The most recommended neuroplasticity books

This is an enlightening memoir recounting the story and journey of experiencing and recovering from a stroke. I love this book because it uniquely combines perspectives of the author being a researcher (neuroscientist), patient (experiencing the stroke), and just a common person with a normal life - which was turned upside down by the stroke. The author walks you through the arduous physical and emotional roller coaster of recovery, a few neurons at a time. The human brain candidly expressing what happened to itself, is a marvelously fascinating concept that you get to learn by reading this book.

I loved this book as it clearly separated the two areas of the brain associated with some of the most challenging feelings we experience (fear, worry, etc.) and how we can use this knowledge to truly overcome the most frequent presentations I see in my practice–stress and anxiety.

Having experienced crippling anxiety at points in my life, I found comfort in further understanding why we as humans are essentially programmed to be anxious–without these neurological systems, we would not have survived.

But we needn’t be slaves to the amygdala and cortex, and so, I like that this book also outlined many easy and practical techniques to get to grips with an anxious brain in a complex world. 

If you think you can’t draw, then read this book! It’s a bible for anyone wanting to draw, and is by all accounts “the world's most widely used drawing instruction book.” If you want to start drawing or have been unable to get much beyond a “childlike level,” the exercises in this book will help you gain those skills you have always sought.

I often use the “Upside down Drawing” exercise with my portrait classes; my students are usually astounded at how quickly and accurately they can produce a likeness! This is a fascinating book and whether you are an experienced artist or just starting, it will give you inspiring confidence and deepen your artistic perception.

This book holds a magnifying glass up to the gender differences and stereotypes we see every day. Eliot describes in easy-to-understand language the neuroscience behind gender differences and details how small differences between boys and girls at birth become amplified over the course of childhood by parents, teachers, and the culture. 

Neuroscientist David Eagleman uses a delightful array of examples—from historical to contemporary, geological to quotidian—to explain the marvels and complexities of the human brain. Although, as someone who lost all her sight later in life, I sometimes find myself wishing for the brain plasticity of a two-year-old, I am grateful for the amount of change that can occur in even the older brain. Most excitingly to a blind person living in an ocular centric world, Livewired reveals how “Sensory organs feed many different information sources to the brain,” and the consequence of this diversity is that: “your brain doesn’t know, and it doesn’t care, where the data come from.” I can only hope reading this book helps non-blind humans learn to be as impartial as their brains.

Karyn Freedman has written a superb but difficult book. It is a close look at her own rape by a stranger while she was in Paris, traveling as a college student. 

The book is a memoir using the lens of this one event. The book is also a scholarly look at rape and its societal causes. It succeeds at both points of view. She documents her ongoing recovery and the power of psychotherapy.

It was illuminating for me to see how this process worked. She writes that rape is often seen as a personal problem but declares that rape is a social issue with deeply set causes.

She makes persuasive arguments backed up by a study she did on rape in Africa. Despite its difficult and intimate subject matter, she was able to remain unflinching in her focus, and her book is powerful because of it.

Dr. Fishbane is a clinical psychologist and couple therapist, and one of the most important clinical theorists in our field. 

She spent years amassing the emerging research on the social determinants of brain development and developed a practical approach to what she calls “neuroeducation” for couples – helping partners understand the neurophysiological underpinnings and effects of marital conflict, how partners regulate each other’s emotions, and how to manage one’s negative arousal to engage in loving, compassionate relationships. 

Although written for therapists, it is highly engaging and accessible for the general reader who seeks to understand why they become so distressed during conflict with their partners and how to manage their arousal for better communication.