Each story is interwoven with the latest in brain science, told in a manner that is both simple and compelling.
“Doidge tells one spellbinding story after another as he travels the globe interviewing the scientists and their subjects who are on the cutting edge of a new age. links scientific experimentation with personal triumph in a way that inspires awe for the brain, and for these scientists’ faith in its capacity.”
“Readers will want to read entire sections aloud and pass the book on to someone who can benefit from it. join that fraternity-the narrow bridge between body and soul is traversed with courage and eloquence.” In the best medical narratives-and the works of Doidge. He presents the ordeals of the patients about whom he writes-people born with parts of their brains missing, people with learning disabilities, people recovering from strokes-with grace and vividness. Doidge is able to explain current research in neuroscience with clarity and thoroughness. It satisfies, in equal measure, the mind and the heart. not only for individual patients with neurologic disease but for all human beings, not to mention human culture, human learning and human history.” Mind-bending, miracle-working, reality-busting stuff, with implications. But Norman Doidge’s fascinating synopsis of the current revolution in neuroscience straddles this gap: the age-old distinction between the brain and the mind is crumbling fast as the power of positive thinking finally gains scientific credibility. “In bookstores, the science aisle generally lies well away from the self-help section, with hard reality on one set of shelves and wishful thinking on the other. 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, 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. 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. “Doidge’s book is a remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain. He divides his time between Toronto and New York. He is a four-time recipient of Canada’s National Magazine Gold Award. Norman Doidge, M.D., is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and researcher on the faculty at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research in New York and the University of Toronto’s department of psychiatry, as well as an author, essayist, and poet.
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