The Woman Who Changed Her Brain: And Other Inspiring Stories of Pioneering Brain Transformation

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The Woman Who Changed Her Brain: And Other Inspiring Stories of Pioneering Brain Transformation (eBook) Pub. Date: 5/1/2012 Publisher: Free Press
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The Woman Who Changed Her Brain: And Other Inspiring Stories of Pioneering Brain Transformation (Simon & Schuster) Pub. Date: 5/1/2012 Publisher: Free Press

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Overview

Barbara Arrowsmith-Young was born with severe learning disabilities that caused teachers to label her slow, stubborn—or worse. As a child, she read and wrote everything backward, struggled to process concepts in language, continually got lost, and was physically uncoordinated. She could make no sense of an analogue clock. But by relying on her formidable memory and iron will, she made her way to graduate school, where she chanced upon research that inspired her to invent cognitive exercises to “fix” her own brain. The Woman Who Changed Her Brain interweaves her personal tale with riveting case histories from her more than thirty years of working with both children and adults.

Recent discoveries in neuroscience have conclusively demonstrated that, by engaging in certain mental tasks or activities, we actually change the structure of our brains—from the cells themselves to the connections between cells. The capability of nerve cells to change is known as neuroplasticity, and Arrowsmith-Young has been putting it into practice for decades. With great inventiveness, after combining two lines of research, Barbara developed unusual cognitive calisthenics that radically increased the functioning of her weakened brain areas to normal and, in some areas, even above-normal levels. She drew on her intellectual strengths to determine what types of drills were required to target the specific nature of her learning problems, and she managed to conquer her cognitive deficits. Starting in the late 1970s, she has continued to expand and refine these exercises, which have benefited thousands of individuals. Barbara founded Arrowsmith School in Toronto in 1980 and then the Arrowsmith Program to train teachers and to implement this highly effective methodology in schools all over North America. Her work is revealed as one of the first examples of neuroplasticity’s extensive and practical application. The idea that self-improvement can happen in the brain has now caught fire.

The Woman Who Changed Her Brain powerfully and poignantly illustrates how the lives of children and adults struggling with learning disorders can be dramatically transformed. This remarkable book by a brilliant pathbreaker deepens our understanding of how the brain works and of the brain’s profound impact on how we participate in the world. Our brains shape us, but this book offers clear and hopeful evidence of the corollary: we can shape our brains.

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Kirkus Reviews

A pioneer in the treatment of learning disabilities describes how she diagnosed her own mental disability and created unique exercises to retrain her brain. Arrowsmith-Young's goal is to train educators--her method is now taught at more than 30 schools in the United States and Canada--and create tailor-made cognitive exercises for students at her Toronto school. The author chronicles how she overcame her inability to conceptualize causality despite having excellent audio and visual memory. She could "make no sense of the relationship between the big and little hands of an analogue clock." Even simple arithmetic was beyond her capability, and her reading comprehension was poor. She had difficulty following conversations, catching only fragments at a time and then replaying them in her head later. By dint of her "singular work ethic and gritty determination to succeed," she stumbled through school by relying on her phenomenal memory to compensate for her disabilities. While studying child behavior in graduate school in the late 1970s, Arrowsmith-Young discovered a book by Soviet neuropsychologist Aleksandr Luria, in which the author described his work with brain-injured World War II veterans. She was amazed to find that many of their symptoms paralleled her own, and she also learned about rats whose brains showed physical change as a result of being placed in stimulating environments. Consequently, the author devised a series of increasingly complex exercises, drilling herself with flash cards showing the hands of a clock in different positions. Her success in increasing her mental function laid the basis for her teaching method, which challenges students to directly address their handicaps. Arrowsmith-Young provides helpful anecdotes that indicate impressive improvements achieved by her students by following the mental exercises that she has developed. An inspiring, instructive life story.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781451607932
Publisher: Free Press
Publication date: 5/1/2012
Edition description: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 288
Sales rank: 130,602
Product dimensions: 6.34 (w) x 9.08 (h) x 1.01 (d)

Meet the Author

Barbara Arrowsmith Young is the Director of Arrowsmith School and Arrowsmith Program. She holds both a B.A.Sc. in Child Studies from the University of Guelph, and a Master’s degree in School Psychology from the University of Toronto (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education).

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