THE BRAIN THAT CHANGES ITSELF

THE BRAIN THAT CHANGES ITSELF

Norman Doidge 


THEdiscovery 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. This book is about the revolutionary discovery that the human brain can change itself, as told through the stories of the scientists, doctors, and patients who have together brought about these astonishing transformations . Without operations or medications, they have made use of the brains hitherto unknown ability to change... 
One of these scientists even showed that thinking, learning , and acting can turn our genes on or off, thus shaping our brain anatomy and our behaviour. The idea that the brain can change its own structure and function through thought and activity is the most important alteration in our view of the brain since we first sketched out its basic anatomy and the workings of its basic component, the neuron . The neuroplastic revolution has implications for, among other things, our understanding of how love, sex, grief, relationships, learning, addictions, culture, technology , and psychotherapies change our brains. All of the humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences, insofar as they deal with human nature , are affected, as are all forms of training. All of these disciplines will have to come to terms with the fact of the self-changing brain and with the realisation that the architecture of the brain differs from one person to the next and that it changes in the course of our individual lives.