Norman Doidge Quotes

#1. THE SECOND SPEAKER, ANITA SALTMARCHE, focused specifically on studies of light therapy used for traumatic brain injury, stroke, and depression.

Norman Doidge

#2. After the initial critical learning period of youth is over, the areas of the brain that need to be 'turned on' to allow enhanced, long lasting learning can only be activated when something important, surprising, or novel occurs, or if we make the effort to pay close attention.

Norman Doidge

#3. The brain is a far more open system than we ever imagined, and nature has gone very far to help us perceive and take in the world around us. It has given us a brain that survives in a changing world by changing itself.

Norman Doidge

#4. The brains of the stimulated rats had more neurotransmitters,

Norman Doidge

#5. An effective psychotherapist or psychoanalyst is a "microsurgeon of the mind" who helps patients make needed alterations in neuronal networks.

Norman Doidge

#6. Neuroplasticity contributes to both the constrained and unconstrained aspects of our nature. It renders our brains not only more resourceful, but also more vulnerable to outside influences.

Norman Doidge

#7. We have senses we don't know we have-until we lose them; balance is one that normally works so well, so seamlessly, that is not listed among the five that Aristotle described and was overlooked for centuries afterward.

Norman Doidge

#8. Moskowitz became a world leader in the use of neuroplasticity for treating pain only after making some discoveries while treating himself. A

Norman Doidge

#9. Because it is a 'use it or lose it' brain, when we develop a map area [in the brain], we long to keep it activated. Just as our muscles become impatient for exercise if we've been sitting all day ...

Norman Doidge

#10. He also discovered that when he touched certain parts of the brain, he triggered long-lost childhood memories or dreamlike scenes - which implied that higher mental activities were also mapped in the brain.

Norman Doidge

#11. Every time the brain is used, four components are triggered: motor movement, thought, sensation, and feeling. Under normal circumstances, we don't experience one without the other three.*

Norman Doidge

#12. Not all activities are equal ... Those that involve genuine concentration - studying a musical instrument, playing board games, reading, and dancing - are associated with a lower risk for dementia.

Norman Doidge

#13. A quantitative EEG (QEEG) is a test that can indicate if a patient has a "noisy brain." This study is often done by advanced neurofeedback practitioners, and must be interpreted by an expert who has actually met with the patient, not simply run the information through a machine.

Norman Doidge

#14. The brain can shut pain off because the actual function of acute pain is not to torment us but to alert us to danger.

Norman Doidge

#15. Nothing speeds brain atrophy more than being immobilized in the same environment: the monotony undermines our dopamine and attentional systems crucial to our brain plasticity.

Norman Doidge

#16. Thought changes structure ... I saw people rewire their brains with their thoughts, to cure previously incurable obsessions and trauma.

Norman Doidge

#17. Everything having to do with human training and education has to be re-examined in light of neuroplasticity.

Norman Doidge

#18. We must be learning if we are to feel fully alive, and when life, or love, becomes too predictable and it seems like there is little left to learn, we become restless - a protest, perhaps, of the plastic brain when it can no longer perform its essential task.

Norman Doidge

#19. Ironically, some of our most stubborn habits and disorders are products of our plasticity.

Norman Doidge

#20. Mind training matters. It is not just a luxury, or a supplementary vitamin for the soul. It determines the quality of every instant of our lives.

Norman Doidge

#21. 6. Slowness of movement is the key to awareness, and awareness is the key to learning. As

Norman Doidge

#22. All of us have worries. We worry because we are intelligent beings. Intelligence predicts, that is its essence; the same intelligence that allows us to plan, hope, imagine, and hypothesize also allows us to worry and anticipate negative outcomes. (164)

Norman Doidge

#23. We often praise 'the ability to multi-task.' While you can learn when you divide your attention, divided attention doesn't lead to aiding change in your brain maps [lasting changes].

Norman Doidge

#24. We all have what might be called a culturally modified brain, and as cultures evolve, they continually lead to new changes in the brain.

Norman Doidge