Neuro-Babble: Making Neuroscience Understandable to Mental Health Professionals

With advancement and availability of imaging, neuroscience has gone through a huge transformation over the past 25 years. Once thought an esoteric sub-speciality of medicine exclusively reserved for research scientists, neuroscientists have recently began to write about the applcation of their findings to clinical practice of mental health professionals. Although many studies don't specifically articulate the linkages to the consulting room, the applications become more evident as clinicians familiarize themselves with the brain, it's relationship to the mind and how it impacts behavior and mental health disorders.

Connecting comceptual data to applied practice is not always an easy proposition, but doing so is generally a fruitful proposition. What is most interesting, is that until recently, most practicing mental health professionals, have not had an indepth understanding of the organ system they are either directly or indirectly treating. Recent studies have suggested that the brain is able to change through intervention. This is often referred to as neuro-plasticity. Though our brains like to conserve energy, and therefore shift to default mode, we can change that default mode through repeated and frequent intervention. Think of it as a fitness program for the brain.

Neuro-babble is a place where mental health professionals can recieve information on neuroscience and its application to treatment. In the coming months, I will be posting articles and research studies that will help clinicians to hone their approach toward one ultimate goal of psychotherapy - to change the way the brain is organized to respond to the environment.

If you have any general questions in general, or would like to inquire about further reading, please feel free to contact me at any time.