norman doidge the brain that heals itself

Doidge himself tried similar exercises and within days managed to permanently lower his own glasses prescription. He tells us of a brain-damaged British child who began developing normally after exercises involving Mozart, Gregorian chants and his mother’s voice, and a Toronto blind man whose sight was restored through neuroplastic eye exercises. Doidge then whisks us to South Africa to meet a man who trained himself in conscious walking to overcome the shuffling gait and tremors typical of Parkinson’s patients. He takes us to a Hawaiian beach and introduces us to a fellow psychiatrist and pain specialist who, after 13 years of chronic neck pain from a water-skiing accident, used rigorous mental imagery to become pain-free with a year.

His new book, The Brain’s Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity, picks up from where the earlier book leaves off.ĭoidge once again uses his very successful technique of interspersing real-people stories with explanations of the science behind the healing. It was wildly successful, selling more than a million copies, generating many TV specials, and making Doidge a bit of a science star. That book popularized the term neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to change its own structure and functioning and even to cure conditions considered incurable. It’s taken seven years, but Toronto psychiatrist Norman Doidge has finally produced a sequel to his international bestseller The Brain That Changes Itself.

Norman doidge the brain that heals itself