Matthew Schelke has a gift for metaphors. His preferred one for describing how our brains take on the traits of our culture? \u201c\u2018Clipping on\u2019 to the social wire.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anyone who has hurtled down a zip line knows how thrilling the descent is. \u201cYou clip your carabiner onto a thin wire,\u201d Schelke writes in Socially Wired: How Culture Shapes Our Brains, published this week, \u201cthen fly through the forest or down from a peak to an unfamiliar destination.\u201d<\/p>\n
Especially in old age, though, the clip doesn\u2019t always form a snug fit\u2014it can weaken, grow rusty, and stop working entirely. \u201cWhen the clip is loosened, as happens in neurological illness,\u201d Schelke notes, \u201cit\u2019s not always a matter of staying on or falling off but often about switching to a different trajectory.\u201d<\/p>\n
Challenging the Isolated Brain Model in Neurology<\/p>\n
Based on patients seen at Columbia University\u2019s Department of Neurology in New York City, where Schelke was chief resident in 2022-23, Socially Wired begins from the premise that neuroanatomy\u2019s focus on \u201cneural wiring\u201d provides at best an \u201cincomplete metaphor\u201d of the brain in isolation.<\/p>\n
Instead\u2014and a challenge to isolationists wedded to the brain\u2019s autonomy\u2014\u201cthe link between the brain and mind is mediated through culture.\u201d The dynamism that ensues revolutionizes understanding not just of the brain\u2019s evolving relation to itself, but also of its many \u201cshared affordances\u201d\u2014adopted habits and customs\u2014that act on us psychologically and cerebrally as they pull us into something resembling convergence and adaptation.<\/p>\n
\u201cBrain health goes far beyond the skull\u201d<\/p>\n
Rendering some brain actions partly cultural, Schelke\u2019s exciting shift in perspective raises a host of medico-philosophical questions for neurological care: \u201cHow do our social and cultural worlds transform our brains?\u201d In particular, \u201cWhat is the nature of the interaction between neural networks and cultural practices?\u201d<\/p>\n
Since \u201cas neurologists know, no two patients with the same lesion are alike,\u201d Schelke acknowledges, the case study presents immediate limitations as a genre. Its tendency to dwell on \u201cunique or bizarre individual experiences\u201d is inherently oversimplifying and means it tends to \u201clack a broader framework.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another key theme of Socially Wired is that \u201cmanifestations of neurological illness vary widely depending on the social context.\u201d Nevertheless, activities that stimulate the brain\u2014for instance, cooking, singing, dancing, learning new languages and musical instruments, and taking exercise\u2014encourage the neuroplasticity that is needed to offset cognitive decline, in some cases to delay and reverse its damage.<\/p>\n
In the case of Gustavo, a sixty-three-year-old high school math teacher in New York City diagnosed with Parkinson\u2019s and prescribed Sinemet (levodopa-carbidopa), he is strongly encouraged to resume his lifelong passion for salsa, and, when dancing is no longer physically possible, to transmute the same energy into administrative work for his club. In Schelke\u2019s formulation, \u201cThe music exogenously activates the same basal ganglia networks that are necessary for isochronous gait, facilitating movement and improving ambulation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other chapters tackle crucial contextual questions about strokes\u2014for instance, why an art lover\u2019s glioma in her medial prefrontal cortex leaves her unable to distinguish museum objects she must not touch (but does) from home-made pottery she very much can (and will). Encouraged to teach her granddaughter basic pottery, Laura joins Schelke\u2019s other patients in creating \u201cmeaningful forms of intentional action within the framework of their illnesses.\u201d<\/p>\n
Practical Implications of Cultural-Mediated Brain Health<\/p>\n
With the link between brain and mind firmly \u201cmediated through culture,\u201d an approach involving only on the first will not help us \u201cpreserve or improve our mental abilities,\u201d Schelke underscores. Put differently, \u201cthe sorts of interventions that are prominent today\u2014medications, supplements, cognitive exercises, dietary changes, neural implants\u2014may be helpful, but they are only half the equation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Corroborating the focus of Socially Wired on re-establishing neuroplasticity, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined in August 2024 that \u201cnearly 45% of all dementia cases may be prevented or delayed,<\/a>\u201d and swung its weight behind lifestyle and dietary changes known to aid in the prevention of neurodegenerative disease.<\/p>\n Schelke also aligns silently with the CDC in looking beyond pharmacotherapy, because the drugs prescribed for these conditions are not without controversy. A recent 2026 Cochrane Review on anti-amyloid drugs and their impact, which examined data from 17 clinical trials involving 20,342 participants with mild cognitive impairment<\/a>, determined: \u201cDrugs that target amyloid beta proteins in the brain likely have no clinically meaningful positive effects, while increasing the risk of bleeding and swelling in the brain<\/a>. Researchers \u2026 found that the absolute effects of anti-amyloid drugs on cognitive decline and dementia<\/a> severity were absent or trivial.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, cholinesterase inhibitors like Donepezil, Memantine, and Aricept that are prescribed for chronic dementia are meant to halt the continued breakdown of acetylcholine, a neuro-messenger vital to memory<\/a>, thinking, and reasoning, yet in some cases have been found to accelerate, not hinder, its destruction<\/a>. Routine side effects include nausea and appetite<\/a> suppression, muscle cramps, and difficulty sleeping<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Role of Diet and Lifestyle in Supporting Brain Health<\/p>\n Above all, if boosting acetylcholine production in the brain is the goal, then a cholinesterase inhibitor may not be necessary. As the website \u201cThe Nutrition<\/a> Source\u201d confirms at Harvard\u2019s T. H. Chan School of Public Health, \u201ccholine is an essential nutrient that is naturally present in certain foods<\/a>\u201d\u2014walnuts<\/a>, seeds, berries, legumes, dairy, fish, and poultry\u2014which themselves assist in the removal of amyloid proteins that restrict blood flow in the brain, significantly reducing the risk of stroke and associated cognitive damage.<\/p>\n The neuroplasticity that Schelke wants lifestyle and dietary changes to rescue is not used to peddle false hope about dementia patients\u2019 miraculous recovery from profound cognitive decline. It forms a constructive, evidence-based approach that interrupts the fatalism characterizing decline as inevitable and all else as medically na\u00efve.<\/p>\n Just as the focus on brain health must center lifestyle, exercise, and dietary changes\u2014including foods that boost acetylcholine production without risk of encephalitis and other dangerous adverse effects\u2014so the brain\u2019s complex wiring and capacity to rewire can break open the solipsism of a person and brain experiencing dementia, placing both of them once more in a vast social network<\/a> where neuronal growth becomes the basis for reducing earlier damage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matthew Schelke has a gift for metaphors. His preferred one for describing how our brains take on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-624708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}