The Brain That Changes Itself

Norman Doidge is a Canadian psychiatrist and award-winning science writer, currently on the Faculty of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto and Research Faculty at Columbia University. In this book, he provides a fascinating synopsis of the current revolution in neuroscience with an emphasis on neuroplasticity. Essentially, Doidge cites many case histories illustrating the power of positive thinking in healing neurological diseases.

Doidge’s focus as the seat of the problem is always the brain. His book is highly readable and holds out hope for many people with neurological impairments.

I love this book because it explains neuroplasticity in a way that anyone without a medical degree can understand. Reading this book helped me put words to what I already experienced in my private practice and made it easier for me to help my clients achieve the results they wanted. The human brain is fascinating but I find most books written by academics on the subject too abstruse. This book clarifies how the brain works and how it changes itself. It is empowering to know that our mental processes can change our brain as well as the other way round. 

We used to think that you were saddled with the brain we inherited. But what the brain sciences have now shown is that the brain can change as the result of our experiences. For example, London taxi drivers have to learn ‘The Knowledge’ (the streets of London), and as a result, there are changes in the size of the hippocampus, a structure that is critical for finding your way. And merely learning to juggle for a few hours changes the speed with which the fibres from your motor cortex conduct.