The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science is a book on neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity is a non-specific neuroscience term referring to the ability of the brain and nervous system in all species to change structurally and functionally as a result of input from the environment. Plasticity occurs on a variety of levels, ranging from cellular changes involved in...

 by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge

Norman Doidge

Norman Doidge MD, FRCP is a Canadian-born psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, researcher, essayist, poet and author of The Brain That Changes Itself . The Brain That Changes Itself describes some of the latest developments in neuroscience, and became a New York Times and international bestseller...

, 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

Paul Broca

Pierre Paul Broca was a French physician, surgeon, anatomist, and anthropologist. He was born in Sainte-Foy-la-Grande, Gironde. He is best known for his research on Broca's area, a region of the frontal lobe that has been named after him. Broca’s Area is responsible for articulated language...

 and Paul Bach-y-Rita

Paul Bach-y-Rita

Paul Bach-y-Rita was an American neuroscientist whose most notable work was in the field of neuroplasticity. Bach-y-Rita was one of the first to seriously study the idea of neuroplasticity , and to introduce sensory substitution as a tool to treat patients suffering from neurological...

 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."

Skills

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.

Reception

Review at Letters On Pages

External links

• The Official Website
• The Brain That Changes Itself documentary, broadcasted by CBC
  Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
  The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
  
  's The Nature of Things
  The Nature of Things
  The Nature of Things is a Canadian television series of documentary programs. It debuted on the CBC on November 6, 1960. Many of the programs document nature and the effect that humans have on it. The program was one of the first to explore environmental issues, such as clear-cut logging...
  
  and produced by 90th Parallel Productions.