It turns out that neurons fire and wire preferentially and maximally with regard to whatever is in the field of focused attention. For example, you may have encountered the saying based on the work of the psychologist, Donald Hebb, in the 1940s: “neurons that fire together, wire together” (Hebb, 2002). But beginning in the 1940s, accelerating in the past couple decades, our scientific understanding of the breadth, depth, and underlying mechanics of neuroplasticity has grown tremendously. The idea that changes in the nervous system underlie learning and memory dates back, in the Western world, at least to Hippocrates. This is what researchers call experience-dependent neuroplasticity. Most of the immaterial information represented by material neural substrates is forever unconscious, but the fraction of this information that composes conscious experience is particularly influential in shaping the brain. The function of the nervous system is to process information, and the brain is constantly changing – both functionally and structurally – due to the information coursing through it. The Science of Experience-Dependent Neuroplasticity

Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy: Accelerating Healing and Transformation. This article is from Loizzo, J., Neale, M., Wolf, E., Eds. In this chapter I will share some ideas about the intersection of three circles: neuroscience, clinical psychology, and Buddhist contemplative practice, which I informally call “applied neuro dharma.” (In Sanskrit, dharma means both reality and an accurate description of it.) Let’s begin with a review of some relevant neuroscience.

Neuro dharma book