“I'm only on page 99 of this book, but I couldn't wait to tell you how exciting it is. Norman Doidge is a gifted story teller, only in this book he tells us stories about the recently expanding knowledge of brain plasticity. Above all, these are stories with people, not facts, at the center of them, but you end up learning and not forgetting the associated facts and theories. So far, I have read the story of Cheryl Schiltz, a woman whose vestibular apparatus stopped functioning, leaving her hopeless and barely able to stand up. The man who gave her hope, Paul Bach-y-Rita, (sadly, recently deceased), was able to construct a helmet that she wore which eventually restored her sense of balance through sending information to her tongue. I have read the story of Barbara Arrowsmith Young, a woman with severe learning disabilities and a frustrating early life, who in graduate school, read about the work of Mark Rosenzweig showing that rat brains could be stimulated to change in rich environments. Putting this together with the work of Luria on a brain-damaged Russian soldier, Barbara her own remediation program that propelled her into a new arena of normal brain function, and eventually parlayed her new understanding of brain plasticity into developing a successful school for the treatment of learning disabilities with her husband, Joshua Cohen. Arrowsmith School in Toronto was opened in the 1980s. And finally, to this point, I have read the amazing story of "Merz" Michael Merzenich, scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, family man, and vintner (and probably much else). His quest for knowledge of how to redesign poorly functioning brains has led to the development of the Fast ForWord reading program that has had amazing results for children with reading disabilities and has spurred a whole new line of research into and work on autism.
I predict that if you read more than a few pages of this very fast reading book, you will not be able to put it down, and you will not only want to read it all, cover to cover, but you will find yourself wanting to share this and that part of the book with this and that person you know. Well, I must get back to Chapter 4: Acquiring Tastes and Loves, so far a knowing and telling account of human sexualiy.”
Jim A wrote this review Tuesday, April 15 2008.
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