norman deutsch the brain that changes itself

With detailed case studies reminiscent of Oliver Sachs, combined with extensive interviews with lead researchers, Doidge, a research psychiatrist and psychoanalyst at Columbia and the University of Toronto, slowly turns everything we thought we knew about the brain upside down. Scientists have taught a woman with damaged inner ears, who for five years had had 'a sense of perpetual falling,' to regain her sense of balance with a sensor on her tongue, and a stroke victim to recover the ability to walk although 97% of the nerves from the cerebral cortex to the spine were destroyed. But more and more evidence is turning up to show that the brain can rewire itself, even in the face of catastrophic trauma: essentially, the functions of the brain can be strengthened just like a weak muscle.

Doidge has written an immensely moving, inspiring book that will permanently alter the way we look at our brains, human nature, and human potential.įor years the doctrine of neuroscientists has been that the brain is a machine: break a part and you lose that function permanently. Using these marvelous stories to probe mysteries of the body, emotion, love, sex, culture, and education, Dr. We see a woman born with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, blind people who learn to see, learning disorders cured, IQs raised, aging brains rejuvenated, stroke patients learning to speak, children with cerebral palsy learning to move with more grace, depression and anxiety disorders successfully treated, and lifelong character traits changed. Psychoanalyst, Norman Doidge, M.D., traveled the country to meet both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity, its healing powers, and the people whose lives they’ve transformed-people whose mental limitations, brain damage or brain trauma were seen as unalterable.

What is neuroplasticity? Is it possible to change your brain? Norman Doidge’s inspiring guide to the new brain science explains all of this and moreĪn astonishing new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable, and proving that it is, in fact, possible to change your brain. Doidge’s book is a remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain.”-Oliver Sacks, MD, author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Norman deutsch the brain that changes itself