The Brain’s Way of Healing

Outline

The Brain’s Way of Healing (2015) explores how the brain’s capacity to change itself, known as neuroplasticity, can help people recover from conditions once thought permanent. Norman Doidge shares stories of patients living with chronic pain, stroke, Parkinson’s disease, brain injury, and learning disorders who improved through approaches using movement, light, sound, and other forms of energy. The book presents a hopeful view of how the mind and brain can heal.

• The brain can change its own structure and function, a capacity known as neuroplasticity, which opens the door to recovery.
• Some conditions once thought permanent, such as chronic pain, stroke and Parkinson's disease, have improved in the patients Doidge describes.
• Movement, light, sound and other forms of energy can be used as targeted ways to help the brain heal.
• Patients with brain injury and learning disorders also appear in the book as people who improved through these approaches.
• The book offers a hopeful view: the mind and brain are not fixed, and healing is often possible.

Norman Doidge is a Canadian psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, researcher, and author. He has been on the faculty of the University of Toronto and Columbia University. His first book, The Brain That Changes Itself, introduced neuroplasticity to readers worldwide and became an international bestseller, followed by The Brain’s Way of Healing.