For years, scientists described the human brain as a machine with parts, each part dedicated to controlling different activities. If a part was injured, the function it controlled would be lost permanently. But as Norman Doidge shows in his new book, The Brain That Changes Itself, (Viking) new neurological evidence has emerged showing that the brain can be trained to rewire itself after an injury, such as a stroke or ear or eye damage. Through interviews with neuroscientists and neuron-rehabilitation patients, Doidge also finds that the brain is capable of improving learning disabilities and intellectual and even moral performance through techniques such as repetition of learning and implementation of regular habits. The more we know about these processes, the more doctors can help patients to find other ways perform lost functions.

Doidge is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and researcher on the research faculty at Columbia University’s Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, in New York, and the University of Toronto’s Department of Psychiatry.

Source: Hudson Institute August 2007