Parenthetical: On Neural Transformation:

(One of the things I’ve been reading about recently and am deeply engaged with is the idea of neuroplasticity. The internal reality formed by neuroplasticity—the ability of the brain to alter in response to external and internal experience—is not only a mental phenomenon but also a somatic one. The traces in the brain left by experience are associated with particular somatic states, some positive, some negative, some an ambivalent combination of both. Plasticity demonstrates that experience leaves a trace on and influences neuronal networks, modifying the way information is transferred through the brain and body. Experience thus leaves a trace that alters the givens or modifications that have preceded it: this the principle of neuroplasticity. Plasticity can be form-giving and/or form-destroying. Catherine Malabou, a French philosopher who writes on plasticity, draws on the definitions of the French word plastique to suggest that plasticity involves both “structural moulding and deflagration.”*)

(To be continued)

*Malabou, Catherine. What Should We Do with Our Brain? Trans. Sebastian Rand (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008) 6.

The views expressed in the Writer-in-Residence blogs are those held by the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Open Book: Toronto.