Our ability to appropriately integrate stimuli from the environment is crucial to our self-perception and neurological wiring — ultimately altering our capacity for optimal function and performance. This month’s additions to the Recommended Readings List focus on two books that address the use of specific stimuli on neuroplastic healing and how the brain determines where we are in space.
The Brain’s Way of Healing by Norman Doidge
We influence the brain and body thru receptors — auditory, visual, mechanical, vestibular, etc. — to alter and induce neuroplastic and eventually bioplastic changes in the structure and function of the entire human system. In his follow-up to The Brain That Changes Itself, Doidge elaborates on how scientists and clinicians are utilizing energy to modulate existing neural pathways and forming new ones, ultimately altering how we perceive reality. I especially enjoyed his chapter on Moshe Feldenkrais as well the use of auditory stimuli in changing functional networks in the brain. Although it can be a bit effusive in the praise of a certain technique, this is a fantastic book on the basics of neuroplastic healing.
Making Space: How the Brain Knows Where Things Are by Jennifer M. Groh
The ability to perceive our location relative to the environment goes largely unnoticed consciously, despite a great many resources devoted to it. Our resting neurological state of being is predicated, at least in part, on our ability to accurately perceive space – alterations of this are often manifested in dysfunctional states. Groh discusses the neurophysiology of how the brain synthesizes multi-modal information to determine our location and how our memory is an innate process of our spacial reasoning. This book is rather straightforward and can be a bit dry but an excellent book for the basics on how we know where things are.
– Seth
P.S. If you haven’t yet watched my interview with Dave Tilley, DPT you are missing the boat! Check it out in my prior post or on Dave’s website, The Hybrid Perspective.
