idea of plasticity changed from a phenomenon that could only happen in childhood to one that could happen throughout life. You can change your brain and the way it functions throughout adulthood. The author reflects on the impact of these ideas, "Contrary to Cajal and virtually every neuroscientist since, the adult brain can change. It can grow new cells. It can change the function of old ones. It can rezone an area that originally executed one function and assign it another." This was such a revolutionary idea; however it seems simple to think about. Adults can learn languages and learn to play instruments. It may be more difficult, but the point is that the changes and pathways in the brain that are necessary for these skills can still be created in adulthood.

Now that the idea of neuroplasticity is concrete, the question is what makes this happen? This part of the book becomes more complicated to me, however the author does a good job at putting everything into basic terms. He gives the answer of quantum physics. "There is no `is' until an observer makes an observation" helps describe the overall theory of quantum physics. Objects only exist because we tell our brain that they do. The question then becomes, how does quantum physics affect the plasticity of our brain? The idea is mental force and this is shown through the OCD patients being able to "cure" themselves of this disease with thinking; however the exact pathways of this quantum physics are still very rudimentary. Mental force is the idea that intention then causes attention and attention can physically change the brain. Again, this is seen in the OCD patients who have to think about the urges they are getting to overcome the obsession.

The idea that attention is the ultimate phenomenon in this book is incredible. What you decide to give attention to have the possibility of changing how your brain works. This book has forever changed me and my opinions about free will. The author does a great job of explaining everything so any reader can read and understand these scientific breakthroughs. I definitely recommend this book to anybody interested in learning about mind over matter, free will, or the evolution of neuroscience.

Dr. Schwartz's innovative look into neuroscience discoveries past and present is a most enlightening read. He begins by tying in his own personal OCD research, mixes studies on brain structure and activity with biology and quantum physics, then comes full circle to his OCD studies. In a humorous yet truthful sort of coincidence, you can almost feel your brain changing as you fill it with the detailed information throughout this intriguing book. Awareness takes on a whole new level as you open the unseen world that runs like clockwork behind our everyday lives.....a great way to open new doors for biology, neuroscience and physics fans alike.

The author is onto something worthy of a close inspection. But he falls somewhat short of the target. The main thesis of the book relies heavily on the notion of "attention" as being categorically different from other brain activities. However, he lays very thin ground for the difference. And the trouble explodes when he tries to characterize the property of "attention" by an hasty analogy to the quantum mechanics. Yet the book can serve as a good reference to start a conversation in the direction that has been largely overlooked by those heavily bent on materialistic reductionism.

This is an engaging and stimulating book, at times fascinating, at other times frustrating. The paydirt: Schwartz chronicles numerous experiments in neuroscience to make a compelling and exciting case for the therapeutic role that our own intentional thoughts can play in treating a variety of mental and physical ailments.

But his larger aim here is to take those findings in neuroscience as proof, or at least very strong evidence, that humans are not purely physical beings subject to the deterministic laws of the natural world, but that we have a non-material self with the power of free will, a power that includes the ability to will changes to the physical brain itself. As it turns out, this move from science to metaphysics is a rather audacious overreach.

The arguments are presented within narratives of both the development of modern neuroscience and the development of Schwartz's own thinking on free will and its capacity to (literally) transform us into better beings. It's fun and endearing to read the biographical details and motivations that drove him to his insights, and it reveals the sincerity and passion of Schwartz's pursuits.

Schwartz recounts how he came to develop an effective new treatment for OCD, one that is based upon the individual achieving some mental distance between the compulsive thought and the self, so that the person can, in a sense, disown the compulsive thought and then refrain from yielding to it by willfully engaging in a different activity. The mental techniques he taught his patients are similar to the mental techniques one learns from Buddhist meditation, of which Schwartz is a dedicated practitioner.

The new treatment is successful, Schwartz claims, precisely because it requires patients to actively direct their attention away from the compulsive desire and onto more constructive things. And he presents an array of experiments that provide further evidence for the view that the volitional thoughts of a subject can increase positive therapeutic outcomes.

The thing is, none of this demonstrates the existence of some metaphysical free will residing within us. Schwartz's OCD treatment, the experiments he references (most of which are performed on monkeys - does he think they have free will too?), as well as the practice of mindfulness, are all easily explainable from within a deterministic framework. Volition could be a purely physical phenomenon.

One of the remarkable findings of recent neuroscience is that human brains go through continuous rewiring throughout life, not just during childhood as was previously held. Schwartz looks at the brains of his patients who responded positively to his OCD treatment and finds that their brains have changed as a result of the treatment. Since Schwartz believes that his treatment is based upon his patients' use of the non-material power of free will, this implies that they have literally used their free will to change their physical brains.

Yet, there's that age-old philosophical mind-body problem to contend with at this point, for how can something non-physical change something physical without violating every law of physics in the books? Here, Schwartz draws a solid line between the old physics of Newton, which is wrong, and the new physics of quantum mechanics. Drawing heavily on his friend Henry Stapp, a theoretical physicist at UC-Berkeley, Schwartz claims that the probabilities and indeterminacies of the new physics can provide us with the theoretical resources needed to explain how human consciousness can alter physical reality.

Again, though, even if we make the (perhaps dubious) assumption that Schwartz's theoretical conjecture is correct here, it still in no way entails that there is anything non-material going on inside of our heads. Our consciousness could still be a purely physical phenomenon. Quantum mechanics might one day radically transform how all of us conceive of the physical world, but that in no way leads us to bring non-physical components of ourselves into the picture.

So, yes, it is wonderfully promising news that scientists, including Schwartz, have demonstrated that volitional thoughts can impact our behavior and even our bodies; but Schwartz is incorrect to claim that this offers any evidence or proof for a non-physical self with the power of free will. The empirical finding sheds no light on these metaphysical issues whatsoever. On a corollary note, it is also significant to note that the practice of Buddhist mindfulness has positive psychological benefits, yet that in no way confirms or disproves the Buddha's metaphysical doctrines about karma, which Schwartz declares in the closing pages of the book to be correct. As I put the book down, I couldn't help but thinking that, if Siddhartha Gautama already got it right over 2,500 years ago, did we really have to mutilate all those research monkeys after all? And don't you get bad karma for doing horrendous things to monkeys, or are you off the hook if you do it to advance medical knowledge?

"The Mind & The Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force" is an eye opening venture into the recently discovered world of neuroplasticity. The book also delves heavily into the power of mental force, with the Schwartz drawing extensively from Buddhist principles to guide the therapeutic techniques he has pioneered for OCD patients. Additionally, Schwartz, a staunch advocate of free will, explains a fair amount about the quantum theory of the mind, an idea I had yet to come across until I read this book.

Overall, the book is well written, fairly well laid out, and many well developed points are presented. It is written from Jeffrey Schwartz's point of view and follows many of his own experiences. However, I feel like the author was unnecessarily verbose throughout much of the book and hinged on repeating the same points for tens of pages at a time. In addition, I feel the reader would have benefited from a reordering of several sections. That said, he makes a firm argument for all of his points and I respect the fact that he makes no denial of the fact that he is an adamant proponent mind/body dualism. There is more than enough detail provided and for those interested in further information, references are provided in the back of the book.

The style of this book is factual with many anecdotal stories provided to make it easier to read. However, at times, the book can be difficult to read and I found myself often referring to the dictionary. Still, the authors do a great job introducing important individuals in the story and include a dizzying array of plasticity and disease treatment experiments that have been conducted. The book starts by focusing on the mind/matter debate and then goes into Schwartz's experience with treating OCD patients. This is followed by an enormous section on neuroplasticity taking up nearly half of the book with the remainder being taken by a quantum theory of the mind and the role of attention in mental force.

"The Matter of the Mind"
The book begins by going right into the mind/matter debate and detailing the argument between the materialists, who argue that the mind is an illusion, and dualists, who explicitly believe in the reality of the mind. Since neuroscience has had such great success detailing the many pathways and functional areas of the brain (for example, showing touching an object with your finger causes a very specific part of the brain to activate), to the materialist camp, it seemed that it would only be time until the mysteries of the mind and consciousness were unraveled. Materialists argue that behavior is a complex reaction that stems strictly from stimuli and that free will is just an illusion. However, Schwartz has great distrust of this means of reasoning and immediately shows that his stance is firmly on the side of emergent materialism, a point of view that argues that the mind arises from the brain in a way that cannot be reduced to the brain processes themselves. One big point that Swartz makes is if behavior was entirely causal then there is no point for the justice system. He says, "If all of the body and brain can be completely described without invoking anything so empyreal as a mind...then the notion that a person is morally responsible for his actions appears quaint, if not scientifically naïve." This part of the book is great in setting up the story for the rest of the book; however, it is far too long-winded and the author constantly repeats his point until the reader is numb from overexposure. He spends far too much time detailing the specific camps people have taken on the debate (functionalism, epiphenomenalism, emergent materialism, agnostic physicalism, etc...) when that time could have been used to dive right into the interesting parts of the book that followed.

"Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder"
Schwartz then beings to talk about OCD and therapeutic approaches, an area he has spent much of his career researching. He shows his disgust for a treatment approach called "exposure and response prevention (ERP)," in which an OCD patient is forced to be exposed to the thing that triggers his/her obsessive thoughts and ride out the anxiety without giving in to compulsions. For example, a patient with a compulsion to wash their hands would be forced to touch dirty toilets and not allowed to wash his/her hands. This therapy in particular has been heralded by materialists. According to them, because it has been shown to be effective in animals, it should be effective in humans. Schwartz believes that human's unique gift of consciousness can be used to help patients overcome the disorder. After researching the disease in detail, he developed a Four Step method in which patients acknowledge the fact that the obsession is coming from a glitch in the brain and, with the use of sheer willpower, force themselves to think about something other than the obsession. Over time, the brain reprograms itself and many of these patients have functional changes in their neural circuitry. This functional change is solid evidence for Schwartz that the mind has real powers and isn't an illusion created by some evolutionary mishap. I felt like this part of the book was very well detailed and it was nice to see Schwartz talk about individual patients, making the disease seem more real. I also enjoyed the fact that he detailed the steps he took to discover the circuitry responsible for OCD and how he felt it could be hijacked to aid the patient.

"Neuroplasticity"
The next few sections of the book detail the mechanisms, history, and implications of neuroplasticity. Schwartz begins in "Birth of a Brain" by detailing the enormous task of the embryo to develop a brain and describing the sheer magnitude of the task (some 100 billion nerve cells in a newborn brain, 100 trillion synapses). In "The Silver Spring Monkeys," the tale of the famous 17 macaque monkeys is played out. Edward Taub, a researcher originally experimenting with these monkeys, was convinced of several charges of animal abuse due to their condition. Throughout a decade long legal battle, Taub managed to drop each and every charge, but not before the Silver Spring monkeys would change the face of neuroscience and show the vast level of cortical reorganization the brain was capable of. Prior to this, the adult brain was considered to be mostly fixed and immutable. However, the discoveries of the Silver Spring monkeys (Pons & Mishkin - Science (1991)) completely toppled this view. In the next section, "The Mapmakers," Schwartz talks about all the research that had been done prior that seriously indicated a brain capable of neuroplasticity but did not do so definitively. In my opinion, it would have been better to place "The Mapmakers" before "The Silver Spring Monkeys." That way, the tale of neuroplasticity could unfold chronologically and the true impact of the Silver Spring monkeys could be understood. In "Survival of the Busiest" and "Network Remodeling," Schwartz talks about neuroplasticity in the context of behavioral changes and not loss of sensory organs/signals. Overall, I greatly enjoyed this part of the book. Schwartz does a fantastic job of detailing the history of neuroplasticity and I certainly appreciated the fact that he went to great pains to explain just how difficult and time consuming some of the experiments were. In addition, he places each experiment in context and explains the scientific implications of the results. This is one of the best summaries of the history of neuroplasticity I have ever come across. If nothing else, this section itself makes the book worth the read.

"Quantum Theory of the Mind"
This is easily the most interesting and unique part of the book. In "The Quantum Brain," Schwartz, with the help of physicist Henry Stapp, details the fact that the "mind" can be accounted for with quantum effects. In Schwartz and Stapp's argument, the essence of the mind cannot be made more fundamental, much like space and time cannot be made more fundamental than they already are. Through quantum effects (entanglement, Quantum Zeno effect) which are specified in the book, the mind is able to control what paths to follow and ultimately create free will. According to Schwartz, "Quantum mechanics makes it feasible to describe a mind capable of exerting effects that neurons alone cannot." However, in "Free Will, and Free Won't," Schwartz presents experimental evidence for the fact that free will may not necessarily be the ability to conjure up ideas and behaviors but rather the ability to choose amongst those presented. In fact, Liebet, the experimenter who discovered this, said "Conscious will could thus affect the outcome of the volitional process even though the latter was initiated by unconscious cerebral processes." To me, these are easily the most profound implications of the book. I applaud the fact that the author sought a physical, logical explanation for the mind instead of going into a philosophical debate. The idea of free will being a veto process rather than a creative process came as a shock to me, but now that I have dwelled on the notion, it makes sense. From that point of view, however, free will is still very important because refraining from an act is just as much an act as anything else.

"The Role of Attention"
One point that that Schwartz repeatedly makes is the fact that the power of the mind is useless without firm attention. He goes as far as to say "The effect of attention on the brain offers a rational, coherent, and intuitively satisfying explanation for the interaction between mind and brain, and for the causal efficacy of mental force." Using his own experience, he mentions how the patients of his that best recover from OCD are those that put the most attention into the process and try their absolute hardest. The ideas presented by this section, while nothing new, are still extremely important with a sizeable amount of scientific literature backing it up. I believe this is the best way the book could have been ended and certainly leaves the reader with a sense of hope that anything can be accomplished with the right amount of attention. If a stroke victim can overcome a crippling injury and learn to walk again with intensive therapy and attention, there is no reason that a healthy person can't learn a new language or learn to play an instrument, even in old age.

Overall, this book as a very informative read, albeit somewhat long and tedious. I would whole-heartedly recommend it to anybody interested in neuroplasticity and the power of the mind and for those who would like a fresh insight into what it means to have free will. There are a great number of sources cited and books mentioned, so it is very easy to delve deeper into an interesting topic. While it could have gotten its point across in fewer pages, the knowledge gleaned from this book certainly makes up for its downfalls.

This book presents a scientific premise that though you may be born hard wired or predisposed to certain thinking patterns those patterns are changeable. You are what you think and how you think will make you what you will be. Yes we can inherit certain traits and chemical imbalances can affect our attitudes , but we are not bound , we are not slave to these patterns of thought . We can change the way we think . The admonition of scripture " to let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus " is achievable . We can develop new thinking patterns . That is one of the great blessings of meditating (thinking in a specific manner) on scripture that by this we can develop the mind of Christ in us . We do not have to be bound by hatred of another . When we consistently pray for one ( not pray against ) who is a perceived enemy , with time and practice our perception will change , our attitude will change , our MIND will change , even though they may not change their attitude towards us( this is about changing ourselves "0UR own MIND"). We cannot always make people like us but we can chose to love them . This book presents the scientific facts concerning the plasticity of the brain (the ability to reshape our brains by the application of our mind (will). ) This book is a great encouragement for personnel change . Chemical imbalances affect the way we think , but the way we think affects the chemicals we release . Bitterness is rooted in our habits of thought and can only be rooted out by a new way of thinking (Jesus is the way the truth and the light). This book is not a theology book but The Bible will shed a lot of light on it . The heart of man ( how he thinks , our emotional seat )can be changed . With the help of Christ we can break the chains and habits of (the motions) miss thinking , negative thought life , lustful thinking(sin) . Some may call it "the power of positive thinking" , the Bible refers to it as righteous living or , doing what is right in the sight of God (as defined by scripture in the Bible). We can develop an attitude of gratitude for the blessings in our life even as we strive to over come the difficulties we daily face . The fact that there are now instruments that can register our mental activity and quantify mental changes is a bonus.

Let me state briefly what I think about this book. If this book, with its gutsy thesis, gets a wide reading among cognitive scientist, neuroscientists, psychologist, and philosophers specializing in philosophy of mind, it will produce a real and far-reaching paradigm shift in discussions on the mind-brain connection. If it gets a wide reading among non-specialist layfolks, it will change many, many lives.
One statement on page 95 gives the thesis succinctly: "Conscious, volitional decisions and changes in behavior alter the brain." Schwartz offers plenty of evidence for this claim from PET scans of individuals suffering from OCD. On page 93 he writes: "The results achieved with OCD supported the notion that the conscious and willful mind differs from the brain and cannot be explained solely and completely by matter, by the material substance, of the brain. For the first time hard science--for what could be 'harder' than the metabolic activity measured by PET scans?--had weighed in on the side of mind-matter theories that...question whether mind is nothing but matter."
If these assertions intrigue you, you will enjoy the book. If you hold an opposing view you will also appreciate the substantial intellectual challenge this book offers your theory. I think probably one of the most important contributions this book makes is to affirm the common sense belief that we have some control over our lives and we can change for the better. The self-help gurus who urge reprogramming the mind/brain and behavior consistent with the reprogramming were right, at least in regard to the matter of self-control. If you'd like hard science (as well as passionate encouragement) that supports you in your efforts to control yourself, you will enjoy this book. If you make money giving self-help seminars, you need this book. If you want hope for changing for the better, you need this book.

There's a lot of interesting and useful information in this book, but it's not without it's flaws. On the positive side:

- The descriptions of experiments on the brain are fascinating. So are the descriptions of experiments in quanta mechanics and the resulting paradoxes.

- I find the conclusions regarding the brain's ability to rewire itself quite inspiring.

- I also find very interesting the idea that Buddhist meditation may be driving neuroplastic changes; it is implied that this physiological change--unbeknownst to the practitioner--is what is actually gained through meditation.

- I admire authors' drive to bring science to questions regarding sentience, although it isn't clear how successful they are; as others have said, taking the evidence provided to the conclusions provided requires a leap of faith. In any case, it's a start from which others may build.

On the flip side:

- I found myself reading reworded versions of the same idea over and over. It was as if the authors were themselves trying to rewire the reader's brain through repetitive exercises. Unfortunately, this makes the reader lose attention, thus undermining this goal.

- There is a lot of text that attempts to add a human interest perspective. Maybe this was considered important to the commercial appeal the book. But, for this reader, it only diluted the value.

- As mentioned by many others, the authors do not provide convincing evidence to support their conclusions on free will. For example, the authors provide very interesting details about quanta mechanics and the evidence that the universe is not deterministic. While I agree that a deterministic universe eliminates the possibility of free will, the inverse is not true: proof of a non-deterministic universe does not result in proof of the existence of free will.

On the whole debate over free will, I have concluded there are two levels at which people discuss this question: (1) a real-world, practical view and (2) a theoretical view. In the real-world view, as long as one consciously believes he has the ability to make choices, he has free will. There may be a perspective that exists, maybe from the view of deities or the afterlife, in which it is clear that free will is just an illusion; this possibility is the theoretical view. But this theoretical view just doesn't matter in the real world. The answer to the theoretical view of free will, whatever it is, has no moral implications to this world (the book is very concerned that the answer has deep moral implications). The fact is, sentient creatures believe that they make decisions under their own volition and believe that these decisions have consequences to themselves and others.

The authors start out with the theoretical question and proceed to prove only the real-world view. But I don't know if the real-world view of free will needs proving. Doesn't everyone believe they experience volition?

Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to rewire itself by the use of one's will -- which is quite controversial in some circles as I found out from the book.

I really enjoyed the book by Dr. Schwartz on the topic, the first couple of chapters were tough to get through as my brain rewired itself to understand words like "volition".
As an engineer, I loved the sections on Quantum Theory and how the brain works, it made absolute sense to me.

I used the knowledge gained by reading the book to quit smoking --whenever I thought about smoking -- I told myself to think "I choose life". My new circuit is now dominant.

The book helped me change my life.

This book provides the reader a very thought provoking experience regarding what causes a person to produce certain thoughts and how one is able to regulate unwanted thoughts and actually change brain morphology and thought patterns. It integrates concepts in neuroscience with physics and applies these concepts to patients with neurological/psychological disorders. There are spots in which readers interested in neuroscience may think the discussion of physics requires a bit of patience and thought, but if you continue reading it will continue to suprise you.

Schwartz et al focused too much attention on scientific controversy and academic infighting. The average non-neuroscientist reader probably doesn't care about inside baseball ; which conference attendees disagreed with which speakers' theories and so on. Too much time was spent on the Silver Spring Monkey case. The author's claim of many years of mindfulness practice contradicts his writing style. I found it to be defensive and frankly, a bit immature.

I really do like this book. The story is compelling and the amount of information presented is prodigious. Like other reviewers have stated the writing can be a little hard to wade through but I think the concepts given make it worth the effort.

Schwartz argues that there is a 'mental force' that is the mind behind the brain and I think it's here that he goes astray. Not woefully astray but astray in the sense that his prejudices are showing. Had he stuck to the physical workings of the brain the book would still be a winner. But he isn't happy in this camp. Schwartz is looking for something behind neurochemistry. I liken this to the intelligent design folks over at the evolution debate. They cannot imagine certain processes developing via natural mechanisms so they interject a 'designer.' I see this as intellectual arrogance: "since we can't figure it out there must be something more." Maybe a good excuse for fifth grade algebra but no so for grown-up scientists. I don't see Schwartz in the same light but he's close and his argument is similar: we just can't figure this out so there must be something behind it. An obvious fan of William James and Buddhism I wonder if he's beginning with answers and looking for questions...

On the plus side, I loved reading about the experiments and gaining an understanding about what the results mean and how that works with neuroplasticity. I believe that the brain can be changed with "exercise" and that's what made me pick-up this book.

But I personally was hoodwinked by the whole "the mind is not of this world" thing. It seemed to me, an admitted novice, but not a complete dolt, that Dr. Schwartz should have been up-front with counter arguments. I think it was nearly 100 pages into the book before he mentioned that it could be that one part of the brain was changing another. We do have a "reptile brain" with a more modern brain added later...I could see where one part could teach the other part something! I wouldn't expect him to argue forcefully for the other camp, but I recognized (with some other readings) that the other position was distorted to improve his (rather weak) argument.

Something the other reviews didn't mention was that this was a bit of a biography for Schwartz. He tells us when, where, who, what they talked about. It's also a bit of a history lesson; sometimes I'd be excited about a topic, only to find out the experiment was in the 1800's (and there's no fMRI results).

I'm in the camp with some of the other reviewers that got tired of the repetition. If the repetition was eliminated, the folksy "I was with 'Mr. Cool' on this day" was eliminated, and especially the drumbeat of how the mind exists outside of reality, you'd have a much more readable and interesting book.

The physical brain can be "all there is" and still operate upon itself! Nothing in this book convinced me otherwise.

Schwartz provides a thorough picture of the development of neuroscience over the 20 years. His research into OCD is presented in a simple yet beautiful way. His book open my mind to the beauty of the human brain and to the idea of the mind. The chapter on physics was a little hard to understand.

This is the first book I purchased on the subject of neuroplasticity, and I was very suprised that it was so easy to understand. I was glued to this book for a week straight. If you are interested in the brain and neuroplasticity but you're not a scientist, this is the book to buy.

The conclusions drawn by this author fly in the face of hundreds of years of cognitive science. Yet more and more researchers are coming to the same conclusion -- that the brain's plasticity allows it to change to meet changed circumstances. Schwartz spends a considerable amount of text explaining OCD, but it is experience with OCD that supports his conclusions. A tough read in parts, but very startling information for the status quo.

An excellent book arguing against material determinism using science of neuropsychology and quantum mechanics. Also does great at thoroughly discussing the history of both making it very accessible to any lay reader.

A mind-blowing read that presents the first hard scientific evidence that what we call "the mind" (consciousness) can physically alter the brain (matter) by choosing what we focus our attention on. Doesn't take a genius to see the far reaching implications of this.

Schwartz and Begley provide evidence for our dualistic existence. While physicists have ducked the question of determinism, evolution has been based on random mutation, a physical impossibility. Schwartz and Begley examine some evidence that shed light on the discrepancies between biology and physics. They are hinting at what I get to: you can't be intelligent and believe in evolution. I highly recommend it. Robert Affolter Dupe 'em and Dope 'em

Just reading this work has opened my eyes and mind to other ways of looking at helping people. The old "talk therapy" is still based on assumptions that just are not true. Thanks for another, better, pespective.

Boring, boring, boring!
I thought this book would have a wealth of clinical anecdotes that tell us how the author supports his claim. Well, maybe somewhere in the book it does but I have just spent over a half hour reading about umpteen theories of consciousness are or were held by living and dead eggheads! I give up. Returned the book! Any author that can't make a concept more interesting than this drool does not deserve to call himself an author!
(Nice book cover though, goes to show you, don't judge a book by its cover!)

He is a spiritual person. Well I thought about what he was talking about a lot. I'm not going to explain all of my thoughts here, but I at least mention what conclusions I reached, lemme know if anyone else shares these. First of all he doesn't come out of closet and candidly say that I believe in god and I think the spiritual world is definitely involved with human brains.
He keeps that hidden throughout for several reasons which mostly are obvious; he hiddenly calls those "spiritual effects", mind!
So what is mind? He never answers that question. I think he does that so maybe some of his not smarter audiences conclude that maybe god exists or maybe science does explain religion somehow. And then he brings up the quantum physics and says Aha that's what it is, quantum physics explains mind but he never says how, all he says is that the classical physics doesn't explain mind it only explains brain, particles hitting each other and stuff. By involving quantum physics I think he's trying to gain more validity or legitimacy on his absolutely non-valid arguments.
My final comment is "WHAT?!"
Why don't you explain what you are talking about instead of just bombarding us by your opinions? Don't just say brain sucks say why it sucks.
Oh, btw I don't belong to Arkansas, I should be living in NY or CA at least.

In general I found the book engaging and interesting, but it has one short-coming and a premise which is a couple of thousand years old.
The short-coming is that the book is too much of a biography of his scientific career. The ancient premise is that there is some duality, that the brain is the mind, but there is "more". This "more" he calls "mental force" or free will. It's basically the soul in the mind, which is based on his premise that the mind is nothing but a machine, which is of course an unacceptable idea to him and most others. The problem is that his premise is wrong - he has not yet come to grips with the fact that the complexity of the brain itself is so enormous that it, in itself, has the ability to choose between many paths of thinking, and thus create free will. Invoking quantum physics (I know little, but what I understood seemed like gibberish) is unnecessary, but apparently feels good to someone who still needs to cling to something outside of the physical brain. He doesn't call it "soul", but it is really just a more scientifically bolstered version of the same thing.

Parts of this book were unreadable. Content aside, the obscene amount of repetition in the book is extremely irritating.

Why don't writers learn that if you can say it in 100 pages, then why use 500? This entire book could have been 100 pages, and if it was 100 pages, then it might have been reviewed by those in the field, instead of ignored. The rambling repetition, repeating his alleged theory over and over, is unreal. He must have repeated one idea 300 times, page after page after page. Maybe he has OCD!

Also, his theory of "quantum physics" when applied to the mind is certainly wrong. There are a zillion of these pet theories out there. "Quantum physics" is the new boogie-man everyone can use to try and dupe people.

His idea that one part of the brain "can't" be controlling another part of the brain is certainly wrong.

I was waiting for this guy to start promoting some cult guru and meditation practice at some point, that's how blatant it is. He is a Buddhist, and is trying to reverse engineer a theory about why Buddhism is the ultimate reality.

Is there no end to these books?

Where is the intellectual integrity, to actually try and find out some facts?

He distorts "materialism" to an obscene degree. He distorts behaviorism, and gives extreme examples.

He goes on and on about the founding of PETA...who cares? Its just padding and distraction.

Everything he talks about is covered in Cognitive Behavior Therapy.

The fact is that no one yet knows how the Mind-Brain works, and these types of books do not help the situation.

It seems to me he is just trying to promote his OCD technique, and Buddhism.

Like they say, a big book, is a big evil.

Please publishers, FORCE your writers to CONDENSE their ideas, and get rid of the crud, so we can review their ideas in a more clear fashion.

This book is meant for New Age True Believers, who know nothing about "biological materialism" and just want to defend their beliefs.

Its not a serious book.

This books sets out to scientifically prove that them ind can heal the body. Neuroplasticity is an amazing concept and in this book it is used in depth to treat and cure many mental illnesses. If you're interested in the power of the human mind and brain I highly recommend getting this book. It's a fantastic read.
You will have to learn one key thing if you don't know already; and that is that the mind is different than the brain...Or is it? *brain explodes*

There are many great comparisons in this book to try to validate that the mind is separate the brain and others that say the mind is the same as the brain.