“The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science”
This has implications not just for individual patients with neurological diseases, but for all human beings, and even for human cultures. Think that the brain is hardwired and that what you have by the age of eighteen is what you’re left with? Think again.
Regarding patients with brain injuries, Dr. Doidge offers the following examples of brain plasticity in his book:
- Cheryl Schiltz lost her sense of balance when her inner ear’s vestibular system was damaged due to a drug’s side effect. She was sentenced to a lifetime of wobbling and feeling as if she were in a constant free fall. After a year of sessions with a device that basically created an external vestibular system, her brain rewired itself and she has now regained her balance and returned to a normal life.
- Michelle Mack was born, literally, with just half of her brain. However, she walks, talks, votes, holds down a job and so on — having transferred the tasks more generally assigned to the missing hemisphere to her remaining half-brain.
- Michael Bernstein suffered a debilitating stroke in his 50s which paralyzed the left side of his body. He’s now back to his former life: through rehabilitation the functions of the brain areas killed in the stroke transferred themselves to healthy regions.
Brain plasticity also means all of the following: you can lift depression, relieve anxiety, ease pain, raise IQ, reverse senility, and change what you thought were entrenched personality characteristics. Read on below to discover more about the brain’s plasticity, and how our brains change with every thought we have.
Why This Book Was Written
Dr. Doidge explains in the preface of “The Brain That Changes Itself” that he became interested in the idea of a changing brain because of his work as a research psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. When patients did not progress psychologically as much as hoped, the conventional medical wisdom was that their problems were simply “hardwired” into an unchangeable brain.
When he first began to hear that the brain was not hardwired, he decided to go out and investigate and weigh the evidence for himself. Dr. Doidge traveled across North America to meet some of the pioneering researchers who were making revolutionary discoveries about the plasticity of the brain, often going against the grain of their skeptical colleagues. In addition, he visited their patients, people who were once thought of as incurable and who are now living normal lives.
What he learned from these scientists and from their patients turned into the raw material for the book. (Read the book’s Preface here.)
Implications of Thinking of the Brain as a Machine
Doidge argues that the idea that the brain is plastic–in the sense that it’s changeable, adaptable, and malleable–is the most important change in our understanding of the human brain in 400 years.
For 400 years the world’s best scientists thought of the brain as a machine, like a computer. That is, the brain was regarded as a machine with parts, where each part performed a specific function. A machine can do many things, but it can’t grow new parts, and it can’t rewire itself.
The implications of thinking of the brain as a machine with fixed parts were the following:
- If anyone was born with brain deficits or limitations, they simply had to live with these limitations, in all cases.
- Those who had sustained brain trauma could do nothing about it, in all cases.
- Anyone born with a normal brain who hoped to improve their brain, or maintain it as they aged, was seen as wasting their time.
- Human nature was seen as being fixed, in so far as we saw the brain to be fixed. (Source).
Why Did It Take So Long to Discover the Brain’s Plasticity?
If the brain is plastic, how is it possible we missed it for so long? Doidge offers the following four reasons:
1. We didn’t have the technology to view the brain.
2. Modern science could be said to have begun with Galileo. Based on Galileo’s findings, scientists began to think of the universe as a giant cosmic clock; biologists then took this model of mechanistic understanding and applied it to the organs inside our bodies. William Harvey, who discovered that the heart circulated the blood through vessels and was essentially a pump, began mechanistic biology.
Shortly thereafter, the philosopher Rene Descartes described the nervous system very much like a pump, and that there were currents that moved up and down the nerves, which we later learned were electric currents. It soon seemed to scientists that the brain was also machine-like.
3. In those cases in which people would get better from strokes, it would be explained away: the brain wasn’t damaged, it was just in shock. That is, any evidence of brain plasticity was dismissed.
4. Plasticity is the culprit that causes us to miss plasticity; plasticity gives rise to flexibility, but it also gives rise to a lot of very rigid behavior. If you’re on a hill covered in snow and you create a path in the snow, the next time you’re going down that way you’ll have a tendency to go down the same path you created. Soon, that path becomes a rut. The brain works in much the same way and this can hamper our ability to think in different ways than we’re accustomed to.
photo credit: Tambako the Jaguar
Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. – Pioneer in Brain Plasticity Research
“Michael Merzenich is a driving force behind scores of neuroplastic innovations and practical inventions, and I am on the road to Santa Rosa, California, to find him. His is the name most frequently praised by other neuroplasticians, and he’s by far the hardest to track down.” — From “The Brain That Changes Itself”
In chapter three of “The Brain That Changes Itself”
For more than three decades, Dr. Merzenich–Professor Emeritus, University of California at San Francisco–has been a leading pioneer in brain plasticity research. He’s made some ambitious claims for the field of neuroplasticity, such as the following:
- That brain exercises may be as useful as drugs to treat diseases as severe as schizophrenia;
- That plasticity exists from the cradle to the grave;
- That radical improvements in cognitive functioning-how we learn, think, perceive, and remember-are possible even in the elderly.
Merzenich argues that practicing a new skill, under the right conditions, can change hundreds of millions and possibly billions of the connections between the nerve cells in our brain maps. Before Merzenich’s work, the brain was seen as a complex machine, having unalterable limits on memory, processing speed, and intelligence. Merzenich has shown that each of these assumptions is wrong. (Dr. Merzenich is co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Posit Science, a site dedicated to brain fitness and training).
You can watch Dr. Merzenich speak about re-wiring the brain at Ted.com below:
More Case Histories Found in “The Brain That Changes Itself”
Here are some other case histories found in “The Brain That Changes Itself”:
- A woman labeled retarded who cured her deficits with brain exercises and now cures those of others. (If you’d like to read more about her, this woman’s name is Barbara Arrowsmith Young).
- Blind people learning to see.
- Learning disorders cured.
- IQs raised.
- Aging brains rejuvenated.
- Children with cerebral palsy learning to move more gracefully.
- Entrenched depression and anxiety disappearing.
- Lifelong character traits altered.
Related Posts:
- 12 Ways to Boost Your Brain Power
- 15 Brain Hacks – Gym and Spa For Your Brain
- 20 Ways to Raise Your IQ
- Four Ways to Achieve a Productive State of Mind
Recommended Products:
Learn to meditate, increase your focus and concentration, boost your creativity, and augment your brain power with the Silva Life System, the world’s most popular meditation program.
Visit the Silva Life System web site and get a free course on the basics of the Silva Life System, which includes their famous 30 minute guided meditation.
My ebook “How to Be More Creative – A Handbook for Alchemists” explains that creativity is not the sole domain of the arts but is important in any field, from medicine to business, and from engineering to developing a creative solution to a negotiation impasse. Whatever you do, creativity helps you do it better. Discover practical advice on how to be more creative in every life endeavor by reading my ebook.
Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe for free by RSS or e-mail and you’ll always know when I publish something new. (What’s RSS?).
Also, please share it on the social media site of your choice, thank you. 
