Why I Wrote The Woman Who
Changed Her Brain
By: Barbara Arrowsmith-Young
I wrote my new book, The Woman Who Changed Her
Brain (May 2012; Free Press, Foreword by Norman Doidge),
to prove and demonstrate how “we can shape our brains.”
Imagine having a brain that is capable and incapable at the
same time. Growing up, I had severe learning disabilities. I
lived in a world that was confusing and incomprehensible.
As I was to later discover, a critical part of my brain was not
working properly, the end result being that all language was
experienced as foreign and my translator was broken.
Finding connections between things and ideas was a
challenge, and telling time, for instance, was impossible.
I couldn’t grasp the relationship between the big hand and
the little hand on a clock. I could not understand cause and
effect, so felt buffeted by random events, not being able to
see the ‘why’ of things. And this was the 1950’s and 60’s
when the brain was viewed as unchangeable, so I was told I
had best learn to live with my limitations. I walked around in
a fog, relying on my excellent memory and my drive and
determination to find an answer to what plagued me.
As a young graduate student in psychology, frustrated with
the enormous expenditure of energy required to work around
my problems and with very limited suc-cess, I came across
the research of the great Russian neuropsychologist
Alexander Luria, who studied soldiers who had suffered
head wounds. Using Luria’s detailed descriptions of the
functions of various brain regions, I identified 19 unique
learning dysfunctions. And after reading the research of
Mark Rosenzweig who demonstrated that stimulation could
improve the brains of rats, I theorized that a person could
transform weak areas of the brain through repetitive and
targeted cognitive exercises. With much reading and an
intuitive understanding of the brain’s functioning, I invented a
series of cognitive exercises to “fix” my own brain. This was
in 1978, long before the concept of “neuroplasticity” was
widely understood. At the time, the scientific community
believed this kind of transformation was impossible, but the
exercises did indeed, in my first hand experience, radically
improve the function of the weakened areas of my brain.
Today, this notion of brain plasticity — which I began
exploring three decades ago — is becoming established
wisdom in neuroscience.
In the past five years, the idea that self-improvement can
happen in the brain has caught hold and inspired new hope.
Assessment measures and brain exercises are being
developed to identify and then strengthen weak cognitive
capacities that underlie specific learning disabilities.
I wrote The Woman Who Changed Her Brain to combine
my own personal journey with case histories from three
decades as a researcher and educator, unraveling the
mystery of how our brain mediates our functioning in the
world. I am enthused by the brain’s incredible ability to
change and overcome learning problems and our growing
understanding of the workings of the brain and its profound
impact on how we participate in the world.