Article rank  PENGUIN 
 
Norman Doidge is a psychiatrist who works at Columbia University and the
University of Toronto. 
RETHINKING THE BRAIN RESEARCHERS ARE PROVING OLD IDEAS WRONG
“EVERYTHING MAY DIE, nothing may be regenerated. It is for the science of the
future to change, if possible, this harsh decree.”
LIAM DURCAN
SPECIAL TO THE GAZETTE 
This was the verdict of Ramón y Cajal, the great Spanish neuroanatomist whose
name is etched across the entrance of the hospital where I work, a man who spent
his career trying – and failing – to find evidence that the brain was capable of
“rewiring” itself. Cajal was forced to concede that the brain was a “fixed”
organ, a view that entrenched itself as doctrine in the neurosciences.


At first glance, Norman Doidge’s excellent book The Brain that Changes Itself is
about heretics – in the guise of patients, doctors and scientists – who refused
this doctrine in favour of one that sees the brain as plastic and dynamic and
capable of unimagined change.


Doidge, a psychiatrist who works at Columbia University and the University of
Toronto, uses a succession of narratives to introduce the reader to this
revolution in the neurosciences.


We meet patients who have suffered from neurological illness and benefitted from
novel rehabilitation methods that take advantage of a brain that can rewire
itself, if given the opportunity.


Just as compelling are the narratives devoted to innovative thinkers in the
neurosciences, like Edward Taub, who developed a method of rehabilitation for
stroke patients in which the patient’s “good arm” is constrained, so that the
brain can “unlearn” part of its weakness. Doidge isn’t content just to document
the eventual acceptance of Taub’s theories; he takes us into the struggles Taub
experienced in his career as his research brought him into conflict with
prevailing dogma, illustrating that “science” can unfortunately be as
doctrinaire and, occasionally, repressive, as any power structure.


We are introduced to V.S. Ramachandran, a peripatetic neurologist who uses
mirrors to help patients “remap” the pain of phantom limbs. (This is the nature
of the fascinating questions dealt with so aptly by Doidge: How do you trick the
brain into not feeling the pain from a limb that is no longer there?).


Through the work of Alvaro Pascual-Leone, we are shown that subjects who are
blindfolded begin to experience reorganization of their “unused” visual cortex,
recruiting it to the tactile task of learning Braille – in 48 hours.


Doidge covers an impressive amount of ground and is an expert guide, a sense of
wonder always enriching his skill as an explicator of subject matter that in
less able hands could be daunting or even impenetrable.


As a psychoanalyst, Doidge understands and respects narratives, and of course
these stories are most emotionally satisfying because they eventually come
together; the once-scorned scientist is not only vindicated, but helps to
transform lives ravaged by neurological impairment. Doidge knows that readers
are interested in science but invested in people, and these stories satisfy on
both levels.


Perhaps the most thought-provoking part of the book is in those chapters where
Doidge addresses how cultural influences literally “shape” our brain. (At this
point, the impressive scope of Doidge’s interests must be mentioned; any book
whose index contains subject headings for Camille Paglia, Plato, Aplysia and
Glenn Gould deserves a read on principle alone.) With what we know about
plasticity, it becomes clear that our response to the world around us is not
only a social or psychological phenomenon, but often a lasting neurological
process.


Doidge makes it clear that plasticity isn’t by necessity a “good” thing, that a
brain capable of reorganizing itself may just as easily do so in a maladaptive
way, that chronic pain or neuroses or the addictive behaviours fostered and fed
by the Internet are also a product of a brain that can change itself. In this
sense, culture is seen less as something ephemeral and becomes more akin to a
diet, in that our cultural consumption – whether it’s crossword puzzles or
sitcoms or the narcissistic mayhem of a video game – has ramifications for the
consumer. It is a thought that troubles as much as it liberates, and it made me
even more appreciative of the time I spent with this riveting, essential book.







 

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