For example the anterior cingulate gyrus mentioned — this area of the brain is supposed to over-ride the prefrontal cortex during these deep conflicts, but that’s not always the case.

In first grade we had a contest who could hold their breath the longest as we walked down the length of the school to wash our hands before lunch. Not only did I easily win this contest but I eventually passed out, hitting the two corner cement walls in the bathroom and then the cement floor.

Some 25 years later in my readings I’ve come across three medical books stating it’s impossible to hold your breath, voluntarily, till you pass out because the anterior cingulate gyrus will over-ride the prefrontal cortex. But I disproved science in first grade and also I then learned that the sherpas in the first climb of Mt. Everest had to hold their breath till they passed out, in order to prove their worthiness to lead the climb.

Nevertheless I studied piano performance for a dozen years and also spent a lot of time doing improvisation. So these brain areas being activated definitely make sense and also I suggest that the rewiring results are long-term. As Oliver Sacks says you can tell if someone is a musician because they have an increased corpus callosum but that’s not the case with a writer or painter, etc.

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/hmn/s08/feature4.cfm

Sitting in on #fMRI experiment using local rappers in a freestyle-vs-memorized processing task; yes, our #neuroscience is cooler than yours.—
R. Stewart (@djenygma) December 16, 2010

apparently, a follow-up to the Limb study mention in the article.