Brain health: General Principles

Fundamental ideas upon which to base a brain health program

The following principles (still under development) will guide development of content in this section of the website. As the section is developed over time, it is expected that each will receive appropriate attention and focused development, as well as documentation by means of links to other website sections and/or research reports.

Principles

1. Brain development from birth to adult age, and continuing until death, is the result of the interaction of genetics, physical environment, and social environment. Genes provide the blueprint for construction. Environment (what you eat) provides the raw materials. Social environment, especially in the first years of life, provides essential stimulation for complex organizational development. [1] Deficits in any of these areas can have grave consequences. Overall, genetics is the prime determinant of outcome [3] - but the other two become critical in certain contexts.
2. If we cannot alter our genes, we still can make changes in our environment, resulting in varying degrees of change in our organic brain, its function, and our resultant behavior. I assume that this is fairly obvious, but it's worth stating anyway.
3. The cells in your brain are continually dying and being remade - on average about twice a year [2]. The raw materials for the new cells can only come from reprocessed dead cells (our own and those of the bacteria that are exceedingly numerous in our body) [4], and from new nutrients from your food. Either way, what you eat becomes who you are, sooner or later.
4. Brains are vulnerable to environmentally-derived damage, the effects of which can be very subtle or quite obvious. At the same time, the brain can display remarkable self-healing capability - but there are very real limits to this capability..
5. Brain and body are very intimately integrated. They influence each other profoundly. This bi-directional relationship can be made use of throughout our lifespan.
6. Mental health is supported by a healthy brain - one which makes has ample and fairly constant energy access, adequate rest, and healthy circulation. Creation or recovery of good mental health is simply far easier with a body and brain are physically healthy.
7. The mind/body distinction - and functional distinction - common in western European philosophy is misleading and inaccurate, regardless of its usefulness in various contexts. Still, the distinction remains useful to us. [5]

Notes

All references are fully described in References.

[1] This critical role for social environment is discussed in detail in Schore (1994).

[2] See Amen (2005), p. 89.

[3] For a time, in the early 1990s, it was thought that environment and genetics were about equally influential on the nature of human personality and intelligence. That view has been revised. It is now clear that specific traits vary considerably in the influence environment has on them (see Twin Study, 2007). General intelligence, for example is primarily genetically determined (see Bouchard, 1998, and Bouchard et al., 1990). Other traiits are less influenced, but overall genetics is the largest influence on human nature (Wright, 1998).

[4] See Weil (2000), p. 104.

[5] It does appear useful to allow "mind" to refer to our subjective awareness or consciousness, and "brain" to refer to the soft, lumpy, and exceedingly complex organ trapped in our skulls. At the present time in our knowledge and thinking, the principle mind/brain problem we are working on is the fact that we are unable to precisely connect our experience and awareness to our organic brain. It can be very unnerving to hold an excised human brain, and to think that you have one of those yourself, and that that is where you live.

References

Amen, D. G. (2005). Making a good brain great: The Amen Clinic program for achieving and sustaining optimum mental performance. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Bouchard T. J. Jr. (1998). Genetic and environmental influences on adult intelligence and special mental abilities. Human Biology, 70(2):257-79.

Bouchard, T. J. Jr., Lykken, D. T., McGue, M., Segal, N. L., & Tellegen, A. (1990). Sources of human psychological differences: the Minnesota study of twins reared apart. In Science, 250(4978), pp. 223-229.

Schore, A. N. (1994). Affect regulation and the origin of the self: The neurobiology of emotional development. Hillsdale, NJ, USA: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Twin study. (2007, November 10). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 09:01, November 11, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Twin_study&oldid=301849607

Wright, W. (1998). Born that way: Genes, behavior, personality. New York: Knopf.