Cerebral Inscriptions

I am currently reading a book entitled The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force. The erudite and perhaps esoteric sounding title belies a powerful and (for the most part) easy to follow argument for volition, or in other words, free will. I will not seek to recapitulate the arguments, but rather to share an idea I thought relevant to myself as an English major.

Two excerpts from the book really caught my attention:

"[T]he arrow of causation relating brain and mind must be bidirectional. Conscious, volitional decisions and changes in behavior alter the brain" (95).

"[H]abits are behavioral expressions of plastic changes in the physical substrate of our minds" (165).

The implication, not so much implied as stated, is that the mind, our thoughts, moods, what we consciously choose to attend to, affect the neural pathways of our brains. Experience and the mind literally inscribe themselves onto brain matter.

Our lives are literally recorded as a narrative, a text, and that book can be read by those who understand its language (PET/CAT scans, brain mapping etc). We need look no farther than our own minds to find the Book of Life. English is as much a scientific inquiry into the mind as science provides into the brain. When we write it is mimetic of the process which has already occurred physically.