Complex life (and our plastic brains), a beautiful fluke

Argh! My computer was playing up, now I have limited time, and so much to blog!

In short:

* the universe is expanding
* some people have alien hands
* Michael Robotham and I went to the same highschool

I really enjoyed being introduced to physicist, astronomer and philosopher Marcelo Gleiser yesterday, in conversation with Cosmos editor Wilson Da Silva. Gleiser spoke about the problems with, and reasons why, scientists for years have been going after a theory that incorporates ‘oneness’, a synchronicity to the universe, a ‘theory of everything’ (one reason being of course a religious cultural hangover). Gleiser’s book Imperfect Creation partly argues the evidence for a much more chaotic universe – it’s a kind of antithesis to super string theory. He says matter, and life itself, both came about through’ asymmetries and imperfections’ – a bit of chance, in other words. But on a philosophical level, this is something to be celebrated – ‘life is an amazing phenomenon, but its extremely rare’, and life existing for such an extended period that it can complexify, this is even more of a fluke. So this means we can rethink our role in the universe – as our being here is rare and precious.

There was so much more to this session, and I apologise to Gleiser for my limited explanation. Gleiser’s discussion was animated by metaphor and gesture, so those of us in the audience without a science background could still understand everything. We got to be galaxies, for example. Which was cool. Gleiser was a beautiful speaker (with his Brazilian-American accent) and has such lovely eyes…

Moving on. It was a bit of a mistake to go from one mind-expanding session to another, I think. My lovely boyfriend and I went to see Norman Doidge and Perminder Sachdev speak with Natasha Mitchell (from ABC Radio’s All in the Mind) and it was fascinating, but our brains weren’t feeling very plastic at this stage, just a bit crammed. Doidge’s book has been extremely popular – talking about revolutionary discoveries in neuroplasticity. Sachdev’s book describes his work in neuropsychiatry and tells stories of some of the patients and cases.

Last night was the opening party of the festival – a blur of lovely faces, and so much fun.

I have an hour until my panel A Wordsmith’s Dream, which has moved from the tiny ACMI Studio into BMW Edge! A slightly intimidating thing, but a wonderful one… Can’t wait to see you there.

Space, brands and brains (some things I’m looking forward to)

So today I’ve put together my little schedule for the festival, and I thought I’d share with you just a few of the sessions I’m looking forward to this first weekend coming up. Sometimes I pick sessions just on who sounds the most interesting – someone I’m curious about and might be able to learn from in session, or later on, reading their book.

One such person is Marcelo Gleiser, an American professor of physics, astronomy and natural philosophy. Apparently his lectures are as popular with literature students as they are with science students. (Well, he’s pretty good lookin’ too, hey?) This Saturday, the 28th of August, I’ll be seeing him In Conversation with Editor-in-Chief of Cosmos, Wilson da Silva.

Neuropsychiatrist-authors Norman Doidge and Perminder Sachdev are going to tell me all about these heavy, complex things in our heads (and their changeability) on the same day, in their session The Amazing Brain.

That brain of mine had a part to play in this personal ‘brand’ I partly by accident constructed – Ms LiteraryMinded. I’m very curious to hear Kathy Charles, James P Othmer and Karen Andrews talk about The Author as Brand – the professional self as commodity, the online persona and so on. This panel really could take many different directions.

And on Sunday afternoon Sandy Jeffs offer us A Privileged Insight into writing with, and through, mental illness.

What are you guys looking forward to this weekend?

Oh, and, of course, do come along to the sessions I’m chairing! A Q&A on Friday with global nomad and self-confessed chameleon Mohezin Tejani. Mo’s life story is fascinating, and the event is totally free. And on Sunday I’m chairing ‘A Wordsmith’s Dream’ with word-nerds Ursula Dubosarsky, Davis Astle and Kate Burridge.

Norman Doidge’s The Brain that Changes Itself

This week, I received an email asking me what books had changed my life. Social pressures aside (should I say Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities when I mean Mötley Crüe’s The Dirt?), some books effect such seismic shifts in knowledge that they easily stand up as life-changing. Norman Doidge’s The Brain That Changes Itself is such a book. While reading it, I had to reluctantly let go of what I’d though were established facts about how the brain works. Two examples, if you will.

Established Fact #1: Each brain function is processed in a particular, predetermined location.

Having the dilettante’s grasp of psychological principles, I was pretty sure that it was possible to map the brain according to which parts did what. For example, the left part of our brain is verbal and the right part is where our visual and spatial abilities always reside. Right?

Well, no. Doidge visits a twenty-nine year old woman, Michelle, who was born with only the right hemisphere of her brain intact. But she is, as Doidge puts it, ‘a demonstration that … half a brain does not make for half a mind.’ Michelle can read, carry out conversations and pray – because her right hemisphere has compensated for the missing part.

Established Fact #2: Brain cells die at astounding rates and cannot be replenished.

We’ve all had older and wiser people warn that we’d better use it or lose it, and there’s probably no older nor wiser than Nobel Prize winner Santiago Ramón y Cajal, who in 1913 declared that adult brain nerve paths die and are never regenerated.

But several studies that show that animals form new brain cells – ‘neurogenesis’ – through exercise and mental activity. Californian researcher Frederick Gage suggests that this is because ‘in a natural setting, long-term fast walking would take [an] animal into a new, different environment that would require new learning’.

These are heady discoveries, and there are more to be had in The Brain That Changes Itself. The book is a delight, due to Doidge’s ability to combine painstaking research with a keen narrative sensibility. The personalities found in this book – whether that of someone who is a prime example of the brain’s fascinating plasticity, or a scientist who has radically changed the way we understand the brain – are as vivid as the science is interesting.

Life-changing, brain-changing … what more could you want?

Norman Doidge will appear at the Melbourne Writers Festival. He is one of the eight writers who will discuss what it means to be human in our Keynote Address #1: Eight Ways to Be Human. In The Brain That Changes Itself: Judge for Yourself, see footage of people with ‘incurable’ conditions, who underwent neuroplastic change. He will also appear in conversation with Perminder Sachdev, author of The Yipping Tiger, to discuss The Amazing Brain.

Potato? Potato.

Morning All,

I’ve just returned from three days in Sydney, immersing myself in their writers’ festival, and am exhausted from all the walking, thinking and drinking (coffee).

It’s always wonderful to see how other festivals work and it’s a treat to be able to actually see/hear sessions. It’s one of the key ironies of directing a festival that you rarely get to see any of the events that you curate (and often when you are immersed in one of your own events you’re preoccupied with ‘is the sound ok?’, ‘I wonder if X finally found the Green Room?’ and ‘did they remember Y’s allergic to crayfish?’).

In just over three days I was able to see a great many writers/thinkers, and I left wanting to read (more of) Laura Lippman, Cees Nootebaum, Norman Doidge, Kazuo Ishiguro, Craig Silvey, Evelyn Jurers, Marcus Chown, Fred Watson and Wesley Enoch, among others.

Unfortunately, this year there was less time spent with my legs dangling over the wharf, looking at the harbour bridge, and more time dodging thick sheets of rain, but I still had a terrific time. And funnily, since returning on Saturday, late in the afternoon, three people have asked me — was the SWF better/worse than MWF? And I’m now truthfully able to answer that it’s impossible to compare. Each of the Australian festivals I’ve been to is quite different from the next — you can’t expect (and wouldn’t want) them to be otherwise.

Happy reading.

Regards,
Steve
Associate Director