Interesting new book
 

Every Tuesday the New York Times publishes a science section in which some of the latest science is presented. Today, there was a review of the book "The Brain that Changes Itself." The review from Publishers Weekly is given below. I ordered the book and it should arrive in a few days. I have long been interested in topics dealing with the plasticity of the human brain; interested but without the necessary research tools to address the topic. Anyway, I just wanyed to let you folks know about the book and, when I finish it, I'll be glad to loan it to you.

All the best,

Lloyd





From Publishers Weekly
For years the doctrine of neuroscientists has been that the brain is a machine: break a part and you lose that function permanently. But more and more evidence is turning up to show that the brain can rewire itself, even in the face of catastrophic trauma: essentially, the functions of the brain can be strengthened just like a weak muscle. Scientists have taught a woman with damaged inner ears, who for five years had had "a sense of perpetual falling," to regain her sense of balance with a sensor on her tongue, and a stroke victim to recover the ability to walk although 97% of the nerves from the cerebral cortex to the spine were destroyed. With detailed case studies reminiscent of Oliver Sachs, combined with extensive interviews with lead researchers, Doidge, a research psychiatrist and psychoanalyst at Columbia and the University of Toronto, slowly turns everything we thought we knew about the brain upside down. He is, perhaps, overenthusiastic about the possibilities, believing that this new science can fix every neurological problem, from learning disabilities to blindness. But Doidge writes interestingly and engagingly about some of the least understood marvels of the brain. By Norman Dodge