natural-born cyborgs

Bach-y-Rita (1934-2006)

"But Bach-y-Rita, by showing that our brains are more flexible than localizationism admits, has helped to invent a more accurate view of the brain that allows for such changes. Before he did this work, it was acceptable to say, as most neuroscientists do, that we have a "visual cortex" in our occipital lobe that processes vision, and an "auditory cortex" in our temporal lobe that processes hearing. From Bach-y-Rita we have learned that the matter is more complicated and that these areas of the brain are plastic processors, connected to each other and capable of processing an unexpected variety of input. Cheryl has not been the only one to benefit from Bach-y-Rita's strange hat. The team has since used the device to train fifty more patients to improve their balance and walking. Some had the same damage Cheryl had; others have had brain trauma, stroke, or Parkinson's disease. Paul Bach-y-Rita's importance lies in his being the first of his generation of neuroscientists both to understand that the brain is plastic and to apply this knowledge in a practical way to ease human suffering. Implicit in all his work is the idea that we are all born with a far more adaptable, all-purpose, opportunistic brain than we have understood. When Cheryl's brain developed a renewed vestibular sense—or blind subjects' brains developed new paths as they learned to recognize objects, perspective, or movement—these changes were not the mysterious exception to the rule but the rule: the sensory cortex is plastic and adaptable, When Cheryl's brain learned to respond to the artificial receptor that replaced her damaged one, it was not doing anything out of the ordinary. Recently Bach-y-Rita's work has inspired cognitive scientist Andy Clark to wittily argue that we are "natural-born cyborgs," meaning that brain plasticity allows us to attach ourselves to machines, such as computers and electronic tools, quite naturally. But our brains also restructure themselves in response to input from the simplest tools too, such as a blind man's cane. Plasticity has been, after all, a property inherent in the brain since prehistoric times. The brain is a far more open system than we ever imagined, and nature has gone very far to help us perceive and take in the world around us. It has given us a brain that survives in a changing world by changing itself."

Norman Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science, Penguin Books, 2007, p.25.