The amazing discoveries on how the brain can continually change itself has profound economic and global implications.“These findings amount to the discovery that the adult human brain, rather than being fixed or “hardwired,” can not only change itself but works by changing itself.” Norman Doidge, “The Death of Neurological Nihilism.”
Probably one of the most exciting and important areas of scientific research today is the workings of the human brain. What is being discovered is that, from birth to old age, the human brain can continually be changed to meet new circumstances.
Many of the latest findings have been documented in a book, “The Brain That Changes Itself,” written by Norman Doidge, a Toronto-based psychiatrist. Among the most interesting facts arising from the new field of neuroplasticity is that the human brain can overcome a wide range of disabilities, handicaps, injuries, and losses.
For example, a woman born without half of her brain—the left hemisphere—is able to live normally and happily because her right hemisphere developed all the functions of a complete brain. Other people who have suffered paralysis caused by strokes, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, or brain trauma can regain their capabilities through specially-designed brain exercises. These exercises, which are becoming a growth industry on the Internet, reorganize the brain to work around dead tissues. Researchers have documented cases where individuals learned how to reverse disabilities that were in place for as long as 50 years.
The study of neuroplasticity will become one of the most important areas of scientific development in the 21st century because of its underlying premise and promise: Human beings have the ability to continually transform how their brains respond to a changing world. The economic and political structures that make use of neuroplasticity as their operating principle will become the dominant ones in the world—far surpassing those that believe human beings have little or no ability to change how they think about things.
