Norman Doidge: The Brain That Changes Itself. New York:  Penguin, 2008. ISBN: 0143113100 (pbk.), $16.00.

Joyce Carol Oates (from “The Grave Dwellers,” in Love and Its Derangements, )

The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge provides a fascinating overview of the emerging science of neuroplas-ticity—the study of the capacity of the brain to alter and reorganize itself under the influence of learning and experience. Through a rich tapestry of narratives about patients with some of the most intractable neurological and psychological disorders, and scientists with their inspiring, sometimes paradoxical cures, Doidge has accomplished a rare feat. He has written a book that accurately conveys cutting-edge scientific discoveries while simultaneously engaging both scientific and popular audiences.

This book is in the same league as other popular and influential neuroscience books such as Antonio Damasio's Descartes' Error, Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Joseph LeDoux's The Emotional Brain. These books were written by path-breaking scientists established in the discipline about which they were writing. By contrast, by training, Doidge is not a neuroplasticity scientist: he trained as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, with award-winning accomplishments as a poet, essayist, and journalist. This background turns out to be a virtue. Doidge takes the reader with him on his own educational journey of the history and evolution of neuroplasticity. One feels that one is sharing in the discoveries and fascination of Doidge, while also learning about the sometimes remarkable and counterintuitive breakthroughs that upend many central tenets of neurology and neuropsychology.

During this journey we meet individuals with devastating disorders that are as troubling as they are enigmatic. For example, patients with “phantom limbs” (pain in an extremity that is not longer exists), stroke victims who lose crucial capacities in communication, sensation, and problem sol