A lively, anecdotal account of potential new directions that may point the way to major therapeutic breakthroughs.
Doidge (Psychiatry/Univ. of Toronto; The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science, 2007) reports on continuing advances in our understanding of the human brain and its unique way of healing.
The author's first book chronicled revolutionary new insights into how the brain can be helped to restructure itself in response to injury. Here, Doidge interviews a second generation of “scientists, doctors and patients,” whom he calls “neuroplasticians.” He recounts his discussion with an American physician specializing in the treatment of chronic pain who pioneered a new method using mental imagery, after he suffered a serious injury. Doidge visited with a controversial 77-year-old sufferer of Parkinson's disease who claims to have been able to reverse his symptoms (and slow the underlying process of deterioration) by focused exercise. One of the most fascinating characters is an Israeli medical practitioner who developed a unique healing method for patients suffering muscular injuries, based on insights from the practice of jujitsu. Doidge uses these and other clinical accounts to illustrate what he claims are three fundamental processes that can be tapped to unleash the brain's healing capacity: the necessity of countering the brain's adaptation to a lost function by “learned nonuse”; the importance of isolating damaged neurons from healthy ones; and the significance of recognizing that “the organic living brain is quite the opposite of an engineered machine with hardwired circuits that can perform only a limited number of actions that it has been designed to do.” Doidge’s takeaway message is that mental activity correlates with neuronal activity, but we still do not know where thought takes place. “This mystery of the mind remains unsolved,” he writes.
A lively, anecdotal account of potential new directions that may point the way to major therapeutic breakthroughs.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-0670025503
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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