Tell me more about Dr. Norman Doidge’s work in the area of Neuroplasticity

A. Neuroplasticity is a subject that greatly interests me.

I came across Dr: Norman Doidge’s book The Brain That Changes Itself in 2010. Dr Doidge has a very impressive background: he is a Psychiatrist, Psychoanalyst and Researcher on the faculty at the Columbia University Centre for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, which is based in New York, and he is also a member of the University of Toronto’s Department of Psychiatry. So he has quite an impressive background. (Read the wikipedia entry about Dr Doidge here).

When I read his book and considered his explanations, I gained a deeper understanding of what we had developed with the method. He was talking about the incredible ability of the brain to adjust to challenges and literally rewire or redesign itself in order to function at its best.

In other words, our brains are not fixed from birth but continue to evolve and change throughout our lives (the brain’s neuroplasticity), and if one part of the brain is damaged, another part will be recruited to do that part’s work.

The light bulb moment for us in reading this book was remembering the time when we had realised that it was Michelle’s conscious brain that was damaged, not her unconscious mind, and that even though her brain had been damaged, there were other ways she could access information.

When Michelle’s memory of the circus was stimulated, the information stored in her deep unconscious mind become available and the memory found its own pathway into her conscious brain without distortion.