Customer Reviews

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

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This is the most interesting book I've read about brain science . . . and the most relevant. I highly recommend you read it!

If you haven't been following brain science, you may wonder what all the fuss is about. Recent experiments have overturned a long-held tenant of brain science: That specific mental and bodily functions can only be directed from one location in the brain. Destroy that section and physicians have told you that you were out of luck. This conclusion doomed many who had suffered strokes and other brain injuries to having no hope of improvement.

The good news, as described in this easy-to-understand popular treatment, is that the brain can actually relocate functions to new areas if the primary site is destroyed. As a result, stroke victims can gain control over movements by therapy designed to disable their abler body areas . . . forcing the brain to establish new circuits to control the areas with little or no control; the blind can learn to "see" using sensor inputs from other areas of their bodies; those without balance can relearn balance through using other feedback mechanisms; and those with "phantom" pain tied to missing limbs can trigger elimination of that sensation. The only continuing limitation seems to be that some areas of the brain are only open to maximum flexibility during short periods of life. But promising research suggests that biochemical tools may be able to reopen those pathways to progress.

Chances are that your physician won't know about all of these advanced therapies. If you or someone you know has neurological disorders, you should read this book to see where to send them for help.

Be sure to check out the sections on how psychoanalysis can be used to rewire the brain to change sensations, reactions, and behavior, and the appendices on cultural impacts on the brain and the potential for perfectibility.

A revolution is now sweeping through the field of brain science, and this book chronicles the stories of the men and women who have ushered in a new age. The brain is no longer viewed as a machine that is hard-wired early in life, unable to adapt and destined to "wear out" with age. Instead, we learn that scientists are beginning to unlock the secrets of the powerful, lifelong, adaptability - or "plasticity" - of the brain. The implications are enormous for treating neurological conditions, for addressing the aging process and for dramatic improvements in human performance. Author Norman Doidge is a psychiatrist on the Columbia faculty and he 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 these developments. 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.

The history of Sigmund Freud's approach to the mechanisms of the mind has exhibited some tumultuous changes over the past century. Norman Doidge reminds us that Freud developed a thesis about the mind's plasticity over time. Freud's psychotherapy - irrespective of some questionable methods - was designed to allow the mind to search within itself and change outward behaviour by identifying memories hidden or repressed. However, after Freud, researchers using diagnoses of stroke or brain-injury victims, "mapped" areas in the brain for function. The first of these was the speech-producing region now named Broca's Area, after Paul Broca, its discoverer in the mid-19th century. Brain modularity, or "localization" as Doidge deems it, became the norm in brain research for decades following Broca. In this fine account of the history or recent brain studies, Doidge addresses a new concept being used to both treat and train - brain "plasticity".

Rewiring of the brain isn't a new concept. Among the more famous examples of how the brain reacts to challenges from the rest of the body is the concept known as "phantom limbs". Patients suffering amputations have complained of itchiness or pain seeming to emanate from the lost limb. V.S. Ramachandran and his colleagues have described this phenomenon in detail. "Rama" is but one of the researchers Doidge parades in a receiving line of innovative cognitive specialists. One of his more noteworthy is Michael Merzenich, who Doidge declares is the "world's leading researcher in brain plasticity". Merzenich followed the work of Wilder Penfield at McGill University in Montreal. Penfield used electrical probes to map the regions of the brain to identify which areas produced specific reactions. Penfield's work reinforced the consensus regarding "localization". Doidge goes so far as to deem neuroscience as long dominated by "localizationism" - a form of dogma. Merzenich, on the other hand used more refined equipment than available to Penfield, has made vast strides with closer detail. His work also demonstrated that "lost areas" in the brain have their duties taken up in other regions. The brain, he demonstrated, can "re-wire" itself - and in more than one way. The brain, then, isn't dominated by genetically assigned "localizations". It's "plastic" and able to change, through training or even using its own resources. In a sense, Freud's original concept has been vindicated by recent research.

Doidge follows the work of dozens of researchers who have revealed examples of this re-mapping activity. They investigate how stroke patients can learn to use limbs rendered unresponsive. The treatment seems bizarre - restrain the good limb so it will not replace the useless one. In a short time, the unresponsive limb begins to respond as the brain is forced to seek new pathways. Patient recovery has been almost spectacular, according to Doidge. He stresses that the theme is "use it or lose it" throughout the book, but is especially true in stroke victims. Where traditional therapy enhanced the capabilities of the working limb, brain plasticity demonstrates that recovering use of an affected limb should be favoured. This new therapy can be successfully applied months, or even years, after the stroke event. In this author's hands, these accounts read like a script for a car-salesman sitcom. He may be correct in his views, but nothing in brain sciences is entirely positive, as history has demonstrated.

There's more than just therapy in brain plasticity achievements. In Asia, particularly Japan, babies are born with ability to form the sound for the letter "L". Since Japanese doesn't contain any words with that sound, children lose the capacity to pronounce it. A new programme, using slowly sounded words can actually recover the pronunciation in immigrants to North America. The technique is an indicator of what Doidge refers to as "plasticity competition". Although the brain appears to re-route signals throughout the brain simply during daily use, there is also the possibility of patterns settling in and resisting change. Doidge refers to this as the "plastic paradox", and sees it as the way habits are formed and retained - even against good sense.

While Doidge has provided a comprehensive look at how recent research has overthrown the notion of "one area - one behaviour", there are numerous questions remaining. How does the mechanism work? What triggers neurons to reach out to make new connections? Is anything already in place displaced, or are idle synapses or dendrites now put to work? Does the old notion of our using "only 10 per cent. of our brain" - an cliché long dismissed by neuroscientists - have some validity, after all? Although two Appendices enlarge greatly on this overview - one on culture and another on "Progress", brain mechanics in this process remain obscure. This shortcoming requires vast amounts of further research but in no way diminishes Doidge's accomplishment. This book will remain a major element in the history of brain studies for some time. Written for any reader who has a brain, the author deserves the fullest praise for his accomplishment. The five stars is given a bit grudgingly, but this book requires the widest exposure possible. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Dr. Doidge's book provides you with an excellent insight into the world of neuroplasticity, or the world of the malleable brain. Although it has many great examples illustrating the "plasticity" of the brain, the reader should have some backround knowledge of the nervous system to fully comprehend the concepts, although it is explained to some extent in the book. An excellent read, one that i would encourage all to read

A great book that covers brain science in easy terms. It would probably be a bit heavy for most readers. I found the authors frequent references to Freud's ideas that have largely been debunked in recent years disconcerting.

This is a fascinating look at how the brain can rewire itself when damage occurs. For instance, by consistently working with a severely damaged part of the body, for instance a limb incapacitated by a stroke, the brain will start supporting the effort to restore it's functioning, even if the part of the brain which would normally support the limb is totally destroyed. This understanding needs to be shared with physiotherapists and other health professionals, as well as families, who are supporting people who have suffered brain damage.

The book gives the message that all sorts of amazing things can be done through lots of brain retraining work, but doesn't claim that it is a quick and easy cure for everything either, which I appreciated.

Some people are taking the idea of neuroplasticity and running with it and maybe going a bit too far and claiming that we can retrain our brains to be any way we want (such as choosing our sexuality), and to use it to cure completely every neurological disease. It is disturbing. But this book doesn't at all support these sorts of unreasonable notions, fortunately.

This book explains that amazing changes can be made to improve people with congenital issues, diseases or brain injuries or that wish to reverse negative learned behaviours - but that these changes take lots of hard work and also that they are limited in some cases. Recovery from brain injuries will often be partial and not total. Not all neurological function that is lost through a brain injury can be fully restored. All we can do is try our hardest and do our best.

(The idea that everyone so injured could be totally well again if they just put the time into rehabilitation worries me a little. Again, this idea is not supported in the book, I'm referring to worrying and ignorant comments made elsewhere.)

Partial recoveries are still very very exciting though and nothing to sneeze at, especially when people are very ill and disabled to begin with. It is very exciting stuff, this book.

This book would be very encouraging to read for those who have had strokes and would like to learn to walk again. The bits at the start of the book about how neuroplasticity may allow people that are blind or deaf from birth to see and to hear, were astounding to read about.

I was fascinated to read about how one can compensate for a failed vestibular system with vision, as this is something I and many other M.E. patients have done.

I couldn't help but think about this compensation in M.E. patients as I read the book. It is a natural phenomena, which is kind of fascinating to me. But it is only a partial solution - which sort of supports the notions in this book of targeted and purposeful brain retraining being so powerful I guess.

This natural brain retraining of the vestibular system works well, but leaves you in a hideous situation if you are even plunged into a totally dark environment - such as when the power goes out. You suddenly have no sense of up or down and the world spins horribly, so much so that you are too ill to crawl towards the torch or lighter that can save you.

I keep torches within reach in every room I spend time in, I have to. This problem also means many of us need to sleep with a nightlight, as your body seems to need to know up from down when you are sleeping too. I also need to make sure when I walk that nothing in the room moves, or else I feel about to fall over and lose my equilibrium for a few minutes and have to clutch at things to not fall over.

But far better all these problems than going back to when I didn't really have any sort of vastibular system and would be constantly spinning and feeling I was rolling off my flat bed, or feel I was falling backwards the whole time I was walking upright! As the women in the book said too, it is also awful always walking with your feet so wide apart for balance as well. I'm so used to it now, but it would be wonderful to one day no longer have to do so! Maybe in time, and with the ideas in this book put into use, this could happen? I'd like to think so.

Reading about how well-known these visual compensations for vestibular problems are was a bit hard going for me at times, as it made me quite annoyed and sad that so few doctors and neurologists seem to know about them and that we as patients are each treated as if this problem were unique to us, when it is so obviously not. The woman with vestibular symptoms mentioned in this book described my symptoms so well. It is a bit maddening how behind with real cutting-edge research and information so many medical professionals are.

If I can improve my health to the point of being out and about in the world again, and my vestibular function hasn't improved along with the rest of me, I'll definitely try the under-tongue vestibular re-trainer device (I forget the proper name for it used in the book!) if I can.

This book was exciting to read and gave me hope for my future and one day being able to try out some of these ideas for myself. But for right now, with a brain injury that also has had systemic effects and caused cardiac insufficiency and an inability to do anything but the most basic tasks (I'm housebound and 95% bedbound and very limited with talking and movement etc. as well), it is impossible and would result in relapse and loss of function rather than improvements. Having an ongoing disease process which means your activity level is severely restricted as well as neurological problems is a different kettle of fish to fixing neurological issues which are not ongoing, such as a stroke, say. You need to be able to put the work in, and not have a disease which is worsening for physical reasons too I guess. But hope for the future is still hope.

The parts supporting animal studies in the book made me feel quite uncomfortable. I would personally rather they had been omitted from the book as they detract from the important main message.

I also have to admit that I was a bit disappointed after reading the book and hearing so many good things said about it that it wasn't edited to a somewhat higher standard, and organised a bit better. Parts of the book were quite boring to read and it'd have been great if the book had summarised the main points in the final chapter instead of just kind of petering out. The book was well written, but could maybe have been made even better with a good edit.

All through the book I kept wondering how much more positive the results from these treatments would be if they were combined with patients being given all the nutrients their brains need to function well and to heal. Nutritional medicine is vital for anyone recovering form a brain injury or similar, the body needs to have all the basic building blocks necessary to make repairs and to function properly, no matter what other treatments are tried. Although this topic is mostly ignored in this book, there was one comment towards the end where the author said that although nutrition was not his area that a properly designed supplement regime is 'a common practice that we should all be pursuing' which is hard to argue with.

For anyone interested in this topic books such as Detoxify or Die, Eat Fat, Lose Fat: The Healthy Alternative to Trans Fats, Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food and Primal Body, Primal Mind: Beyond the Paleo Diet for Total Health and a Longer Life and others are a great start. (These books and others like them have let me very slowly start to improve my own health, FWIW.)

Overall this book is a fascinating and engaging read, especially if you are facing a neurological disease or other neurological problem. I'd highly recommend checking to see if your library has a copy. The books on neurological case studies by Oliver Sacks are also a very interesting read if you have any type of brain injury.

Jodi Bassett, The Hummingbirds' Foundation for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

Finally! Someone has written an owners manual for the brain. Once you read this, you begin to understand why we do the things we do, and how to solve behavioral and physical problems. Excellent!

6. The Brain that Changes Itself - Norman Doidge

This is an excellent book for the general reader of the new concept of neuro-plasticity. Doidge is a doctor and worked with Paul Bach-y-Rita, the scientist who brought this subject on stream since the 1970s when every other neurobiologist thought he was a nutbar. That was because the view was that once a brain was formed, it could not change. If you had a stroke, head injury, or eye damage, tough, you were stuck with it for the rest of your life.

Baccy-Rita found out differently. His own father, a professor, had a large stroke and could not get himself on or off the toilet, could not crawl, could not lift his arm. But with much ongoing work of doing things like learning how to crawl again, then to stand without falling over, and so on, he ultimately regained his abilities, including speaking and typing, to be a professor for many years, and go mountain climbing, where he died on a holiday.

The concept of brain plasticity means that if you can give stimulation to one sense for another sense, that the brain changes itself to process the new information and also connect with the areas that require responding to the world, like walking or talking, and the damage is ultimately repaired. For example, a woman who was given too much antibiotics in an infection in a hospital lost her sense of balance so badly that she could not stand up, lost her job, lost everything. She was treated by Bachy-Rita in the following way: a hat with gyroscopes and vision devices was put on her head and then the leads were attached to a small paddle that she placed on her tongue. The small electrical discharges to her tongue were taken up into her head to compensate for her ruined vestibular system (our balance centre in our inner ears), made connection with the visual cortex and the parietal body command centres and ultimately she got to the point where she only had to put the hat on for a few minutes every four months. I have grossly simplified this one example of dozens in the book.

In another example, this has been made into a documentary, that I have seen on PBS and CBC: a blind man was given a vision hat and the tongue paddle. In the end he was able to navigate his way around a room, and, 'see' and pick up a ball from the floor, spot a garbage can across the room and toss it into it. I don't think I could do this, and I've got sight.

Plasticity, like the left brain right brain concept, is currently being dumbed down into psycho babble on many tv shows. This book gives you a much better introduction to the concept and is definitely worth looking at for anyone who wants to understand how the brain can be trained to use another area to provide a function. Many products have been made using these concepts. Space suits are so thick that people can't feel nuts and bolts in their fingers. Gloves with sensors on the outside connected to the inside make this possible. Men who have lost the ability to ejaculate have been provided with a sensory condom that takes the friction information to another area of skin that then gets taken to the brain and processed so that sexual pleasure is enjoyed and ejaculation happens once again. Tests have shown promise for dealing with the tremor of Parkinsons' it's a very useful concept of wide application. If you have a brain 'misfunction', you should read this book. The problem is not your brain, the problem is that no one has devised a rehabilitation program that you can follow to get the functions back.

And for a Brave New World concept, read page 84 for descriptions of how, in future, we will be able to turn our 'learn easy' centre (nucleus basalis) on with yet to be developed drugs and learn anything with the ease we did in childhood. It will be for us the Matrix response to the question: Can you fly this thing? Answer: Not yet. And then you get loaded.

Do focus on chapter 4 that is about love, sex, parenting changing our attractions, losing a love, grieving and learning to love another. All are plasticity events whereby certain brain chemicals (for ex, oxytocin and vasopressin) allow us to unlearn old loves and form new attractions, but at the same time change sexual attraction into love. It also has an excellent section on sexual fantasies, how they arise, stimulate us, and when knowing their origin, change can begin. You will be able to look at your own mind with new light, a common association is sex and violence, and this chapter will give you some insight into yourself. I lost my children through divorce 15 years ago, and this chapter has a good explanation of how one begins to feel less pain by making small steps away over the years, or how, for instance, a new love can shield you from the necessary grieving over the loss of children. It's still there, waiting to be faced and let go.

Chapter 7 has a fascinating section on pain in phantom limbs. Using a mirror box that projected a limb for an amputated limb, VS Ramachandran, was able to have patients lose pain from the limb they didn't have and to unfreeze limbs that had been in slings or casts before amputation. This means that pain is in the brain, not the body, and that the entire body is really just a phantom the brain has constructed for its own use. This means that with the correct mind stimulus that a person could become anything they wanted to be, including a rocket scientist, or a better rocket scientist.

dcreid.ca - more to come...

Excellent book!!! It really challenged my perceptions, beliefs, attitudes and my scientific knowledge. This gave me a whole new way of thinking about what we are told by Scientists, Doctors.... and how we can be instrumental in our own "life changes" & our own "healing". Science is not "cast in stone" and changes every day, every moment and every second. Our lives too will changes as we evolve, grow, and transform!!!