Surprising science: new about neuroplasticity.
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For nearly a century, scientific dogma held that the brain is immutable, fixed by genes and early upbringing. Wall Street Journal science writer Sharon Begley recently visited the frontiers of neuroscience and returned with a news flash: The dogma is wrong. Researchers have discovered that the brain remains plastic, lifelong. This creates new frontiers: Stroke victims can rewire their brains using challenging exercises; deaf people can repurpose dormant auditory cortexes for other tasks; and blind people can begin to "see" patterns of Braille dots using a seemingly dead visual cortex. Suspecting that they were on to a general pattern, researchers soon looked for similar changes in "normal" brains. Working repetitively on your golf swing, playing the piano or learning a language, they found, also change your brain in lasting, important ways, as does practicing compassion toward others. Begley arrives with heavyweight friends: a foreword by the Dalai Lama and a preface by Daniel Goleman of Emotional Intelligence. If you want to understand how the brain keeps working, and how to make yours do more of what you want it to, we think you should start here. Your brain will thank you.
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