The Woman Who Changed Her Brain: And Other Inspiring Stories of Pioneering Brain Transformation
Barbara Arrowsmith-Young
Language: English
Pages: 288
ISBN: 1451607938
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The incredible story and miraculous work of a remarkable woman. Though she began life severely learning disabled, built herself a better brain and a brain training program that has helped thousands of others do the same.
Barbara Arrowsmith-Young was born with severe learning disabilities that caused teachers to label her slow, stubborn—or worse. As a child, she read and wrote everything backward, struggled to process concepts in language, continually got lost, and was physically uncoordinated. She could make no sense of an analogue clock. But by relying on her formidable memory and iron will, she made her way to graduate school, where she chanced upon research that inspired her to invent cognitive exercises to “fix” her own brain. The Woman Who Changed Her Brain interweaves her personal tale with riveting case histories from her more than thirty years of working with both children and adults.
Recent discoveries in neuroscience have conclusively demonstrated that, by engaging in certain mental tasks or activities, we actually change the structure of our brains—from the cells themselves to the connections between cells. The capability of nerve cells to change is known as neuroplasticity, and Arrowsmith-Young has been putting it into practice for decades. With great inventiveness, after combining two lines of research, Barbara developed unusual cognitive calisthenics that radically increased the functioning of her weakened brain areas to normal and, in some areas, even above-normal levels. She drew on her intellectual strengths to determine what types of drills were required to target the specific nature of her learning problems, and she managed to conquer her cognitive deficits. Starting in the late 1970s, she has continued to expand and refine these exercises, which have benefited thousands of individuals. Barbara founded Arrowsmith School in Toronto in 1980 and then the Arrowsmith Program to train teachers and to implement this highly effective methodology in schools all over North America. Her work is revealed as one of the first examples of neuroplasticity’s extensive and practical application. The idea that self-improvement can happen in the brain has now caught fire.
The Woman Who Changed Her Brain powerfully and poignantly illustrates how the lives of children and adults struggling with learning disorders can be dramatically transformed. This remarkable book by a brilliant pathbreaker deepens our understanding of how the brain works and of the brain’s profound impact on how we participate in the world. Our brains shape us, but this book offers clear and hopeful evidence of the corollary: we can shape our brains.
Pictures of the Mind: What the New Neuroscience Tells Us About Who We Are
Essential Neuroscience (2nd Edition)
Inside Your Brain (Brain Works)
Clinical Neurology (A Lange Medical Book)
iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind
Apoptosis in Neurobiology (Frontiers in Neuroscience)
Speech discrimination deficit; Kinesthetic speech disorder; Predicative speech deficit author’s father’s problems with, 42–43 ëpredicativeí aspect of, 77 motor symbol sequencing deficit and, 132, 134, 137, 218 Zazetsky’s problems with, 3 Spelling problems, 124–25 auditory speech discrimination deficit and, 203 motor symbol sequencing deficit and, 132, 134–35, 218 symbol recognition deficit and, 110 Sperry, Roger Wolcott, 36 Sports, 146–47, 157, 170 Stanford Achievement.
“Even my therapy,” she says, “has progressed as a result of the cognitive changes. I could never really sort it all out before. It was just like a big hodgepodge of thoughts, emotions. What’s a thought? What’s an emotion? My thinking is clearer. I can see the essence of the problem at hand. It’s such a relief. I don’t feel stupid. Now I can read the newspaper and say ‘That’s a good point’ or, ‘That’s a crock.’” When this deficit was in place, everything that Gabriela read had equal weight. She.
Was sitting in her high school accounting class, this day being supervised by a substitute teacher. She had no aptitude for numbers, and her regular teacher had given her permission to work on her English homework while the others learned how to balance books. “What are you doing?” the teacher asked Claire. “My English,” said Claire, who never thought to explain why. The teacher read sauciness into that remark, and said, “You can either stop doing your English now, or you can leave this.
Measures of time. They were relational components. I threw myself into the exercise, as is my style. My brother Donald used to call me “an engine without a regulator.” The name of the game was speed and accuracy. How quickly could I calculate time — first simple time, then complex time? By gradually speeding up the exercise and making it harder, could I go from not being able to tell time to being better at it than the average person? If this worked — if I could get faster and more accurate at.
Total number of items in all the orders and double or triple ingredients based on the number of identical dishes needed. If the chef is also responsible for ordering ingredients, then he or she must calculate appropriate amounts as the menus change with the seasons and customer tastes. Other jobs that would pose a challenge for anyone not strong in this cognitive area would be stock analyst, actuary, accountant, and statistician. Individuals with this cognitive weakness have difficulty.