This is an interesting and readable book, and it clearly has created a lot of interest in the subject. It covers a range of topics relating to neural plasticity, which is not quite such a new topic as the author would have us believe. The strength of the book is the writing style and how accessible it is.
However, I would urge readers to approach this book with a degree of caution, or dare I say take it with a pinch of salt. What the author fails to do is apply any real level of critical appraisal to the material he covers. Some of the material covered has a substantial evidence base, some of it has a shaky evidence base, some has no evidence base whatsoever and is pure conjecture. If I take the example of constraint-induced therapy, originating from a psychologist called Taub, which I went away and read up on quite extensively following the claims made in this book. This is a treament for hemiplegia following stroke, whereby the good arm is constrained for several hours each day, thus forcing the person to use their bad arm. The logic behind this is that this will prevent learned non-use and also facilitate some cortical remapping, so that that control of that arm is taken over by in-tact brain areas. When you look at the evidence, a lot of which is pretty good quality research, this is not anything like the panacea that Doidge presents it to be. There are only a proportion of patients this works for, it is still unclear what the best protocol for its use is, and there is a lack of evidence for it producing lasting, long-term gains. A recent Cochrane review concluded that there was not enough evidence to say clearly whether it was effective or not, so the jury is still out.
Some of the education-related material was based on one particular programme. When looking at the references, all the evidence seemed to come from one source, and was not published in peer-reviewed journals (i.e. had not been scrutinised by the scientific community). About the highest level of publication appeared to be a poster presented at a conference.
As another reviewer mentioned, the chapter on sexuality seemed to be pure conjecture.
Do I regret reading it? No, it entertained me, and annoyed me in equal measure, but consequently prompted me to do further reading. So I have to say I benefitted from reading it, and would probably recommend it to others. But please approach it with a critical mind.
