Book: The Brain That Changes Itself
Author: Norman Doidge
Find Online:http://www.normandoidge.com/?page_id=1259
Date Read: In progress
I was intrigued by the intersection of neuroscience and self-help in this book.
And while machines do many extraordinary things, they don’t change and grow.
…activity is, I believe, the most important alteration in our view of the brain since we first sketched out its basic anatomy and the workings of its basic component, the neuron. Like all revolutions, this one will have profound effects, and this book, I hope, will begin to show some of them.
The neuroplastic revolution has implications for, among other things, our understanding of how love, sex, grief, relationships, learning, addictions, culture, technology, and psychotherapies change our brains. All of the humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences, insofar as they deal with human nature, are affected, as are all forms of training. All of these disciplines will have to come to terms with the fact of the self-changing brain and with the realization that the architecture of the brain differs from one person to the next and that it changes in the course of our individual lives.
While the human brain has apparently underestimated itself, neuroplasticity isn’t all good news; it renders our brains not only more resourceful but also more vulnerable to outside influences. Neuroplasticity has the power to produce more flexible but also more rigid behaviors—a phenomenon I call “the plastic paradox.” Ironically, some of our most stubborn habits and disorders are products of our plasticity. Once a particular plastic change occurs in the brain and becomes well established, it can prevent other changes from occurring. It is by understanding both the positive and negative effects of plasticity that we can truly understand the extent of human possibilities. Because a new word is useful for those who do a new thing, I call the practitioners of this new science of changing brains “neuroplas-ticians.” What follows is the story of my encounters with them and the patients they have transformed.
The idea that the brain can change its own structure and function through thought and activity is, I believe, the most important alteration in our view of the brain since we first sketched out its basic anatomy and the workings of its basic component, the neuron.
All of these disciplines will have to come to terms with the fact of the self-changing brain and with the realization that the architecture of the brain differs from one person to the next and that it changes in the course of our individual lives
The Nature article was reported in The New York Times, Newsweek, and Life, but perhaps because the claim seemed so implausible, the device and its inventor soon slipped into relative obscurity
Yet it was thought implausible and ignored because the scientific mind-set at the time assumed that the brain’s structure is fixed, and that our senses, the avenues by which experience gets into our minds, are hardwired. This idea, which still has many adherents, is called “localizationism.” It’s closely related to the idea that the brain is like a complex machine, made up of parts, each of which performs a specific mental function and exists in a genetically predetermined or hardwired location—hence the name. A brain that is hardwired, and in which each mental function has a strict location, leaves little room for plasticity