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Thank you for asking me to clarify instead of making assumptions, which would be easy given my admittedly sloppy wording. For the time being, I can only extremely briefly answer one question-- what I meant by mind shaping brain. I meant cases of either the "will" or experiences altering the brain/body in profound ways. I should have worded it more broadly as the category of consciousness having causal power over the body, including (but not limited to) the brain.
Kelly and Kelly (at UVA) et al. really do a terrific job summarizing the research here in their 2007 volume "Irreducible Mind." The volume has some hard-to-swallow bits scattered, but one must not throw out the baby with the bathwater. These are well-trained scientists who document their claims carefully, though I'd say some of the book is more scientifically-sound than other bits. I really wish they would have left certain things out! That said, I ought to list a few examples of what I mean.
Please note that none of this is intended to be an argument for dualism or anything "paranormal." There are some interesting arguments there, but for now, let's avoid it. (I'm not sure how I feel about dualism anyway!) It's hard for to even know where to begin, and so many more examples in these and other areas should be discussed when time permits.
One area is meditation practices, which can cause structural changes in both gray and white matter vs controls (Kang et al. 2013 here), alter cortical gyrification vs controls (see Luders et al. 2012, Front. Hum. Neurosci., who note that "cortical gyrification appears to increase as the number of meditation years increases"), change in the anterior cingulate cortex (reductions in radial diffusivity and axial diffusivity and an increase in fractional anisotropy) vs controls (see Tang et al. 2012, PNAS here), and which *may* be able to increase telomere length (see Thimmapuram et al 2017--this makes sense in light of the fact that psychological stress "accelerates the erosion of telomeres", according to Shalev et al. 2013). Many other effects of meditation could be mentioned, some replicated and some not yet replicated, some concerning brain changes and some not. More details on references available upon request. Sorry, I'm rushing through this and am way too lazy and busy to be more specific. But seriously, look into the effects of meditation on the brain.
Another area is that of multiple personality/Dissociative Identity Disorder. This is controversial, but some findings seem to justify the diagnosis, and even if they don't, they nevertheless support my point. In some cases, one personality (called an "alter") can have allergies that the other alters lack, and this manifests as rashes and hives (sometimes blisters!) and which dissipate when the non-allergic alter takes control (see Braun 1983, Psychophysiologic Phenomena in Multiple Personality and Hypnosis, American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis). More impressively, a team in Germany studied on a woman with DID where some alters were measurably blind but others weren't! Using visual evoked potentials (along with other tests!) they demonstrated that it was genuine blindness and not an act. Granted, this is just one example, but it's pretty fucking powerful! It was traced back to the patient's reaction to having been in a car accident, which means that an emotional experience can shut down the brain's ability to see as measured with VEPs. See Waldvogel et al. (2007) in Nervenarzt [German for "Neurologist", a peer reviewed German journal that can be found on pubmed.com, meaning the U.S. NIH considers it a mainstream journal], volume 78, issue 11. Regarding this case, the authors wrote, "The switch between these states could happen momentarily. As a neural basis of such psychogenic blindness, we assume a top-down modulation of activity in the primary visual pathway, possibly at the level of the thalamus or the primary visual cortex. Therefore VEPs do not allow distinction of psychogenic blindness from organic disruption of the visual pathway. In summary, psychogenic blindness seems to suppress visual information at an early neural stage."
VEP differences in alters were also seen in Ludwig et al. (1977), Larmore et al (1977), and Putman (1986 and 1991). Larmore et al. note that VEPs are "relatively reliable and time-stable" and that fluctuations are "extremely limited." Regarding the patient they studied (with four alters), they wrote, "The average visual evoked responses (AER) for each personality were quite different from each other [...] each personality had its own individual AER type, as if four different people had been tested." There are other DID examples I'd call relevant (including nervous system changes), but this is enough for now. The point here is that profound changes in the nervous system are the result of profound disruptions in consciousness, in a "top-down" fashion.
Placebo is another weird area. e.g. Benedetti et al. (2004) showed that placebos induce changes in the subthalamic nucleus of Parkinson's patients compared to no-treatment controls (placebo vs placebo haha). Simply believing that one is receiving medication can change brain in measurable and important ways. Obviously, there are limits to what the placebo can do, and one must avoid the crazy new age trap of "healing thyself" of disease. It clearly doesn't work that way, but nor does it have to in order to illustrate my point. More placebo examples can be given.
I'm going to stop here, but a lot more should be said.
