The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science

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Overview

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 more An 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. 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. 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. Using these marvelous stories to probe mysteries of the body, emotion, love, sex, culture, and education, Dr. Doidge has written an immensely moving, inspiring book that will permanently alter the way we look at our brains, human nature, and human potential.

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What People Are Saying

From the Publisher

“The power of positive thinking finally gains scientific credibility. Mind-bending, miracle-making, reality-busting stuff...with implications for all human beings, not to mention human culture, human learning and human history.”
-The New York Times

“Brilliant...Doidge has identified a tidal shift in basic science...The implications are monumental.”
-The London Times

“Fascinating. Doidge’s book is a remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain.”
-Oliver Sacks, MD

“Two years ago, when the journal Cerebrum at the Dana Foundation in the US updated its list of great books about the brain for the general reader, it found there were already 30,000 brain-related books in English. Aided by scientific advisers and readers, it produced a new list - with The Brain That Changes Itself at No. 1.”
-The Melbourne Age

“Lucid and absolutely fascinating. It satisfies in equal measure the mind and heart.”
-The Chicago Tribune

“Doidge turns everything we thought we knew about the brain upside down.”
-Publisher’s Weekly

“Brilliant...This book is a wonderful and engaging way or re-imagining what kind of creatures we are.”
-Jeanette Winterson, novelist, Order of the British Empire, Guardian, Best Book of 2008

“Superb. Brilliant. I devoured it.”
-V.S. Ramachandran, MD, PHD, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, Univeristy of California, San Diego, Author of Phantoms of the Brain

“Doidge... is a master ... at explaining science to the rest of us. Doidge is the best possible guide. You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to read it, just curious about your brain. Buy this book. Your brain will thank you.”
-The Globe and Mail

“Readers will want to read entire sections aloud and pass the book on to someone who can benefit from it. [Doidge] links scientific experimentation with personal triumph in a way that inspires awe”
-Washington Post
“Doidge tells one spell-binding story after another as he travels the globe interviewing the scientists and their subjects who are on the cutting edge of a new age. It may be hard to imagine that a book so rich in science can also be a page-turner, but this one is hard to set down.”
-Jeff Zimman, Posit Science, e-newsletter

“The most readable and best general treatment of this subject to date.”
- Michael M. Merzenich, Ph.D., Keck Center for Integrative Neurosciences University of California at San Francisco

“A riveting, essential book… These stories are most emotionally satisfying. Doidge addresses how cultural influences literally "shape" our brain. [And]….our response to the world around us is not only a social or psychological phenomenon, but often a lasting neurological process.”
— Montreal Gazette, Liam Durcan, MD, Neurologist & Novelist

“A hymn to life.”
-Panorama Italy

“The Brain That Changes Itself...is without question the most important book of the year, and maybe the most important book we have ever read.”
-Kiril Sokoloff, 13D Research Inc

“This books is like discovering that the earth isn’t flat.”
-Gretel Killeen, Sun Herald, “The Books That Changed Me”

“A rich banquet of brain-mind plasticity, communicated in a brilliantly clear writing style.”
-Jaak Panksepp, Ph.D., Head, Affective Neuroscience Research, Falk Center for Molecular Therapeutics, Northwestern University;

“A masterfully guided tour through the burgeoning field of neuroplasticity research.”
- Discover Magazine

“Norman Doidge has shown that what and how we think can change our brains. He has illuminated the foundations of psychological healing.”
- Charles Hanly, Ph.D.President, International Psychoanalytical Association

“Astonishing. This book will inevitably draw comparisons to the work of Oliver Sacks. Doidge has a prodigious gift for rendering the highly technical highly readable. It's hard to imagine a more exciting topic--or a better introduction to it.”
- Kitchener Waterloo Record

“Perfect for fans of Oliver Sacks”
-Quill & Quire

“Beautifully written and brings life and clarity to a variety of neuropsychiatric problems that affect children and adults... It reads a bit like a science detective story and -you do not need a Ph.D. to benefit from the wisdom imparted here.”
- Barbara Milrod, M.D. Psychiatry, Weill Medical College, Cornell University, New York

“A panoramic examination of plasticity's profound implications. “
-Toronto Daily Star

“An eloquently written book about the boundless potential of the human brain.
- The Jewish Week

“Norman Doidge has written a fascinating, highly readable account of the new brain science.”
-John Cornwell, Literary Review, England

“You really should read this book... this remarkable work will lead us to see ourselves in a new light.”
-Mail on Sunday, England

“An 'essential primer’ for anyone who wants to better understand their own brains and the considerable advances in neuroscience of the past two decades.”
-Melbourne Age

“A book that everybody should read... it is nothing short of miraculous. Get it!”
-Yoko Ono, Yoko Reads Book Recommendations

“Fascinating … Doidge has accomplished a rare feat. He has written a book that accurately conveys cutting-edge scientific discoveries while simultaneously engaging both scientific and popular audiences.”
-Neuro-Psychoanalysis

“A remarkable book ... a highly readable exploration of a branch of science that has the potential to change all our lives.”
-Hobart Mercury

“Why isn't this book on the top of the bestseller list of all time? The recognition that the brain in plastic and can actually change itself with exercise and understanding is a huge leap in the history or mankind, far greater than landing on the moon.”
- Jane S. Hall, International Psychoanalysis

“Only a few decades ago, scientists considered the brain to be fixed or ‘hardwired’ and considered most forms of brain damage, therefore, to be incurable. Dr. Doidge, an eminent psychiatrist and researcher, was struck by how his patients’ own transformations belied this and set out to explore the new science of neuroplasticity by interviewing both scientific pioneers in neuroscience, and patients who have benefited from neurorehabilitation. Here he describes in fascinating personal narratives how the brain, far from being fixed, has remarkable powers of changing its own structure and compensating for even the most challenging neurological conditions. Doidge’s book is a remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain.”
- Oliver Sack, MD, author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Jessica Warner

The case study is the psychiatric literary genre par excellence, and Doidge does not disappoint. There is a woman who manages quite well on just half a brain, an eye surgeon who made a remarkable recovery from a severe stroke, a seven-year-old who had to be taught how to hear pitch, an eight-year-old girl whose autism was holding her back from learning how to speak. Their stories are truly inspirational, and Doidge tells them with great compassion and sensitivity.

Buy this book. Your brain will thank you. (Jessica Warner, senior scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, and the author of Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason and The Incendiary: The Misadventures of John the Painter)

Oliver Sacks

Only a few decades ago, scientists considered the brain to be fixed or "hardwired," and considered most forms of brain damage, therefore, to be incurable. Dr. Doidge, an eminent psychiatrist and researcher, was struck by how his patients' own transformations belied this, and set out to explore the new science of neuroplasticity by interviewing both scientific pioneers in neuroscience, and patients who have benefited from neuro-rehabilitation. Here he describes in fascinating personal narratives how the brain, far from being fixed, has remarkable powers of changing its own structure and compensating for even the most challenging neurological conditions. Doidge's book is a remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain.

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Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

For years, scientists have insisted that the human brain cannot be changed, that brain damage is irreversible, and that behavior tied to brain function is stubbornly immutable. Now a revolutionary science called neuroplasticity overturns this discouraging doctrine, uncovering startling evidence that the brain can rewire itself after damage or disuse and offering new hope for victims of stroke, trauma, disease, and behavioral disorders. In this book, psychiatrist Norman Doidge introduces the pioneering practitioners of neuroplasticity and presents the extraordinary stories of real people whose lives have been transformed by its applications. Written in a lively anecdotal style and suffused with an optimism readers are sure to find contagious, The Brain That Changes Itself offers a rare look at the human side of science.

Globe & Mail

It takes a rare talent to explain science to the rest of us. Oliver Sacks is a master at this. So was the late Stephen Jay Gould. And now there is Norman Doidge. A terrific book. You don't have to be a brain surgeon to read it -- just a person with a curious mind. Doidge is the best possible guide. He has a fluent and unassuming style, and is able to explain difficult concepts without talking down to his readers. The case study is the psychiatric literary genre par excellence, and Doidge does not disappoint. Buy this book. Your brain will thank you.

Barnes & Noble online

Dr. Norman Doidge shows how patients have overcome deficits caused by trauma, strokes, prenatal problems, and disease. The stories are as instructive as they are inspiring.

Jeff Zimman

Doidge tells one spell-binding story after another as he travels the globe interviewing the scientists and their subjects who are on the cutting edge of a new age. Each story is interwoven with the latest in brain science, told in a manner that is both simple and compelling. It may be hard to imagine that a book so rich in science can also be a page-turner, but this one is hard to set down. —Posit Science, e-newsletter

New York Times

The power of positive thinking finally gains scientific credibility. Mind-bending, miracle-working, reality-busting stuff, with implications, as Dr. Doidge notes, not only for individual patients with neurologic disease but for all human beings, not to mention human culture, human learning and human history.

Globe & Mail

Discover

A masterfully guided tour through the burgeoning field of neuroplasticity research.

Chicago Tribune

Lucid and absolutely fascinating... engaging, educational and riveting. It satisfies, in equal measure, the mind and the heart. [Doidge is] able to explain current research in neuroscience with clarity and thoroughness. Presents the ordeals of the patients about whom [he] writes . . . with grace and vividness. In the best medical narratives -- and the works of Doidge... join that fraternity -- the narrow bridge between body and soul is traversed with courage and eloquence.

The Washington Post

Readers will want to read entire sections aloud and pass the book on to someone who can benefit from it...links scientific experimentation with personal triumph in a way that inspires awe for the brain, and for these scientists' faith in its capacity.

Discover

Excellent. A masterfully guided tour through one of neuroscience's hottest areas. Along with eminently clear accounts of the relevant concepts and experiments, [Doidge] gives well-turned descriptions of personalities and in-the-moment reactions. Intimate. Appealing.

Psychology Today

A woman who perpetually feels like she's falling, a man addicted to hard-core pornography, an amputee with excruciating pain in his phantom elbow: all cured thanks to neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to rewire itself. Doidge provides a history of the research in this growing field, highlighting scientists at the edge of groundbreaking discoveries and telling fascinating stories of people who have benefited. An engaging read for anyone interested in the science behind how our surprisingly moldable brains are changed by our experiences.

Publishers Weekly

For years the doctrine of neuroscientists has been that the brain is a machine: break a part and you lose that function permanently. 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. 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. 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. He is, perhaps, overenthusiastic about the possibilities, believing that this new science can fix every neurological problem, from learning disabilities to blindness. But Doidge writes interestingly and engagingly about some of the least understood marvels of the brain. (Mar. 19)

Library Journal

The newest buzzword in brain science seems to be neuroplasticity—the idea that the adult brain is capable of positive change. For decades, scientists and doctors thought little could be done for victims of strokes and accidents because brain cells in adults were locked into specific functions and didn't change or grow. Doidge (psychoanalysis, Columbia Univ. Psychoanalytic Ctr.) tells the story of the scientists whose work has proven that neuroplasticity is, in fact, possible, with examples of patients suffering from strokes, paralysis, obsessive-compulsive disorder, blindness, learning disabilities, and other neurological and psychiatric problems who have been helped. Sharon Begley covers the same ground in her upcoming Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential To Transform Ourselves, but Begley actually demonstrates how the topic is important to the average person. With stories of those whose lives have been saved or improved through training based on neuroplastic theories, Doidge's book is much more engaging for lay readers. Recommended for most libraries.
—Mary Ann Hughes

Kirkus Reviews

A collection of anecdotes about doctors and patients demonstrating that the human brain is capable of undergoing remarkable changes. Research psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Doidge (Columbia Univ. Psychoanalytic Center) calls this growing awareness of the brain's adaptability "the neuroplastic revolution," and he profiles scientists whose work in neuroplasticity has changed people's lives. He begins with Paul Bach-y-Rita, a pioneer in brain plasticity who has helped stroke victims improve their balance and walking. Doidge also interviews Michael Merzenich, a researcher and inventor who claims that brain exercises may be as useful as drugs in treating schizophrenia and has also developed training programs for the learning-disabled and the aging. The author talks with V.S. Ramachandran, a neurologist successful in treating phantom-limb pain, and he visits the Salk Laboratories in La Jolla, Calif., to report on the implications of current research on human neuronal stem cells. Some stories focus on nonscientists, such as the brain-damaged woman who developed her own brain exercises and then founded a Toronto school for children with learning disabilities, and a woman who functions well and has extraordinary calculating skills despite her brain having virtually no left hemisphere. The author draws on his own psychoanalytic practice to illustrate how the brain's plasticity can also create problems, e.g., when early childhood trauma causes massive change in a patient's hippocampus. One appendix explores the issue of how culture shapes the brain and is shaped by it; another takes a brief look at changing ideas about human nature and its perfectibility. Somewhat scattershot, but Doidge's personalstories, enthusiasm for his subject and admiration for its researchers keep the reader engaged.

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Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780143113102
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
Publication date: 12/18/2007
Series: James H. Silberman Bks.
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 448
Sales rank: 39,682
Product dimensions: 5.40 (w) x 8.30 (h) x 1.10 (d)

Meet the Author

Norman Doidge, M.D., is a research psychiatrist and psychoanalyst on the faculty at the Columbia University Psychoanalytic Center in New York and the University of Toronto, as well as an award-winning writer. He has presented his scientific research at the White House.

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Note to the Reader     xv
Preface     xvii
A Woman Perpetually Falling...: Rescued by the Man Who Discovered the Plasticity of Our Senses     1
Building Herself a Better Brain: A Woman Labeled "Retarded" Discovers How to Heal Herself     27
Redesigning the Brain: A Scientist Changes Brains to Sharpen Perception and Memory, Increase Speed of Thought, and Heal Learning Problems     45
Acquiring Tastes and Loves: What Neuroplasticity Teaches Us About Sexual Attraction and Love     93
Midnight Resurrections: Stroke Victims Learn to Move and Speak Again     132
Brain Lock Unlocked: Using Plasticity to Stop Worries, Obsessions, Compulsions, and Bad Habits     164
Pain: The Dark Side of Plasticity     177
Imagination: How Thinking Makes It So     196
Turning Our Ghosts into Ancestors: Psychoanalysis as a Neuroplastic Therapy     215
Rejuvenation: The Discovery of the Neuronal Stem Cell and Lessons for Preserving Our Brains     245
More than the Sum of Her Parts: A Woman Shows Us How Radically Plastic the Brain Can Be     258
The Culturally Modified Brain     287
Plasticity and the Idea of Progress     313
Acknowledgments     319
Notes and References     323
Index     409

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The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science

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More About This Book

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Globe & Mail

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Easy to understand!

A book that will be equally enjoyed by skeptics and those seeking hope.

A bit technical, but interesting

A MUST READ

A book that changed my life.

Wonderful book about brain plasticity!

I would definitely recommend this book to absolutely anyone. Th

Highly recommended-I could not put it down

Great!

Changed my life!

Great

Wonderful read

Should be required reading for every teacher!

Inspiring!

Engaging and inspiring

A Book for the Ages

Excellent book.

Eye Opener!

Good introduction to neuroplasticity

Life changing

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