Norman Doidge

Content warnings for animal harm, human disability, kink-shaming (as in he believes (as of 2007 publication) kink is a universal sign of childhood trauma and/or mental illness), a blanket anti-porn stance, Freudian psychiatry, and judgy ignorance of non-vanilla relationship norms. But if you can get through that, there's an excellent survey of how the brain grows, becomes rigid, adapts, etc.

This very readable book takes the layperson on a journey through a variety of cases and researchers involved with neuroplasticity. Where other texts have tended to focus on one aspect (e.g., brain injury, countering aging, psychotherapy), Doidge is unusual in that he combines rather different cases into one book. In this mix, you'll find the tales of recovery from stroke, the story of a girl born with only one brain hemisphere, and musings on neural changes after exposure to pornography. The show more brain is not set in stone in childhood; it continues to add new cells and form new connections between cells until the day we die.

Be warned, however; much of what we've learned about the workings of the brain has come from animal research, and the details aren't danced around in this book. In fact, the author spends quite a few pages defending the research using silverbacks conducted by Taub; he makes the case that PETA had its facts wrong and actually did more harm to the animals by taking them away from the lab. Readers will encounter examinations of the brains of sacrificed animals, but they will also find descriptions of human autopsies and their findings. For example, the findings of new cells in the final days of life aren't from indirect evidence, but direct observations from autopsies. Such descriptions do not make up the bulk of the book, but they are more than a few pages and particularly sensitive readers may want to find another book to read.

Weaving clinical anecdotes with background on prominent researchers, Doidge makes a very good case that research on humans and other animals can translate to improvements in quality of life for those with impaired development or brain injury. Well-referenced, the work tucks away literature citations at the end of the book so that they don't interrupt the flow of the narrative.

Although the chapters of the text cover a variety of cases, the commonalities of neuroplasticity come through clearly for the reader to make this work a unified whole. I recommend this book for any educated layperson who'd like to know more about the flexibility of the brain without learning a vast new terminology. show less

This book was somewhat disappointing overall, primarily because of the author's twin approach to link theories to individual patient cases and also to apparently advertise programmes for treatment.
For me at least, both of these rob the book of a significant degree of scientific credibility.
It feels to me as if the research could have been presented in a more concise and scientifically oriented work, but that somehow that got lost along the way.

Boy, when they say "remarkable" they mean remarkable. I was astounded by these recovery stories based on therapies I'd never heard of before. The book is a fascinating read, and I ended up just buying it as a reference when I got near the end of it. I found a lot of information that had potential applications for myself or my loved ones.
I've been hearing references to neuroplasticity for about a year now, and this is the first book I've read about it. It does get rather in-depth in spots, show more alternating between technical details and anecdotal examples. Science is not my strongest subject, but I was still able to follow.
I have two complaints. The first one is that he kept referencing his other book [b:The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science|570172|The Brain That Changes Itself Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science|Norman Doidge|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1431402537s/570172.jpg|557215], which I plan to eventually read, but I didn't need to be reminded of so often. The second complaint is the animal testing that was spoken of with absolutely no empathy or apology. There has to be a better way to test a therapy than dropping a magnet on a mouse's head to simulate a brain injury, or severing a rat's spinal cord, or sewing a monkey's fingers together. That mouse one particularly, on top of being cruel, didn't even seem like it would guarantee any accuracy. I should clarify that the author wrote about this testing but wasn't the one actually performing any of these tests himself. I just didn't appreciate that it was presented so prosaically.
Still a good book though, and highly recommended. show less