Brain's Way of Healing, The

In his new book, Norman Doidge describes the role of brain plasticity in healing. This paradigm is helping us recognize how improvement from symptoms of all kinds is not only possible, but explainable, as well as reproducible.

Doidge artfully draws us in with people's stories, including the experiences of Dr. Michael Moskowitz, a chronic pain specialist who figured out a way to cure his own increasingly debilitating chronic pain after 13 years (chapter 1). He has also successfully taught the technique to some of his patients. In chapter 2, Doidge walks with John Pepper, a World War II survivor with Parkinson's disease who devised a program that enabled him to recover lost mobility and other functions. Pepper uses his approach not only to keep many of his symptoms at bay decades after diagnosis, he has also taught it to others with Parkinson's, who have also improved. More amazing stories and treatment approaches follow in each chapter and the case studies highlight this new paradigm. The research starts to explain the ever-elusive, until now, "why."

In easy-to-read connecting language Doidge gives us a framework for understanding what is happening during these transformations. He, and the studies he cites throughout, take us beyond our current understanding of the brain.