A variety of techniques to stimulate the brain’s innate plasticity is being employed. In many cases this involves an energy source, low-intensity lasers, or light, or heat, which appears to help stimulate neuronal connections. A device applied to the tongue, causing vibration, helped an opera singer with MS to regain his voice. Sound, particularly the sound of a mother’s voice, and certain types of chanting, has helped young children with symptoms of autism to overcome those symptoms.
One of the founding scientists in the field of neuroplasticity was Moshe Feldenkrais, M.D., a renowned physicist and judo expert. He developed several techniques in stimulating “unused” circuits of the brain and making them work for other purposes, such as therapies for stroke and MS patients, as well as children with learning disorders, attention deficit and even autism.
Feldenkrais knew that when a body part is injured, its representation in the mental map becomes smaller or disappears. Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, became famous for discovering that the surface of the body is represented in the brain by a map.
This led to the understanding that the size of an individual body part in the brain map is proportional not to its actual size in the body but rather to how often and how precisely it is used. If the body part performs a simple function—the thigh, for example, which mainly does one thing, moving the knee forward—the representation in the brain is small. But brain maps for the fingers, often used in precise ways, are enormous.
Feldenkrais understood that it is a use-it-or-lose-it brain, and that when parts are injured—and thus, not used often—their representation in the brain map decreases. Feldenkrais asked his patients to make very finely tuned, differentiated movements of these injured parts, paying close attention while doing so. Gradually these patients experienced these injured parts in their mind as becoming larger. Thus taking up more of their mental maps, and leading to more refined brain maps which leads to less pain and increased healing.