Dennis Charney: Neuroplasticity and Your Resilient Brain

One of the things that we have found in our research is that, in general, we don't make full use of the capacity of the human brain. We identified that actually initially from hearing from a couple of the POWs when they were in solitary confinement. They told us that when they were in solitary confinement for years and all they had was the ability to think, they developed unusual cognitive capacities that they never had before. When they were in solitary confinement, like they were essentially exercising their brain.

One individual told us he was able to multiply eventually many numbers by many numbers, 12 numbers by 12 numbers accurately. He never was able to do that before. Another told us that he was able to remember very early times in his childhood, like remembering the names of the students in his kindergarten class. Admiral Shoemaker, one of the individuals that we came to admire a lot, built a house in his mind—nail by nail, cabinet by cabinet, room by room—and then when he got out, he built that house. When we met him, he was having a fight with his wife because she wanted to renovate the house, and he said no way was that going to happen.

That brought home that when you exercise your brain and you don't have any outside distractions because you're in solitary, you have enormous capacities. Our research group, subsequently hearing about this and others around the country, have now taken a tact that through specific exercises we might be able to enhance brain plasticity or use more of the capacity of the human brain. For example, we now have a research study in which, through exercises, through psychological exercises, we are trying to retrain the circuits that are involved in depression.

It's not a typical psychotherapy. It's very specifically oriented toward improving the circuits that are involved in causing human depression. So far, there are some positive results around that. For certain forms of learning and memory problems, new therapies have been developed that exercise the human brain around learning and memory mechanisms. With human anxiety, practicing certain techniques that tap into the circuits and the chemistry of anxiety is now an area of focus. Mindfulness therapy is an example of that.

So that's a really emerging area to develop new therapies—non-pharmacological therapies—that exercise the human brain to improve learning and memory problems, anxiety, and problems with depression.