| The Brain That Changes Itself | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Norman Doidge |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | Neuroplasticity |
| Genre(s) | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
| Publication date | 2007 |
| Pages | 427 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 067003830X |
| OCLC Number | 71189897 |
| Dewey Decimal | 612.8 22 |
| LC Classification | QP363.3 .D65 2007 |
The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science is a book on neuroplasticity by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge, M.D. It features studies of several patients suffering from neurological disorders and details how the brain adapts to compensate for their disabilities. Interviews with the patients and doctors make up a large portion of the contents. Doidge uses examples of previous work carried out by neuroscientists such as Paul Broca and Paul Bach-y-Rita to show that the brain is adaptive, and thus plastic. Through the case studies, Doidge demonstrates both the beneficial and detrimental effects that neuroplasticity can have on a patient, saying, "Neuroplasticity contributes to both the constrained and unconstrained aspects of our nature," and "it renders our brains not only more resourceful, but also more vulnerable to outside influences."
Contents |
An important example of neuroplasticity is how humans gain skills. Doidge presents an experiment performed by Pascual Leone in which he mapped the brains of blind people learning to read Braille. Braille reading is a motor activity, which involves scanning with a reading finger, and a sensory activity, which involves feeling the raised bumps. The brain maintains a representation of these sensory and motor aspects, which are located in different cortices. The blind subjects practiced two hours a day, Monday through Friday, with an hour of homework. The mapping of their brains took place on Monday, after the weekend, and Friday, immediately after their week cram. What the scans ultimately showed is that the maps dramatically increased in size on Friday scans but returned to a "baseline" size on the following Monday. It took 6 months for the baseline Monday map to gradually increase and by 10 months they plateaued. After the blind subjects took a two month break, they were remapped, and their maps were unchanged from their last Monday mapping. What this shows is that long lasting changes as the result of skill learning took 10 months of repeated practice. The reason why short-term improvements were made based on the Friday mappings, but eventually disappeared, is the result of the type of neuronal connections that were taking place. The Friday mappings were the result of the strengthening of existing neuronal connections. Monday mappings, though showing little progress initially and plateauing at ten months, were the result of the creation of new neural connections.