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|  | Author: Norman Doidge
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
List Price: $16.00
Buy New: $8.82
as of 11/24/2009 14:08 CST details
You Save: $7.18 (45%)
New (34) Used (20) from $8.82
Seller: OB1S
Rating:  170 reviews
Sales Rank: 641
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1 Reprint
Pages: 448
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 0143113100
Dewey Decimal Number: 612.8
EAN: 9780143113102
ASIN: 0143113100
Publication Date: December 18, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New Book direct from the publisher. Ships immediately from New York. Please allow up to 15 days for delivery. Returns accepted. Satisfaction guarantee.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 16-20 of 170
 Change Your Mind By Changing Your Brain August 23, 2009
Ray Uyemura (Los Angeles, CA)
Norman Doidge's THE BRAIN THAT CHANGES ITSELF methodically dispels the mainstream understanding of how certain parts of our brains are permanently wired for specific functions. For example, it has long been accepted that there are specific areas of our brains dedicated to speech, motor control, vision, etc.; however, The Brain That Changes Itself illustrates the flexibility of the human brain to adapt to changing conditions, whether it be through the practiced stimulation of alternative sensory pathways or the continued learning of new ideas.
What might seem to many as bordering science-fiction, Doidge presents profound case studies that demonstrate the often unnoticed and untapped abilities of our brains to change both the way we think and the physical, biological brain itself. Doidge's writing style and his attention to the reader's train of thought conveys his passion for this topic. Take time to read the appendices in his work! Even his detailed notes help the reader reinforce the wonderful ideas presented here. I highly recommend this book to all students and faculty of Psychology. We've taken this topic for granted too long!
The Brain that changes itself August 20, 2009
Greg Oswalt (Phoenix AZ USA)
This is an important inspirational book for anyone that has or knows someone with a mental problem such as a stroke or a learning disability. This is an enlightening book for anyone that wants to understand how their brain works. Knowledge in this book has the ability to transform the lives of millions of people in a way that will benefit their lives and those around them. I do think chapter four goes too deep into the description of sexual acts associated with internet pornography but the reset of this chapter and the rest of this book has been a life changing experience. The true stories in this book have greatly motivated me to do more with my life. This book has been like beautiful music to my eyes and a needed stimulus to awaken my mind. After reading this book I purchased five more copies to send out to family members.
Inspiring and informative August 20, 2009
Hagios (Rhode Island)
The localization theory of the brain holds that each part of the brain has a certain dedicated function. Once damage has happened to that part of the brain then those functions will be permanently lost or impaired. Modern research has replaced the theory of localization with the theory of plasticity. The brain is flexible and can be molded like plastic. There are some utterly fascinating case histories.
The most inspiring story was of a woman named Barbara. She was born mentally disabled. She had trouble with special awareness. When she was three she was playing `matador and bull' with a parked car but did not swerve away from the car. She ran headfirst into it and cut her head open. Her mother didn't think she'd live to be five. She also had trouble with abstract concepts such as telling the difference between "father's brother" and "brother's father." She couldn't tell her left hand from her right. It also made it difficult to relate to people because she had difficulty following conversations. She would replay song lyrics and movie dialogues over and over in her head trying to make sense of them. Reading was very difficult for her because couldn't understand the symbols or what they meant, except with the most excruciating effort. Once she had a cold and mistakenly put sulfuric acid into her nose instead of the cold medicine. She lay in bed with acid running into her sinuses because she was too ashamed to tell her mother of yet another mishap. This kind of stuff makes your heart brake for her.
On the bright side, she was great at memorization. She could memorize math procedures even if she couldn't understand the concept of addition. She was also tremendously determined. She made it to college and entered graduate school in the hopes of discovering a cure to her own condition. The prevailing theory for treating the disabled was compensation. Barbara had already been doing that - she used her memory because she wasn't good at abstract thinking or special awareness. But she stumbled across the emerging literature on neuroplasticity. That led her to the opposite approach, what another researcher called constrain-induced learning. The brain is plastic but it also follows the path of least resistance. Block off what you are good at and force yourself to developed your weaknesses with intense practice.
Barbara couldn't read a clock because she wasn't good at abstract concepts. But she had a friend make hundreds of flash cards with pictures of clocks on them and the time on the other side. She spent long days going over the flashcards. At first she was no good at them. She would take a real clock and spend hours slowly advancing its hands trying to figure out why 2:45 meant that the minute hand was on the nine. Slowly she got better. She added a "second hand" and even a "sixtieths of a second" hand. She figured that out too. She was much faster at telling time than most people who weren't mentally disabled. Inspired she created similar exercises for her other disabilities. They worked too.
Eventually she founded a school based on her methods. They had sixteen year olds who read at a first grade level. They would do drills like telling time on a clock with ten hands, and trace out characters in Chinese and Urdu (which aren't as familiar as our alphabet). The amazing thing isn't that the students didn't just get better at the tasks. There were large spillover effects. Time spent on these abstruse drills led to faster speech with better enunciation, and better special awareness. The rewiring that was taking place in the brain created a general improvement, not just an improvement in telling time or tracing characters. Doidge concludes:
"The irony of this new discovery is that for hundreds of years educators did seem to sense that children's brains had to be built up through exercises of increasing difficulty that strengthened brain functions. Up through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a classical education often included rote memorization of long poems in foreign languages, which strengthened the auditory memory (hence thinking in language) and an almost fanatical attention to handwriting, ... Then in the 1960s educators dropped such traditional exercises from the curriculum"
Another application of neuroplasticity is to sexuality. This may be the first book arguing that pornography is unhealthy written since 1980, but it makes a compelling case. One of the maxims of neuroplasticity is that "nerves that fire together wire together." Pornography, like all activities that trigger the brain's release on dopamine, leads to increasing tolerance. You need a stronger dose to get the same high. That usually sends people looking for more and more cryptic fetishes to connect to sexuality so that the brain has new and novel pathways for sexual stimulus. This makes it tough for men to be attracted to real women, at least, not if they are not acting out an elaborate script from his fantasies. But neuroplasticity offers some hope too. "nerves that fire apart wire apart." The author worked with one patient who associated sex with violence. He encouraged his patient to develop separate behaviors so that the sex and the violence were no longer intermingled. Eventually the brains neural maps of the two, which had been fused, separated.
pleased with purchase August 20, 2009
Maggie M. Kaiser (USA)
The product showed up on time and was in great condition. I would recommend this seller to other individuals. I was very pleased with my purchase.
Change the way you think, and the things you think will change. August 19, 2009
M. Auer (Canada)
My review will be more of a description of how I felt before I read the book versus how I feel after, to give an insight into the effects of this book.
I'm the type of person that likes to get down to first-principle truths: to me, there's no point discussing something if the foundation of the discussion isn't based in reality. I like to dig deep.
And so, although I never really knew much about the brain before reading this book, I did know that I was feeling bogged-down by the baggage I carry around in my head:
Why do I do the things I do? What motivates me and why? What should I do next? Am I stuck with my current habits, good or bad, for life? Is there any point in trying to change myself? If so, how?
It seemed like any motivation to actually DO something was stifled by these questions, going round n round in my head ad nauseum.
Now, after reading the book, I feel liberated.
I feel freed from the self-destructive brain loop that had been going on in my head because I started to understand how it worked. In turn, I felt freed from the general constraints of a hard-wired brain philosophy that makes one limit their capacity to change.
The brain is alive, not a machine, and simply needs certain inputs to feel healthy (ie happier). Surprisingly, this was a huge revelation for me. Little brain puzzles always seemed like a waste of time, and so I never attempted them. I kept thinking "Sudoku is just going to make me better at Sudoku, that's it." But these aren't just "stupid" little exercises. Every new exercise & experience, as insignificant as it seems, is much more therapeutic than I gave credit for.
I used to get frustrated at these puzzles, but now I don't because I know it's good for my brain to go through the process. Amazingly, my patience in other parts of life has also improved. It spills over to other parts of the brain because there are no "brain compartments". Again, the brain is NOT a machine. Every little thing helps.
Western society seems overly obsessed with physical well being, and mental health gets a back seat. Eastern philosophies seem to have this mental edge, and this book gives credence to their ways, explaining it in the western-scientific language we are used to.
This book is basically a guide to mental health (ie a guide to prolonged happiness, to be interpreted by yourself). It gives you the ability to identify your mental roadblocks, and the methods and motivation to overcome them. Be your own shrink, ha.
I now feel motivated to embrace new situations and activities with open arms - especially if I know I'll suck at them and even if they may embarrass me. Life, for me, has gone from being intimidating to becoming an endless stream of little brain puzzles. I don't take life so seriously now.
The three take home points are:
- Pay attention to learn something (having trouble paying attention? you can practice paying attention - it's called meditation, although this book doesn't cover that. I wish it did!)
- Use it or lose it (for better or worse - to kick bad habits and pick up new ones)
- After improving (you surely will), try out a new thing by applying step 1
Repeat as necessary, and feel better.
Showing reviews 16-20 of 170
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