I think Sebastion Sueng (sp?) has a really interesting take on this. We can see at a macro level how behavior impact brain functioning, but the information we get is very gross and interpretable in a number of directions. But at the micro-level, where actually synapses actually come into contact with each other at any given time, if we are honest we simply don't have the instrumentation to observe this - unless we cut open the brain. So it all has to be conjecture. It can be very good conjecture, but conjecture all the same.
What is so interesting about this is how it is the opposite of the study of human behavior and speaks to Martin's question about empirical evidence for cultural impact on behavior. We are able to get really good information at the micro-level, but everything becomes confused and muddled when we try to take it macro.
Michael
________________________________
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Martin Packer
Sent: Mon 6/25/2012 12:00 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity; monica.hansen
Subject: Re: [xmca] Plasticity and Physiotherapy
Send him this!
Dehaene, S., Pegado, F., Braga, L. W., Ventura, P., Filho, G. N., Jobert, A., . . . Cohen, L. (2010). How Learning to Read Changes the Cortical Networks for Vision and Language. Science. doi:10.1126/science.1194140
On Jun 25, 2012, at 10:53 AM, monica.hansen wrote:
> This is short personal story to illustrate:
> Years ago, in the late nineties, when I was a practicing secondary school teacher, a year after I had been introduced to Vygotsky by a couple of mentors in my department, I would talk with another parent during soccer practice. Our 10 year old girls were on the same team and while they played we shared some interesting stories and observations about how they learned and practiced skills, in schools and in sports. He seemed genuinely interested in my perspective and experience as a parent and a teacher, sharing his own observations as an involved and active parent. One day, I asked this father what his profession was and he told me he was a neurologist. I then asked him some questions about the possibility of different functional systems in trying to understand some unusual patterns in student reading and writing. I wish I could remember what he said directly, but it amounted to a cursory opinion that neurology had nothing to do with learning and that I, as a teacher working with students, couldn't possibly observe anything that had to do with the functioning of the brain at the level he worked at. That he seemed so genuinely interested in the inquiry about the development of his daughter from a personal stance, but did not connect what he knew professionally to the same inquiry came as a shock and a mystery. I had the same question you had, Andy.
>
> I think that this was one of the reasons I became so interested in brain research!
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
> Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2012 11:06 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Plasticity and Physiotherapy
>
> Thanks Elizabeth (PDF attached).
> That gives us the Kuhnian story (with an ethical twist) of why neuroscience required a fixed machine for its discipline and how the paradigm shift occurred, but what is missing is how it was that outside of the discipline others knew that the brain changed. This is what intrigues me. How a discipline can maintain a fiction about its own object of study whilst outside the discipline people know it is a fiction. I am presuming it has a lot to do with the sociology of science and the status of the various sciences. But I will see if I can find something.
>
> Andy
>
> Elizabeth Fein wrote:
>> Tobias Rees has a wonderful article in American Ethnologist ("Being
>> Neurologically Human Today: Life and Science and Adult Cerebral
>> Plasticity - An Ethical Analysis" Volume 37, Issue 1, pages 150-166)
>> that talks about the "regime of fixity" in neuroscience, and the way
>> this story of the brain has been maintained over the years and is now
>> being challenged.
>>
>> Elizabeth Fein, Ph.D.
>> University of Chicago
>> Department of Comparative Human Development Postdoctoral Fellow,
>> SociAbility
>> (847)559-3240
>> efein@sociabilitychicago.org
>>
>>
>> ---- Original message ----
>>
>>> Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 12:44:10 +1000
>>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu (on behalf of Andy Blunden
>>>
>> <ablunden@mira.net>)
>>
>>> Subject: [xmca] Plasticity and Physiotherapy
>>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>>
>>> On the theme of empirical evidence and the latest discoveries
>>>
>> of
>>
>>> neuroscience, this is one which has intrigued me, especially
>>>
>> since it
>>
>>> became personal. So far as I know, physiotherpists have known
>>>
>> for at
>>
>>> least two generations that brain damage can be repaired by
>>>
>> physical
>>
>>> exercise. But this scientific, empirical knowledge,
>>>
>> coexisted, at least
>>
>>> in some countries, with a dogma taught in school biology
>>>
>> classes, that
>>
>>> "no new brain cells are created after age X," making a total
>>>
>> mystery
>>
>>> (SFAICS) of all manner of learning processes which everyone
>>>
>> knows about
>>> from daily experience. Then we hear from the tribunes of
>> advanced
>>
>>> neuroscience, armed with all sorts of advanced brain imaging
>>>
>> equipment,
>>
>>> about "brain plasiticity" and what lowly physiotherpists know
>>>
>> about with
>>
>>> their own hands and patients knew about with their own
>>>
>> experience of
>>
>>> rehabilitation, became a new scientific discovery solely
>>>
>> because
>>
>>> (SAFAICS) it was expressed in the language of "the latest
>>>
>> discoveries of
>>
>>> neuroscience." On the plus side Norman Doigue's campaign has
>>>
>> had a
>>
>>> psychological impact on people undergoing rehabilitation, by
>>>
>> giving the
>>
>>> stamp of neuroscientific approval to the physiotherapists'
>>>
>> work and
>>
>>> giving renewed hope.
>>>
>>> Is there anyone who knows about the history of science in
>>>
>> this area that
>>
>>> can explain how this fiction was maintained?
>>>
>>> Andy
>>> --
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>> -----------
>>
>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>> Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1
>>> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
>>> Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
>>>
>>> __________________________________________
>>> _____
>>> xmca mailing list
>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1
> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
> __________________________________________
> _____
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
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