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Showing posts from August, 2012

Brain Rewires Itself - Always Good News with the Brain

Good information from this The New York Times article.  Here it goes -  August 6, 2012, 2:08 pm Really? The Brain Gets Rewired if One of the Senses Is Lost By ANAHAD O'CONNOR THE FACTS Certain regions of the human brain are dedicated to the various senses. The visual cortex handles vision, for example, while the auditory cortex processes sound. But what happens if one of the senses is lost? Do the neurons in the auditory cortex of a deaf person atrophy and go to waste, for instance, or are they put to work processing vision and other senses? In studies, scientists have shown that when one sense is lost, the corresponding brain region can be recruited for other tasks. Researchers learned this primarily by studying the blind. Brain imaging studies have found that blind subjects can locate sounds using both the auditory cortex and the occipital lobe , the brain's visual processing center. But recently a similar phenomenon was discovered in the deaf. In

Neuroplasticity of Our Nurses’ Brains

Brain is constantly changing by forming and even growing new neural connections.   This inherent malleability is called neuroplasticity.   Training, experience and environmental factors can help rearrange the brain.  So we necessarily don’t die with the brain we are born with.     ‘Practice makes a man perfect’, and similar other sayings were in fact alluding to Neuroplasticity.  We know this when we practice an instrument, a language or any skill for that matter.   These days since I breathe Neuro plasticity, its conscious application is the obvious next step.  I’ve had the perfect opportunity to practice this when we get poorly trained and poorly trainable nurses.    Some of these nurses amaze me with their limited knowledge of nursing.   From ignorance about a Trach tube or a PEG feed, they are clueless about basic care giving like changing diaper, giving bath and changing sheets for a person confined to bed.  Makes you wonder why are they then considered nurses?  Wel