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    The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science
    Unavailable
    The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science
    Unavailable
    The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science

    Written by Norman Doidge, M.D.

    Narrated by Jim Bond

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    "Fascinating. Doidge's book is a remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain." -Oliver Sacks

    The discovery that our thoughts can change the structure and function of our brains-even into old age-is the most important breakthrough in neuroscience in four centuries. In this revolutionary look at the brain, bestselling author, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge, M.D., introduces both the brilliant scientists championing this new science of neuroplasticity and the astonishing progress of the people whose lives they've transformed. Introducing principles we can all use as well as a riveting collection of case histories-stroke patients cured, a woman with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, learning and emotional disorders overcome, IQs raised, and aging brains rejuvenated-The Brain That Changes Itself has "implications for all human beings, not to mention human culture, human learning and human history" (The New York Times).

    "Readers will want to read entire sections aloud and pass the book on to someone who can benefit from it….Links scientific experimentation with personal triumph in a way that inspires awe." -The Washington Post

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJun 1, 2008
    ISBN9781423368038
    Unavailable
    The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science

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    Reviews for The Brain That Changes Itself

    4/5

    491 ratings47 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This is a fascinating explanation of how the brain can change: how areas once devoted to a specific function or area of expertise can change their role if required; how people can use specific mental and physical exercises to promote healing after a stroke or brain injury; how we can keep our brains sharp. It is written in an engaging style, including several stories of real people that are inspiring. The scientific aspects are well explained for a lay reader.
    • 4/5
      This was actually my third attempt at this book. Not that it is not a good book. It is actually a fantastic book. Engaging, not hard to read, etc. It just seems to be one of those books you really need to be in the right mood for. January seemed to finally be it as I ran through half the book on the first day. This book discusses breakthroughs in neuroplasticity, or the science of how our brain changes with input from the environment. Cognitive theorists viewed the adult brain as a 'machine' capable of very little actual change. Science shows our brains are constantly changing with new input for good (leaning to use skills again after a stroke, teaching the blind to 'see' with electronic input) or bad (repeating OCD compulsions deepens them further, watching hard pornography on a regular basis can make it harder to be aroused in a 'regular' sexual situation). It discusses many of the breakthroughs that help people lead normal lives and the research that discusses how neuroplasticity occurs. A great accessible read for the layperson, and a must read for anybody in psychology or medicine.
    • 5/5
      A very enlightening read. Amazing accounts of the brain's ability to adapt and repair etc.
    • 5/5
      "The Brain That Changes Itself" is about the scientists doing research on brain plasticity and some of the people who have experienced, or are experiencing changes in brain plasticity. The author has a psychiatric background; in fact he says psychoanalysis is a form of neuroplastic therapy.There are various case studies in this book, ranging from the man who was able to beat his internet porn addiction and go back to healthy relationships; the woman who was born with half a brain (and managed to mostly compensate for it); the woman who was labeled learning disabled but overcame it to teach other learning disabled children; and how most people are not too old to learn new things. In fact, it is strongly recommended in this book that people keep learning throughout life: such as learning a new language in your 50s, or learning a new skill such as dance routines. However, the book doesn't promise that every single person's brain challenges can be solved; sometimes there are hurdles such as "chemical" brain issues. It does provide encouraging news that many people can adapt to challenges given to their brains, ranging from those who suffer strokes to those who receive cochlear implants. It is not a self-help book but there are resources provided in the book for readers who might want to learn more about a particular topic that was discussed in the book.I thought this was a very readable book and a layperson unfamiliar with science and/or psychology would be able to understand it.
    • 4/5
      Very readable account of the science of brain plasticity and its applications in therapies for people who have suffered strokes, brain traumas, addictions and old age. The appendix on "The culturally Modified Brain" is merely one high point in a brief book full of fascinating facts, insights and reflections.
    • 3/5
      Interesting, but the kind of book that will turn people who do not have a natural tendency to be skeptics into TRUE BELIEVERS. Not my kind of thing (but I knew that from the "personal triumph" subtitle).
    • 4/5
      The first couple chapters of this book were really, really interesting to me. But by the end, I felt like it was getting a bit repetitive and I could kind of figure out the stories before he finished telling them because they all follow the same basic theme - these people showed that their brains grew by having some disability and then overcoming that disability. (Obviously that oversimplifies it quite a bit.)

      In the end, very interesting book if you're interested in the brain/body, but you definitely do not need to be in the field to understand it.
    • 5/5
      Fascinating!!!!! Written by a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, this is an intriguing, engrossing look at the history of the discovery (make that discoveries) of the amazing plasticity of the human brain, including several case studies highlighting the brain's flexibility. The case of the girl born with half a brain is especially mind blowing, so to speak.
    • 3/5
      Very readable examination of the ways in which medical opinion has changed on the former belief that the adult brain is incapable of developing new neurons and that specific regions of the brain's cortex are irrevocably assigned to specific functions.
    • 5/5
      Doidge collects anecdotes from patients and researchers that bring to light the wonderful world of neuroscience and attepts to explain the concepts and principles of Neuroplasticity. It is easy to read and has great metaphors to help relate the research to the layperson.
    • 5/5
      Delightful book! It is a sort of compendium of interviews and stories of other neuroscientists' work, However, Doidge weaves all of the stories together with his own insights and experiences with his own patients in a thoughtful and thought-provoking way. The book is FUN to read and easy-to-understand. I particularly enjoyed the chapter "Turning our Ghosts into Ancestors," because it explains the neuroscience behind how the unfortunately-often-maligned Psychoanalysis works.Even the "Notes and References" section of the book itself is an enjoyable read - not just citations, but added information and insights.A real treat! I read the book after reading Sharon Begley's "Train Your Mind, Change your Brain". Because they are both about plasticity, they complimented each other nicely.Consider one additional piece of information from the book: When people of an "Eastern" culture live in a "Western" culture (or vice-versa), they begin to re-structure their brains in a way that adapts to the new culture to a great extent. I, personally, have such experience, having lived in Japan for two years. I wonder if more of us had such experiences, we might learn to empathize with each other more and therefore make the world a more compassionate place.At the very least, we might be able to synthesize new and more creative ways of looking at things as we meld the supposedly more "focused Western brain" with the more "holistic Eastern brain".
    • 5/5
      one of the best books on the topic of brain science. Extremely accessible for both the layperson and scientist alike. I really enjoyed this book.
    • 5/5
      Doidge presents compelling evidence that the adult brain is not a machine. We can "rewire" our brain - in effect changing its structure and functions to deal with trauma or damage.The ideas are entertainingly presented using case studies. A readable, inspiring book.
    • 5/5
      For a long time, the brain was considered to be hard-wired. When damage was done to the brain, it was thought to be irreversible and something the sufferer must simply learn to live with. 'Not so,' says researcher Norman Doidge, a psychiatrist and researcher in neuroplasticity. He presents evidence of the brain's ability to re-wire itself following traumatic injury to allow other parts of the brain to completely or partially take over the activities previously associated with the injured area. He does this thru the compelling use of case histories and demonstrates the variable amounts of success patients have achieved. A thorougly engaging read that opens up a myriad of possibilities for brain research and personal improvement.
    • 4/5
      Best type of popular science. This book is an easy read and most inspiring - it introduces the layperson to neuroplasticity, showing how our brains are flexible and can rewire themselves in response to damage. It also shows how we can use practice, habit and our imaginations to rewire our own brains - for better or worse. You will not think in the same way after you have read this. Highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      A fascinating, albeit some what repetitive look at how the human mind works and changes.
    • 2/5
      Although, like a previous reviewer I too was a little disturbed by the "sewing the kitten's eyes shut" statement I did find this book fascinating and highly readable. The sections on autism and OCD were especially enlightening.
    • 4/5
      Interesting subject, fairly tightly written, but sometimes it strayed.
    • 5/5
      A work that is great because the science it presents is interesting and the way it presents the science is interesting itself and accurate. The science is that of neuroplasticity...how the brain changes (itself).For what it is, it's nearly perfect, but for a broader understanding, would need to have a social analysis and a body-mind analysis.
    • 2/5
      This was far too Freudian for me (ALL masochists had childhood hospitalizations & learned there to fetishize pain) as well as entirely too full of anecdotes. I like my science more, well, sciencey. There were some interesting anecdotes, to be sure, but ultimately it was not what I was looking for.

      ETA: Um, yeah, I just NOW noticed the part of the title that references "stories of personal triumph" so it's my own damn fault. I hate "stories of personal triumph" as a rule.
    • 4/5
      This is a fascinating book by a psychologist who looks at stories of people with different disabilities whose brains basically rewired themselves around their condition. The book looks at the implications of brain plasticity. Interesting stories. Interesting discoveries.
    • 3/5
      I found this a particularly annoying book. The content of the discussion was interesting and informative, but the style of delivery was poor. This is science-lite. It is science presented like a low budget TV documentary - lots of interesting info presented without the hard data and analysis.One of the annoying characteristics is to present slabs of the information in interview format - in the words of the person involved. Now this might be appropriate in the case of Michelle Mack, born with half a brain, but not in the case of Michael Merzenich, one of the scientists who has developed brain training routines resulting from his research. Merzenich is quoted at length, and individual examples of positive results from his (commercialised) programs are given (such as Fast Foreword). Why anecdotal evidence like this? What about the broader test results? What about comparisons with control groups? A quick internet search came up with many anecdotal reports of disappointment with Fast Foreword. An competent book on this topic would have resolved these conflicting reports.So, interesting topic, lots of good information, but presented in a dumbed down manner. What a shame.Read Nov 2015
    • 5/5
      A discussion of newly-emerging knowledge about the plasticity of the brain. This is written for the non-technical reader, in the form of a series of case studies. It is a fascinating book, and a very hopeful one.
    • 5/5
      This is an excellent book for the layperson. It combines an anecdotal discussion, based on the author's medical practice, together with a review of historical and current research. Some of it is speculative, but the speculation always has a basis in the research. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      A fascinating look at how the brain works, presented in layman's terms. My only negative would be that it's written from a humanistic, evolutionary worldview, but that should not prevent anyone from learning more about the incredible ways the human brain functions.
    • 5/5
      I suggested this book for my non-fiction group and it was a great discussion-generator. It's about the "plasticity" of the brain, which allows it to reroute functions when a portion of the brain becomes disabled. The Brain the Changes Itself was a challenging but fascinating read. Although the author had ample chance to get caught up in the jargon of his field, he never did. The author's best "trick" to keep non-scientists reading was having a person with a problem featuring prominently in each of the eleven chapters to illustrate the ideas he's covering. And for those who can't get enough of the scientific part, he has great back-notes that give either sources or further information. The weakest parts were appendices I and II, which were simply underdeveloped chapters. I would have preferred the author either develop the chapters fully or leave them out. 04/10/2010
    • 2/5
      This book covers past and present work in neural plasticity and is written for a non-specialist to understand easily. It gives some interesting case studies, which appeals to the mainstream audience. However, I found his Freudian expositions a bit irksome. I felt throughout the book that the author had a distinct agenda: to explain how modern advances in neuroscience 1) were already proposed by Freud or 2) are evidence that Freud's theories coincide well with physiological truth.
    • 4/5
      Possibly the most exciting non-fiction book I've read. Certainly the most exciting this year. What a wonderful and amazing set of stories - and so much that is useful to apply in life. I wanted to make notes and I think I will go back and do so.Not even horribly marred by the author's need to pin his psychiatrist's views on a couple of self-indulgent chapters without much underlying science.The parts that are backed by science appear very well referenced.I want to buy a heap of copies for family and friends - even though I don't think many of them would read it.
    • 4/5
      The first thing to be said is that Doidge is no writer--he dangles participles like a bastard, he has a Tom Clancyish sense of the physical traits, personality points, and biographical notes that will make "brilliant physiologist Paul Bach-y-Rita" or "Holocaust survivor Eric Kandel" into the kind of pat characters whose life and work can be rolled out in a cheap moviesque narrative. Some of his sentences don't even make sense.

      But that turns out to matter very little, because the material at hand here is so, so interesting. I'm a little suspicious of Doidge's "for years nobody believed in neuroplasticity, but now they realize it will FIX EVERYTHING", but I think that's more the fault of the presenter, because wow, neuroplasticity is going to fix everything! The basic concept is that while most of our mental and physical functions may live in specific locations in the brain, that's not hard and fast as suggested by old localization creed--neural maps can move, and new areas can take over for old ones, and with repetition and exercise we can train our brain to function in new ways and learn or relearn skills that brain damage should mean we've lost or never had. Help for kids with autism, aphasia, old people with Alzheimer's! Help for the deaf and blind! Understanding how falling in love wipes out our old mental maps as we neuroplastically mold to our new lovers! Amputating phantom limbs! Helping people with OCD, obsessive thoughts, chronic pain. Understanding the imagination. A sombre but not sensationalistic discussion of how neuroplasticity informs the whole internet-pornography thing. Helping people lose undesirable personality traits by learning why they developed them in the first place. Even a girl who is a little weird but fully functioning WITH ONLY HALF A BRAIN.

      And let's go back, briefly, not to the brain girl, as interesting as she is, but to the personality traits thing. As an English grad student who was just laughing about how all the suggested t-shirt designs for our program feature quotations, not from literature, but from critical theorists, because that's still the way fucking English programs roll ("Dare to Dream" -Lacan. Nice sentiment coming from anyone else), what interests me is the way Doidge, obviously interested in the future of brain science but also a fairly old-school psychoanalyst and believer in the talking cure, manages to square the circle, reminding us that Freud ("Yo mama" -Freud. the others are even worse) was originally a neurologist and bringing stuff about plasticity back to the familiar ol' Freudian notions about how we learn to be who we are--and bringing Freudian notions about how we learn habits to protect our fragile psyches down to what that actually is proving to mean in the brain, and how true it's proving to be. Freud first proposed neuroplasticity. Freud first proposed the synapse, and the simultaneous firing of synapses is behind his ideas on free association. Other shit like that. I admit I'm not really qualified to evaluate the evidence coming as it does only from Doidge the true believer, but when I'm spending days in psych classes with Carrie Cuttler pooh-poohing the very notion of anything Freudian having anything relevant to say to modern psychology, which lest we forget is a real science, it's nice to get a corrective, however much truth is in it, that says hey, Freud may not be experimental science by the modern standard, but he created a model of serious explanatory power, and not just as a gussied-up metaphor the way English students use it. there is also a discussion of Marshall McLuhan in terms of how the medium actually affects the brain. Actually taking theory as referring in non-parameaningful terms to things and processes in the real world, and laying it all out for us in such compelling, even if sometimes crudely expressed, terms, is . . . well, it kind of restores your faith in the public (even the pop) intellectual, is what it does.

    • 2/5
      An enjoyable and interesting read that I finished in one afternoon, the book explores the latest research showing how incredibly plastic the brain really is. I was already familiar with some of it, and hoping for a little more scientific depth (the jargon doesn't get much heavier than 'neuron' and various parts of the brain). But the anecdotes of patients with weirdly cool conditions and sketches of the "neuroplasticians" he meets are well done. A solid and entertaining summary, with an index and references to follow up.