The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by NORMAN DOIDGE, M.D.

Notes:

– Someone designed things that allowed night vision, how the brain was rewired stories and case studies, micro electrodes to rewire the brain, etc.

– The Fast Forword program sounds like something I could have done with. It’s like games that helped speed up learning and recovery.

– Traces of childhood sentiments in adult love and sexuality are detectable in everyday behaviours. When adults in our culture have tender foreplay, or express their most intimate adoration, they often call each other “baby” or “babe.”

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– What used to be soft core is now shown daily in music vids, hardcore in movies and porn these days have a theme of humiliation hate or anger. Partners would request acting like stars and want to do the same. College kids looking for videos after getting a tolerance magazines and refer to women as things like cum dumpsters. Porn rewards double – excitement and satisfaction. Those who stopped cold turkey managed to return to normal.

– Unlearning also happens throughout life. In grieving you disconnect one neuron at a time. It’s so hard for some because of the billions of neural connections.

– S&M interests were because of being in hospitals early childhood where they couldn’t express pain or anger properly or had similar medical experiences. Some like it because it reminds them of their childhood and like staying there.

– Remobilisation of limbs say from stroke, mirror box used to remove the phantom hands pain and scratching cheek would itch the hand scratch.

– Obsessions/ compulsion the more you do it the more you want to, even resisting for a minute every time helps re-wiring

– Sea gypsies can control eye lenses to see better underwater, can stay there twice as long, etc.

– It was also observed that the differing cognitive styles of the analytic West and the holistic East parallel differences between the brain’s two hemispheres. The left hemisphere tends to perform more sequential and analytical processing, while the right hemisphere is often engaged in simultaneous and holistic processing. Were these different ways of seeing the world based on different interpretations of what was seen, or were Easterners and Westerners actually seeing different things?

– Countries use enemy countries in school questions to have kids conditioned.

– Vid games are like porn, TV and music videos too which is why we keep looking at the TV too.

Table of Contents
– Contents
– Note to the Reader
– Preface

1 – A Woman Perpetually Falling . . .: Rescued by the Man Who Discovered the Plasticity of Our Senses
2 – Building Herself a Better Brain: A Woman Labelled “Retarded” Discovers How to Heal Herself
3 – Redesigning the Brain: A Scientist Changes Brains to Sharpen Perception and Memory, Increase Speed of Thought, and Heal Learning Problems
4 – Acquiring Tastes and Loves: What Neuroplasticity Teaches Us About Sexual Attraction and Love
5 – Midnight Resurrections: Stroke Victims Learn to Move and Speak Again
6 – Brain Lock Unlocked: Using Plasticity to Stop Worries, Obsessions, Compulsions, and Bad Habits
7 – Pain: The Dark Side of Plasticity
8 – Imagination: How Thinking Makes It So
9 – Turning Our Ghosts into Ancestors: Psychoanalysis as a Neuroplastic Therapy
10 – Rejuvenation: The Discovery of the Neuronal Stem Cell and Lessons for Preserving Our Brains
11 – More than the Sum of Her Parts: A Woman Shows Us How Radically Plastic the Brain Can Be

– Appendix 1: The Culturally Modified Brain
– Appendix 2: Plasticity and the Idea of Progress