How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Can Change Your Life

Brain plasticity is a very interesting subject, and Mr. Merzenich is well-versed in it and has been involved with research regarding it for a long time. There is some good information in this book, but it turns out to be mostly an ad for his (not inexpensive) product developed to aid in maintaining brain plasticity. Like many many other products on the market.

Thought it was tedious and repetitive. There was a lack of balance between the 'stories' and the strategies for help. I had the feeling that the author felt the need to write it to make claim to his research on neuroscience. Imwouldnhave espected at least 50/50.

The premise of this book sounded so exciting to me.

I am a highly functioning intelligent person who unfortunately suffers from short term memory loss due to a head injury sustained in a car accident.

I purchased the book with the hope that I would get solutions and exercises to assist me solve this issue.

This book is so badly written. I don’t doubt the authors expertise, however he should have sort a talented writer to interpret his knowledge so that the book was understandable. It was laborious and repetitive in its language.

If in fact his theory on brain plasticity is correct it is important to get this message out to share with the wider community. However in the format that this book is presented it has little hope of doing so. I felt that the title of this book would alone generate a lot of interest from the most vulnerable people and I felt that I had been taken advantage of when I started reading it to find that it had little or nothing to offer me.

The author shares interesting anecdotes and some useful tips, but net net it comes across quite tainted. The book essentially pitches a particular subscription-based brain training program (obviously not included in the book), and makes quite grandiose claims in spite of presenting the weakest reference section I've seen in a non-fiction book in quite some time: The book itself contains no reference section. Instead there is some kind of advertisement for the money-making websites where you can train your brain and also access the references. Awkward.

The trouble with trying to write a fair review of SoftWired is avoiding clichés. There are several that are applicable and so maybe I should just list them here and get them out of the way. Here they are ( some of them, anyway): revolutionary; earth shaking; groundbreaking; life changing; landmark.
Yes. This book is all of that. Its appeal is to basically two groups of people:
1. those who have suffered trauma to the brain either through accident or disease;
2. anybody over forty years old
I’m not going to hide the punch line here. The message of the book – the thing that makes all those grand cliché s appropriate – is this: the brain is like a muscle and it can be strengthened dramatically through the right kind of exercise, diet and lifestyle. The book is full of examples of dramatic changes – healings, really – in the lives of men and women who had suffered terrible, seemingly permanent brain damage or who had been born with congenital defects that prevented them from functioning normally.
Not only that, the book claims that the neurodegenerative effects of aging can not only be slowed, they can be reversed. Fading memory, slowing processing speed, all can be remedied.
Think of this: If you are over forty years old you can look around at your peers and see enormous differences in physical health. Some of your friends are overweight, some have even allowed themselves to slip into Metabolic syndrome and are obese. Some are stiff as a board and some are weak. Many have digestive or respiratory problems and have a line of prescription pills on their table every morning. Then, on the other hand, there are those who have kept themselves in shape – women who can still turn heads and finish marathons and men who can do more pull-ups and push-ups now than they could at twenty.
What Mezernich is saying in this book is that with the same kind of dedication to our brain health we may enjoy that same difference in mental vitality. That is, we may take twenty years off our brain age and fifty-year-olds may think and perceive as fast and remember just as accurately as a thirty-year-old. Here is an appropriate time for one of those clichés. That is revolutionary!
Here is what Mezernich tells us:
“But understand that as your brain gets healthier, that health will be manifested to a very significant extent by a greater capacity for having fun and enjoying life.”
And, yes, he does tell us how it can be done. The modern lifestyle – the lifestyle of Western Civilization does much to encourage the natural, age-related degeneration of the brain. It’s very like the relationship between the Standard American Diet and the diseases of aging that are now raging among us – diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. That is, it is not a matter of doing a few things wrong some of the time; we are doing almost everything wrong almost all of the time. The paved and air-conditioned world we live in does not present our brains with enough of the right kind of challenges needed to keep it sharp. We find ways to compensate for our fading memory and our slowing processing speed and these shortcuts only make matters worse.
The book convincingly makes the case that a concentrated effort to retrain our brains, done over a reasonable amount of time, will make profound and lasting changes in our abilities and, accordingly, our lives. We can do this on our own with a computer and an internet connection. It is that available. We may consequently avoid mental decline and enjoy more freedom and longer independence and productivity. That is earth-shaking; that is groundbreaking; that is life-changing.

Soft-Wired Michael Merzenich
I had been waiting for this book. I am a person who has re-wired my brain after damage and as a result, I have researched many books, videos and research papers. I share this by speaking and writing about ways to build better brains. I had read many books on the power of plasticity, but Michael Merzenich is the acknowledged ‘father of the brain plasticity’ and I couldn’t wait to hear from him. Sadly, much of the information in this book has already been presented by others in a more readable way.
When I started reading the book, I had the distinct feeling that Merzenich had been asked to turn his experience into a promotional book for Posit Science. Firstly, he does not find writing easy and I found the book difficult to read. He apologises regularly for ‘selling’ the training but seemed genuinely interested in sharing the science and research. He is, clearly, a great man, but I felt that this book portrayed only part of the story about plasticity – the part that builds cognitive strength.
The parts that I found added to my understanding were all around the dangers of getting older and ignoring brain function – that there is no pill to improve the brain over 40 – just persistence and willpower. Without conscious development, the brain will decline as we age. The good news with plasticity is that we can prevent decline and even build strength.
The parts that I thought were underemphasized were: nutrition, exercise, sleep, positive emotional mood and – above all – to satisfy our brain’s need to be social. All of these areas respond positively through plasticity – but can also create difficulties if not addressed. They create a brain receptive to and capable of training. To be fair, Merzenich does mention all of these, but apart from exercise, they are treated as additional to cognitive development. This could be a case of ‘if you are a hammer, every problem is a nail’ or the fact that his business partners were more interested in the on-line brain game promotional power of the book.
Merzenich comments ‘There are a million other things that you might do, in simple daily adjustments, on the path of personal growth or recovery. If you effectively apply lifestyle changes- perhaps also a regular schedule of visits to a brain fitness center – you’ll very substantially increase the chances of living the last decade of your life in good spirits, and in very good brain health’. This has certainly been my experience and after years of focusing on other aspects of brain development, I decided to sign up for brain training with Posit Science after reading this book.
I believe cognitive training is very powerful, but I also believe that other simple lifestyle changes have just as much, if not more impact on our brain’s ability to recover and develop. These form a solid foundation for cognitive development. I still regard Merzenich very highly as a scientist, but perhaps he needed a ghost writer. I also think that these ‘...million other things....’ are easily categorized and actioned – it’s just that this book does not do that.

If you want to stay sharp, healthy, and quick-witted for a lifetime, or get there again, then you need this book. I recently interviewed Dr. Merzenich for our Inspire Nation Show, and love what he has to share, that you'll also find in this book.

You can get smarter at any age.

You can strengthen all areas of the brain.

Whether you're young or old, there's ways to improve your brain, improve it's function, and experience a richer, deeper, more meaningful...higher definition life!

Dr. Merzenich's contribution to science and humanity is quite noteworthy, and this is a fantastic book to put his work into practice.

Before sharing my review I want to disagree with those who have described "Soft-Wired" as a “infomercial” for BrainHQ, the latest cognitive training program from Posit Science. It is true that the book includes the stories of people who Dr. Merzenich claims have benefited from the programs that he helped develop at Posit Science, but this is NOT what makes the book compelling.
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In "Soft-Wired: How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Can Change Your Life" Dr. Michael Merzenich shares some of what he has learned during his career as a pioneer in the field of brain plasticity. The focus of Soft-Wired is on the practical implications of the discovery that our brains continue to change, and can even improve, throughout our lives.

Although I am very familiar with the science presented in Soft-wired, I recommend reading this book no matter what your background. I found Soft-wired compelling because of the way Dr. Merzenich includes the stories of many real people facing a wide variety of cognitive challenges. I also enjoyed his reflections on his own life and career; but what really makes this book stand out is its combination of optimism and practical advice.

Every choice we make changes our brain, so it is up to us to make choices that tap our brain’s plasticity in a good way. This means embracing challenges and avoiding ruts, which is exactly the opposite of what most people do as they get older. The brain-healthy habits that Dr. Merzenich champions can be applied at any age, but it is never too soon, or too late to start.

"No matter how much you've struggled, no matter where you've been, in a sense, in your life, you're in charge, you could say, of your life going forward. And you have the capacity, you have the resources to change things for the better—always have that capacity. And that's what the book is trying to emphasize. “ (Quote from episode 105 of the Brain Science Podcast, which is available at brainsciencepodcast.com and in iTunes.)

Excellent, readable scientific research on how the brain works and what individuals can do to improve their brain function and stave off the onset of dementia or arrest its progression. Readers should note reading any book on the brain alone isn't going to improve your brain function. The research shows there are no quick fixes or remedies to keeping your brain fit. It takes a commitment and hard work to keep your brain functioning at a high level and computer based brain training is a proven scientific, research based avenue to brain fitness. I first read about Dr. Merzenich’s computer based brain research in Time Magazine in the mid 1990’s. Over the last 15 years I have seen Dr. Merzenich featured numerous times on National Public Broadcasting. When I discovered he had written a book I bought one, read it and sent copies to my friends and family. I was distressed to read some negative reviews associated with Dr. Merzenich’s book, mostly centering on his reference to his computer brain training program and company. Dr. Merzenich is a pioneer in computer based brain training research and the research speaks for itself. I am not going to learn a foreign language in my 60’s but I can turn on my computer daily and do 20-30 minutes of brain training. Dr. Merzenich’s book was obviously not my first exposure to Posit Science, the company associated with his research. I got my first introduction into Posit Science’s Brain HQ program through my auto insurance company, USAA. This computer based training centered on improving peripheral vision and reaction time. The positive results showed up in many daily activities including improved birding skills and ping pong prowess. Next I found BrainHQ available through AARP and moved into the BrainHQ website for training. After these two positive experiences I purchased a subscription to PositScience's BrainHQ training. I view this subscription as my brain health insurance policy and it is cheap at that.

This is like the best murder mystery ever! Suspense buillds and builds as more insults to the brain both internally and externally are revealed. Who has taken the first shot? and who will finiish my brain off? All the while, hope is lurking in the background....hope based on solid scientific information. I kept reading about the insidious internal & external forces sharpening their blades while I read faster and faster looking for the solution! Studying Anat Baniel Method and reading Soft-Wired are the highlights of my continuing recovery. I now have the tools to guide me down the right path. Finally, the author does not hide his humor under his lab coat which made it a bit easier to wait until I could see what strategies I could use to save my brain. Luckily, I expect a full recovery. I have signed up with Brain HQ, and am using physical exercise with attention and the study of ABMI to stimulate connections in my brain and I will remain vigilant to other assaults in the future.

Admittedly I'm just guessing, but I think the author went with one of those "print-on-demand" publishers. Seems today we've moved backwards into a past world where the author may or may not make any sense, but how will we ever know? It's almost impossible to read the darn book because the printing is so terribly bad. Thus, fairly or unfairly, the author must go down with his publisher.
The text is essentially unreadable. The dials on the big "digital one-copy-at-a-time" printing gizmo must have been tuned to: font as scrawny / skinny as possible (to save priceless ink?) and then further adjusted down to be as microscopic as possible. (To save some of the wretchedly poor quality, worse-than-newsprint paper?)
I bought two copies of this book from the store, one for me and one for a friend. The author may have a good answer for what the blurb says is an important question. Unfortunately, due a poor choice of publishing, the world (especially those with aging eyes) will never know.
Guess the books might burn in the fireplace anyway; heaven knows there's precious little toxic ink involved.

NOT RECOMMENDED!

Am a neuroscientist by training and I am very familiar with the work of Pr. Merzenich, specifically his research related to brain plasticity. I have to say I was very surprised and pleased by the reading of this book. It really simplify and connect the reader with cutting-edge scientific information, in a way that I find humble, effective and inspiring. I would therefore highly recommend this book to medical professional, medical students and especially the general public. There is a neuroplasticity revolution going on right now, and our society would be better off if more people become aware of it. And better source for that knowledge than the man nincknamed the father of neuroplasticity: Pr. Michael Merzenich. Happy reading! Dr. Mo.

Contains some earth-shattering gems I never realised.

* Wow anthropologists have told us that we humans are different from otehr large-brained ,mammals because of our "truly remarkable capacity for behavioural adaption"
Wow it's lucky I even picked up this book about brain-plasticity, since I didn't know that !

* Humans can "thrive almost anywhere on earth" and ""we can capture, find or grow nutrients required for sustenance". Wow if I hadn't done Geography in High School or watched hundreds of nature documentaries, I PROBABLY WOULDN'T KNOW THAT.

* Dr Merzenich then goes on to give us the amazing info that humans can SPECIALISE! Now if I hadn't done high school economics or watched a few hundred news stories that mentioned this, I would have been surprised to know this !

DEFINITELY getting right into the info about how to help ME use BRAIN PLASTICITY !

~*~

But seriously, authors of non-fiction how-to/self-help books really need to minimise the GUFF and GET THE POINT.

DO NOT TELL THE READER WHAT THEY ALREADY KNOW.
THAT'S NOT WHAT YOUR GETTING OUR MONEY FOR !

I have been aware of neuroplasticity for some time and have in the past (and still do) subscribe to Posit-Science products. So I enjoyed the fuller explanations and case studies. But I did not give this top billing because it took on an "infomercial" feel at times. Well written, makes the complex brain science easily accessible, and provides hope for many of the debilitating mental failures of aging America, so for all these reasons I add: Read it!

His assertions are backed up with many years of research and are convincing. I signed up for the 30 free trial at BrainHQ. I'm 81 years old and am really working hard to forestall further memory loss. Wish me luck. BTW, my kids' mom died of Alzheimers disease and I feel they are worried about it so I hope to be able to tell them this really works. It 's not a cure but helps delay progress of the disease.

Feel like you're losing it? Can't remember anything? Worried about your genetic history?

This empowering book is an easy read, written by the world's leading pioneer in brain plasticity. (Warning: the first 70% of the book is about all the things that can go awry as a result of aging, injury or life experience, but the promise that these changes can be significantly improved is very exciting.) Merzenich's decades of results are clinically consistent and peer reviewed, providing an optimistic approach to aging.

I love books about neuroscience and this is one of the best I've read so far. Merzenich, a well-known brain researcher, takes us through his life's work studying brain plasticity - the science of how our brains continuously change and grow based on our habits and lifestyles. At the end, he gives some practical evidence-based advice on how to take the learning's from his work and make changes in your own life (and in your own brain). This is a must-read for anyone interested in the brain!

I became of Dr. Merzenich when my daughter gave me his brain fitness programs. While I completed both of them, I didn't really understand the sience behind them. This book does a great job of explaining the neurosciene in layman's terms. There are some incredibly inspring stories included in it with the background to describe why the positive change occurred. I recommend it to anyone who is complaining about senior moments but who doesn't believe that there is anything that can be done about it.

Brilliant, this is pathbreaking science for the mind, brain and the soul, read it and stay young with a healthy brain, powerful mind and eternal spirit for a long life and beyond... highly recommend !