Translator: Hannah 527 Reviewer: Ilze Garda
I'm an optimist.
My work is very special.
I help people to recover from neurological disorders
that are considered to be incurable.
I have this box with me today because it is a symbol.
We are told that we think in boxes. And in fact, we do.
A box is a framework for your mind, made of limits.
We have been taught limits.
We are constantly creating limits for our minds.
We create walls for our imagination not to trespass.
We have been expecting
the solution for neurological conditions such as dystonias, Parkinson's disease,
generalized dystonias, or even cerebral palsy
to be a new drive, or a new device.
This is what we saw with the discovery of penicillin,
or the design of the first pacemaker.
We are expecting the future to be as the past was.
But we can think outside of this box.
I ask you to stop for a second and start imagining.
Imagine that in the future, we can treat conditions
that we are not able to treat successfully today.
Imagine that your own movements can be organized in such a way
that they become meaningful for your brain.
Like a language in code that only a brain can understand.
Imagine that we crack this code, and by using this language in code
we can ask your brain to release tensions that have been sustained
for more than 30 years in your body.
We can ask your brain
to bring movements, emotions, sensations back to life.
We can even ask your brain to change its own structure and function.
This new form of therapy
will not need to be manufactured, or produced, but taught.
This new treatment will have the same quality, the same efficiency
in first world or third world countries.
We will prescribe organized movements, choreographies,
specific choreographies for specific conditions, for specific patients.
Now, I ask you to stop imagining
because this revolution is happening right now.
Using this technique, Ignatio was able to play golf again.
Wendy, after 30 years dealing with constant tremors in her legs,
is able to sit still and stand.
Carol was able to face the light with her eyes open.
Maria was able to write again.
In cases like this, you can get results just in four consecutive days.
Zack, after 8 years dealing with constant spasms in his arms
is now playing tennis and winning.
For many different reasons, your brain can forget familiar movements
making it difficult for you to blink, walk, talk, eat by yourself, or write.
A neural software can be degraded or missing.
The work of my life has been harnessing neuroplasticity
to help patients affected by distonia to remember those movements
in a quest for recovering control over their lives.
What amaze me most
is when the movements and the neurosoftware
is not accessible in the brain,
you can transfer it from another person.
It looks like movement is learned and modulated socially.
Our mothers told us how to blink,
not only how to read, or our language,
[they] also taught us essential skills
that we consider to be innate.
When the neurosoftware is not accessible in the brain,
you can transfer it by mimicking another person's movement,
and make it yours.
When your brain accepts the transfer, a neuroplastic change will start.
It's a reorganization of the whole brain.
And in the end, you will not be able to see the difference
between the movements that you have lost, and the ones that you have just installed.
If you do research in neuroscience, you have to be a skeptic.
So we put the findings to the test, and we were surprised to see
that the brain activity changes and returns to normal.
I believe that this discovery will profoundly change
the field of brain rehabilitation.
Welcome to the era of movement.
Thank you.
(Applause)