In The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force brain researcher Jeffrey Schwartz and Wall St. Journal reporter Sharon Begley explore the extraordinary discoveries in brain research over the last 20 years. When we were growing up we were taught that the brain pretty much is fixed by age 10, and after that no new neurons are made. For a 100 years it was believed that if you had a stroke and lost functioning over one part of your body as a result of damage to the brain, you just had to live with it. New imaging techiniques in the last quarter century have enabled researchers to precisely map functioning of different parts of the brain, down to the millimeter. What has been discovered is that new neural pathways are being forged in the brain throughout our whole lives, depending on how we use our mind. Wherever we focus our attention is where new neural connections will be made.