The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science » (~)

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.

An astonishing new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Norman Doidge, M.D., traveled the country to meet both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they've transformed—people whose mental limitations or brain damage 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.

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.

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