Norman Doidge

so she became one of a small tribe of gentamicin’s casualties, known among themselves as Wobblers

William Harvey (1578–1657)

discovered how our blood circulates through

René Descartes (1596–1650) argued that the brain and nervous system also functioned like a pump

Language development, for instance, has a critical period that begins in infancy and ends between eight years and puberty. After this critical period closes, a person’s ability to learn a second language without an accent is limited. In fact, second languages learned after the critical period are not processed in the same part of the brain as is the native tongue.

goslings, if exposed to a human being for a brief period of time, between fifteen hours and three days after birth, bonded with that person, instead of with their mother, for life

Competitive plasticity also explains why our bad habits are so difficult to break or “unlearn.” Most of us think of the brain as a container and learning as putting something in it. When we try to break a bad habit, we think the solution is to put something new into the container. But when we learn a bad habit, it takes over a brain map, and each time we repeat it, it claims more control of that map and prevents the use of that space for “good” habits. That is why “unlearning” is often a lot harder than learning, and why early childhood education is so important—it’s best to get it right early, before the “bad habit” gets a competitive advantage.

ost autistic children have an IQ of less than 70. They have major problems connecting socially to others and may, in severe cases, treat people like inanimate objects, neither greeting them nor acknowledging them as human beings. At times it seems that autistics don’t have a sense that “other minds” exist in the world.

Human beings exhibit an extraordinary degree of sexual plasticity compared with other creatures. We vary in what we like to do with our partners in a sexual act.

romantic love began to gain social approval in the aristocracies and courts of Europe only in the twelfth century—originally between an unmarried man and a married woman, either adulterous or unconsummated, usually ending badly. Only with the spread of democratic ideals of individualism did the idea that lovers ought to be able to choose spouses for themselves take firmer hold and gradually begin to seem completely natural and inalienable.