Soft-Wired: How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Can Change Your Life

What if you had the power to change your brain for the better?
In Soft-Wired, Dr. Michael Merzenich--a world authority on brain plasticity--explains how the brain rewires itself across the lifespan, and how you can take control of that process to improve your life. In addition to fascinating descriptions of how your brain has produced your unique memories, skills, quirks, and emotions, Soft-Wired offers sound advice for evaluating your brain and gives clear, specific, scientifically proven guidance for how to rejuvenate, remodel, and reshape your brain to improve it at any age. What people are saying about Soft-Wired: "Soft-Wired is the most authoritative, useful and entertaining book on the subject of brain plasticity. Written by the scientist who launched the field, this book stands above them all. If you take Merzenich’s science to heart, you’ll understand how you came to be the person you are and how to become the better, stronger person you could be.” -Sandra Blakeslee, New York Times science writer "Soft-Wired is one of the most important books on health and aging ever written... if you are fifty or older you will want to read this book." -Jeff Hawkins, author of On Intelligence, co-founder of Grok, inventor of the Palm Pilot “Mike Merzenich’s innovative neuroscience research has revolutionized the way we view our brains. With practical advice that anyone can follow, Merzenich informs us that it’s never too late to improve our mental abilities. Soft-wired captures the brain’s Rx for living our entire lives with a brain operating at or near full capacity–after reading this book you’ll be equipped to control your neural destiny!” -Kelly Lambert, PhD, author of Lifting Depression and The Lab Rat Chronicles “Michael Merzenich is the neuroscientist who, more than any other,persuaded skeptical colleagues that our brain maps are plastic, and can change their structure and function with mental experience. But he is also a brilliant visionary and an extraordinary inventor who has put his vision into practice, and, to my knowledge, developed more effective computer-based brain exercises than anyone alive, wholly based on his detailed understanding of neuroplasticity. In this book, written for a popular audience in a personal way, he explains how plasticity affects the brain across the lifespan, with an emphasis on how to use it to deal with the fact our brains age, and are prone to decline. It contains the most compelling argument I have seen showing why our most sophisticated brain exercises are far better than medications, crosswords or “brain games” to improve and maintain our cognitive fitness, and it demonstrates they also provide us with protection from the symptoms of a broad spectrum of neurological diseases. He gives many compelling examples of people who had neurological injuries or diseases, and who got their cognitive functions back. He even shows that some risk factors for oAlzheimer’s Disease can be lowered, and symptoms delayed. Filled with fascinating facts about the brain, this book is also the very personal reflection on how to live, knowing that your brain is plastic, by a fascinating man who, at 71 years of age, is bursting with creativity, and whose own faculties continue to improve.” -Norman Doidge, M.D., Author of The Brain That Changes Itself