“Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and acclaimed author who explored some of the brain’s strangest pathways in best-selling case histories like The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, using his patients’ disorders as starting points for eloquent meditations on consciousness and the human condition, died on Sunday at his home in Manhattan. He was 82.” [obituary]
On the eve of 2011, Dr. Sacks wrote an op-ed piece entitled, “This Year, Change Your Mind,” in which he discusses the marvelous ability of the brain to adapt and grow, under challenging circumstances and at any age:
“While some areas of the brain are hard-wired from birth or early childhood, other areas — especially in the cerebral cortex, which is central to higher cognitive powers like language and thought, as well as sensory and motor functions — can be, to a remarkable extent, rewired as we grow older.”
Is there something you’d like to learn — another language, a musical instrument, maybe even how to cook? Leap right in and change your brain!
