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THE BRAIN'S WAY OF HEALING: REMARKABLE DISCOVERIES AND RECOVERIES FROM THE FRONTIERS OF NEUROPLASTICITY
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THE BRAIN'S WAY OF HEALING: REMARKABLE DISCOVERIES AND RECOVERIES FROM THE FRONTIERS OF NEUROPLASTICITY By Norman Doidge New York (NY): Viking, 2015 432 pp., $29.95
At age forty-four, Ron Husmann, an accomplished Broadway singer and television actor, developed multiple sclerosis (MS). The disease revoice to a scratchy whisper. As his arm and leg muscles atrophied, he used walking canes and, when his balance became too impaired, an electric cart. Husmann heard about pioneering work being done at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the nascent field of neuroplasticity-the ability of the brain to heal itself in response to mental experience and noninvasive stimulation, such as from electricity, light, or sound.
Researchers at the university's Tactile Communication and Neurorehabilitation Laboratory had invented a small, battery-operated device that transmits minute electric pulses to a flat, chewing gum-size electrode that rests on the front two-thirds of the tongue. The device painlessly stimulates the tongue's sensory neurons, which in turn pass electrical signals through the lingual and facial nerves directly into the brain stem, whichis closely connectedtoprocessing areas for movement, sensation, mood, cognition, and balance. The tongue, it seems, is something of a superhighway for neural messaging.
After only two sessions with this Portable Neuromodulation Stimulator, Husmann was able to hum a tune. After four sessions, he was able to sing again. His other MS symptoms also began to improve. After several weeks, "the man who had come in wobbling on a cane, tap-danced for the [research] team," writes Norman Doidge in The Brain's Way of Healing.
Doidge is a psychiatrist at the University of Toronto and a lecturer in psychiatry at Columbia University's Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. In this latest bestselling book, he presents dozens of fascinating narratives involving patients afflicted with conditions such as MS, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, stroke, and autism who...