Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog
The Brain That Changes Itself: Personal Triumphs from the Frontiers of Brain Science
By: Norman Doidge, M.D.
Narrated By: Jim Bond
Norman Doidge (Author, Canadian psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, studied literary classics and philosophy at the University of Toronto.)
To an older person, there is a sense of disappointment and optimism from what Norman Doidge writes in “The Brain That Changes Itself”. The disappointment is the feeling of lost opportunity for some because of their ignorance of how the brain works. The optimism is that the past is passed while Doidge explains brain improvement is not completely lost with either age or injury. For older people, improving brain function is more difficult but not impossible. For the injured or medically challenged brain improvement is a dire necessity. For the young, improving brain function is at its best unless there are medical complications.
Doidge explains as one grows older or suffers from brain injury; the brain can be rewired to improve learning or restore bodily function.
.
Age slows the synaptic process of learning, but the brain is still receptive to synaptic improvement. Older brains simply have to work harder to compel new neuronal synaptic connections. With brain injury or disease, new connections must be made by different parts of the brain to restore the relationship between thought and action. A youthful brain is likely to improve faster than an older brain, but experimental studies show improvement is possible for both. Doidge explores brain plasticity in “The Brain That Changes Itself”.
Doidge explains medical or physical deterioration of brain function can be improved with repetitive effort.
What brain disfunction has in common is the ability to adapt to the circumstances of people’s lives. With the appropriate help of teacher, clinician, and self exercise, people can rewire their brain.
The difficulty is in societies willingness to invest in the professional needs of those who are affected by brain dysfunction. Treatment of the aged requires commitment to repetitive learning and relearning which can be done with personal commitment. It is not the same for those who lose motor control of their body from injury or medical conditions. The requirement Doidge and others have found for medical or physical brain injury is the training and availability of clinicians and physicians to provide the therapeutic treatment that will aid recovery. How many medical clinicians have been trained to aid brain-dysfunction’ patients to re-wire their brains to think, see, hear, or walk? How many patients can afford the treatment?
The potential of rewiring the brain extends to returning old brains to their childlike state of openness with drugs. It is a new frontier that illustrates how human brains are superior to A.I.
“The Brain That Changes Itself” reveals a lot about the science of re-wiring the brain. Re-wiring the brain for older people is possible with minimal assistance but it requires repetitive work. For the brain damaged, the need for neurologists, clinicians and other professionals are essential for treatment success. The difficulty is in balancing need with cost and the public’s ability to pay.
Brain plasticity can either aid or destroy society.
Doidge notes how North Korean children are taught from grade school through high school to see their leader as a god, not a fallible human being. The less formed minds of the young are more easily programed than adults. He shows brain plasticity is a new frontier in medicine that can be abused.
There are many brain discoveries and therapies to be discovered that will extend the ability of human beings beyond today’s capabilities. Those discoveries are like the discovery of fission. The science of brain plasticity has potential for either programing destruction or liberating the mind.
REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE 