Studies that show that NPD brains are structurally different

http://www.livescience.com/37684-narcis ... cture.html

studies like the one described there. It makes me want to get my own brain scanned. It might help me decide if I should commit to long term therapy. If my brain is fundamentally flawed, then there's no point in going to therapy or trying to heal, as I don't have the correct physiology to feel empathy anyway, right?

How would one even go about getting their brains scanned?

People with depression for example also have grey-matter loss, so according to your logic depressive patients shouldnt get therapy.

Its important to distingish between correlation, cause and effect in these things. In the case of such mental illnesses its more probable that the brain regions simply loose neuroplasticity due to not being used imo.

Is there possibility that grey matter in that area can increase?

I know that mindfulness medication for example is supposed to increase grey matter in certain areas.

spacey wrote:Is there possibility that grey matter in that area can increase?

I know that mindfulness medication for example is supposed to increase grey matter in certain areas.

My knowledge in that area is sadly very limited. I know that it was thought for a while that only the olfactory region and the short-term memory region can be "rebuild" but I think I remember that this perspective has changed in the last years to include other regions as well. Dont know though.

Using your favorite search engine, type the name of your nearest metropolitan area AND brain scan.


I typed brain scans AND Dallas TX.

http://www.brainplace.com/
http://www.amenclinics.com/the-science/ ... -can-help/
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/8/prweb9797406.htm
http://www.choosingwisely.org/patient-r ... headaches/

spacey wrote:It makes me want to get my own brain scanned. It might help me decide if I should commit to long term therapy.

It seems to me therapy involves two things. Reaching inside to understand the shame/pride at the root of the disorder. I think NLP is one such form of therapy. And, deliberately living more outside to learn to exist more genuinely among others (the monkeys grooming each other as a social ritual). I think that's CBT.

I wouldn't think underdeveloped (or deteriorated) parts of the brain would influence either of those except in regard to one's own conscience -- and therefore commitment to work at it, and get the most they can from it. I.e., if you've uncovered a lot of the underlying emotions, I don't think you could overdo CBT. If you hit a wall with that, go back to the inward focus to see if your "practice" at being normal might open new insight (inward).

What came to my mind immediately was a study (with scans) demonstrating cannabis changes the pathways of smokers brains. Problems are solved using different networks.

For someone like Stephen Hawking, that might be bad. For me, it has been a resounding success.

A scan might be useful to confirm your diagnosis. I'd like to see scans of those who have underwent both types of therapy and have demonstrated improvement. But, the point is: people do improve. I wouldn't start planning to limit your improvement based upon something relatively new and novel like these scans.

Don't let any of that stop you. There has been a lot of research on neuroplasticity within the past decade or so. the brain can create new neural pathways, and yes, you can increase gray and white matter in your brain. look up neural plasticity on Google you'll find a lot of interesting stuff on this.

Getting an MRI scan here in London is not difficult, but getting the actual scan interpreted - I have no idea how to go about it