Doidge Ltd Quotes & Sayings

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

When such patterns are triggered in therapy, it gives the patient a chance to look at them and change them, for as we saw in chapter 4, "Acquiring Tastes and Loves," positive bonds appear to facilitate neuroplastic change by triggering unlearning and dissolving existing neuronal networks, so the patient can alter his existing intentions. — Norman Doidge

4. Differentiation - making the smallest possible sensory distinctions between movements - builds brain maps. Newborns, Feldenkrais observed, often make very large, poorly differentiated movements based on primitive reflexes, using many muscles at once, such as reflexively extending their entire arms. They also cannot discriminate among their fingers. As they mature, they learn to make smaller, more precise individual movements. But the movements do not become precise until the child can use awareness to discern very small differences among them. Differentiation, Feldenkrais would — Norman Doidge

There always was blood in the deep, dark depths of despair and tragedy, wasn't there? — Meghan Ciana Doidge

Well, if that wasn't the kettle talking smack about the pot, I don't know what was. — Meghan Ciana Doidge

The modified Mozart used by Tomatis, Paul, iLs, and others over time in an individualized therapy must be distinguished from claims made in the media in the 1990s that mothers could raise the IQ of their children by having them briefly listen to unfiltered Mozart. This claim was based on a study not of mothers and babies but of college students who listened to Mozart ten minutes a day and improved IQ scores on spatial reasoning tests - an effect that lasted only ten to fifteen minutes! Hype aside, different studies by Gottfried Schlaug, Christo Pantev, Laurel Trainor, Sylvain Moreno, and Glenn Schellenberg have shown that sustained music training, such as learning to play an instrument, can lead to brain change, enhance verbal and math skills, and even modestly increase IQ.] — Norman Doidge

NEUROFEEDBACK IS A SOPHISTICATED FORM of biofeedback and an extremely versatile treatment that is useful for many of the conditions described in this book. It has recently been recognized by the American Academy of Pediatrics as a treatment for removing ADD and ADHD symptoms as effectively as medications. — Norman Doidge

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

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

Dr. Margaret Naeser and colleagues from Harvard, MIT, and Boston University, including Harvard professor Michael Hamblin, a world leader in understanding how light therapy works at the cellular level. Hamblin, at Massachusetts General Hospital's Wellman Center for Photomedicine, specializes in the use of light to activate the immune system in treating cancer and cardiac disease; he was now branching out into its use for brain injuries. Building on lab work that applied laser therapy to the top of the head (transcranial laser therapy), the Boston group had studied its use in traumatic brain injury and found laser treatment helpful. Naeser, a research professor at the Boston University School of Medicine, had done studies using lasers for stroke and paralysis and was one of several pioneers using "laser acupuncture" by placing light on acupuncture points. — Norman Doidge

According to Ramachandran, pain, like the body image, is created by the brain and projected onto the body. This assertion is contrary to common sense and the traditional neurological view of pain that says that when we are hurt, our pain receptors send a one-way signal to the brain's pain center and that the intensity of pain perceived is proportional to the seriousness of the injury. — Norman Doidge

Ironically, some of our most stubborn habits and disorders are products of our plasticity. — Norman Doidge

I was going to die and I'd just saved his freaking life. No good deed goes unpunished. — Meghan Ciana Doidge

brain and other nerve-related problems such as headaches from concussions, vascular dementia (dementia caused by blood vessel problems in the brain), migraines, Bell's palsy (a paralysis of the facial nerve), and tinnitus (ringing of the ears). He emphasized he was influenced by research that had been done in Israel on light therapy and the brain. Dr. Shimon Rochkind, a neurosurgeon at Tel Aviv University, originally pioneered work using lasers to treat injuries in the peripheral nervous system, that is, all the nerves in the body except those in the brain and spinal cord. Injury to peripheral nerves can lead to problems sensing or moving. — Norman Doidge

6. Slowness of movement is the key to awareness, and awareness is the key to learning. As — Norman Doidge

I might be able to walk away from sexy, dangerous shifters, but chocolate had me at its beck and call. — Meghan Ciana Doidge

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

No, I chided myself - scary monster men are not sexy. — Meghan Ciana Doidge

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

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

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

As they clasped, sparks of Declan's magic cascaded from their mutual grip. Kett chuckled. Declan grimaced ruefully. Then he threw his head back and laughed. They dropped the handshake. Apparently, measurements had been taken, assessed, and accepted - length, width, and power of thrust. They were both acting ridiculous. — Meghan Ciana Doidge

Life made you get your hands dirty; life was vengeful if you tried an easy route. — Meghan Ciana Doidge

It doesn't help that your idiom is all at once playful, esoteric, and, at times, bemusing. — Meghan Ciana Doidge

Based on his work with plasticity, Taub has discovered a number of training principles: training is more effective if the skill closely relates to everyday life; training should be done in increments; and work should be concentrated into a short time, a training technique Taub calls "massed practice," which he has found far more effective than long-term but less frequent training. — Norman Doidge

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

The glial-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) that he referred to is a brain growth factor. It functions like a growth-promoting fertilizer in the brain. GDNF is made by glial cells, one of the major types of cells in the brain. Fifteen percent of our brain cells are neurons; the other 85 percent are glial cells. — Norman Doidge

1. The mind programs the functioning of the brain. We are born with a limited number of "hardwired" reflexes, but the human being has the "longest apprenticeship" of all animals, during which learning takes place. "Homo sapiens," he wrote, "arrives with a tremendous part of his nervous mass left unpatterned, unconnected, so that each individual, depending on where he happens to be born, can organize his brain to fit the demands of his surroundings. — Norman Doidge

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

Too bad he was such an asshole. Why did assholes have the best chests? — Meghan Ciana Doidge