Hot Off The Page: The Brain That Changes Itself

“Want to know your brain better? Well worth reading.“
Luke Holmes

Let me take you back all the way to 2007. A different time. Kevin Rudd was winning a landslide victory against the incumbent eyebrows, the Deathly Hallows was coming out and we all still actually believed it was the last Harry Potter story… and brain plasticity was an idea that still needed to be argued for.

This book is one part brilliant scientific expose on the incredible degree to which the human brain can adapt on the fly, and one part impassioned plea to the general population that this really, really, really does happen. It doesn’t in any way detract from the experience, it just lends the whole thing a flavour of urgency and vindication that it otherwise might not have.

I guess that’s one way to keep your science book from being dry: Write it when the idea is just gaining worldwide acceptance.

First, the science bit. It’s wonderful. It may now be well known and accepted, but that doesn’t stop it from being wonderful, and even within that there are elements of the true degree of possible plastic change that caught me off guard. Our lovely grey blobs don’t just make some new shortcuts when we learn or lose things… entire processing centres can vanish and be overwritten for different senses with remarkably little change in practice. Don’t have a visual cortex? Fine, vision is now processed where other people process sound. Plastic Brain: 1 Localizationists: 0

Second, the history bit. Also wonderful, but here’s my only warning. These discoveries have been happening for decades, and like all breakthroughs, they had to come from somewhere. How were they able to measure and test these extreme circumstances of whole senses or limbs being absent?

Yep, animal testing, and a decent amount of it. It’s not gratuitous or too graphic, but this book does contain numerous accounts of some pretty intense tests on animals to measure brain plasticity. Not saying it’s “ok”, not saying it’s not, just saying it’s there. You want to know how the brain works and find solutions for a whole range of problems? That’s how we get it.

Apart from that there’s a decent timeline to be pieced together of people proposing brain plasticity WAAAY back when, only to be told it was bollocks. Thankfully I found it just enough to be informative, not gratuitous.

Want to know your brain better? Well worth reading.

Also, a better motivational book does not exist. Reading the science of how your lazy ass is literally making your brain less effective is a great way to get you off the couch.

Luke Holmes, On The Page

Luke Holmes’ series takes a dip into what has inspired him. “It is not review writing. No effort is being made to be objective or balanced. All reactions are my own hot-takes, and are subject to my personal tastes and how I feel about the book at the time”.