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I want to share a little secret,

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which I hope will not be a secret 
by the end of the talk.

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I am truly, madly, deeply passionate 
about the human brain.

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Science has taught us 
that our brain shapes us,

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that it makes us uniquely who we are.

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And if we think about our brain,
it has 200 billion neurons.

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Think about the world's population: 
that's a mere 7 billion.

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And we have hundreds of trillions 
of connections in our brain.

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If we imagine all the stars 
in the Milky Way Galaxy,

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there are more connections in our brain, 
than all of those stars combined.

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So, this incredibly complex organ 
that we carry with us

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everywhere we go, 
it does shape who we are.

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It is a filter, 
it filters our perceptions

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and our understanding of ourselves, 
of others, of our world,

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and of our place in that world.

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And, what is incredibly amazing

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is no two brains are exactly alike.

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If you look at the person next to you,

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and you note 
all the physical differences between you:

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the shape of your nose, 
the color of your eyes, your height,

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there are more differences 
between your two brains

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than all of those physical differences 
in combination.

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So, our brain does make us uniquely us.

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And I am here today 
to share with you my story,

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and it's a story of how I came to learn

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that not only does our brain shape us,

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but that we can actually shape our brain.

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My story began in Grade 1,

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and in Grade 1 I was identified 
as having a mental block.

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I was told I had a defect.

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And I was told I would never learn 
like other children.

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And really, the message at that time 
was loud and clear.

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I was told I needed to learn to live 
with those limitations.

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And this was 1957, and it was the time 
of the unchangeable brain.

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And childhood was 
a profound struggle for me.

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I couldn't tell time. 
I couldn't understand the relationship

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between an hour hand 
and a minute hand on a clock.

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I couldn't understand language. 
Most of what I read, or heard,

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was really as intelligible 
as the 'Jabberwocky'.

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I could understand concrete things.

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If somebody said to me, 
"The man is wearing a black coat",

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I could paint the picture in my head, 
and I could understand that.

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But what I couldn't do was understand 
concepts, or ideas, or relationships.

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So, lots of things were confusing.

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I pondered, how could my aunt also 
be my mother's sister?

46
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And what did that fraction, 
1/4, really mean?

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Any kind of abstract concept 
was hard for me.

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Irony and jokes: that was impossible.

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So, I learned to laugh 
when other people did.

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Cause and effect: 
it did not exist in my world.

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There were no reasons 
behind why things happened.

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My world was a series of disconnected 
bits and pieces of unrelated fragments.

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And eventually, 
my fragmented view of the world

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ended up causing 
a very fragmented sense of myself.

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And that wasn't all: 
this whole left side of my body

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was like an alien being, 
unconnected to the rest of me.

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I would bang and bump into things 
on the left side of my body.

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If I picked up anything in this left hand,
I would drop it.

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If I put this left hand on the hot burner,
I would feel pain,

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but I had no idea 
where it was coming from.

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I was truly a danger to myself.

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My mother, she was convinced 
I would be dead by the age of 5.

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And then, if that wasn't enough, 
I had a spatial problem.

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I couldn't imagine 
three-dimensional space.

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I couldn't create maps in my head.

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I would constantly get lost,
even in my friend's house.

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Crossing the street instilled terror.

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I could not judge 
how far away was that car.

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Geometry was a nightmare.

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I felt incredible shame.

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I felt there was something horribly, 
horribly wrong with me.

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And in my child's mind, 
when I'd heard that diagnosis,

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of having a mental block, 
I actually thought

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I had a wooden cube in my head 
that made learning difficult.

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And I didn't have a piece of wood 
in my head, but I wasn't far wrong.

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I had blockages, as I was later to learn,

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in very critical parts of my brain.

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And I tried all the traditional approaches, 
they were all about compensation,

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and about working around the problem,

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finding a strength to support a weakness.

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They were not about trying to address 
the source of the problem,

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and they took heroic effort, 
and led to rather limited results for me.

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Then, Grade 8.

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I hit the wall.

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I could not imagine 
how I could go on to high school,

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and handle more complex curriculum.

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The only option I could see 
was ending my life.

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So, I decided to end the pain.

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And the next morning, when I woke up 
after my failed suicide attempt,

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I berated myself for not even being able
to get that right.

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So, I soldiered on.

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And part of what kept me going was 
an attitude that I learned from my father.

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He was an inventor, and he was passionate 
about the creative process.

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He taught me that if there's a problem,
and there's no solution,

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you go out and create a solution.

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And the other thing he taught me was

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that before you can solve a problem, 
you have to identify its nature.

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So I continued my hunt. 
I went on to study psychology,

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to try to understand 
what was wrong with me,

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what was the source of my problem.

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And then, in the summer of 1977, 
something life-altering happened.

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I met a mind like my own,

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A Russian soldier, Lev Zasetsky, 
the only difference being

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his mind was shaped by a bullet,

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and mine had been that way since birth.

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I met Zasestky on the pages of a book,
'The Man With a Shattered World',

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wrtitten by the brilliant Russian
neuropsychologist, Alexander Luria.

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As I read Zasetsky's story,

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he couldn't tell time, 
he described living in a dense fog.

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All he got was fragments, bits and pieces.

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This man was living my life.

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So now, at the age of 25, in 1977,

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I knew the source of my problem.

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It was a part of my brain, in the left 
hemisphere, that wasn't working.

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And then I came across the work 
of Mark Rosenzweig,

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and he showed me a solution.

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Rosenzweig was working with rats,

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and he found that rats in an enriched 
and stimulating environment

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were better learners. 


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And then he went 
and looked at their brains:

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their brains had changed physiologically 
to support that learning.

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And this was neuroplasticity in action.

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Neuroplasticity, simply put, 
the brain's ability to change

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physiologically and functionally, 
as the result of stimulation.

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So now I knew what I had to do.

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I had to find a way to work, 
to exercise my brain,

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to strengthen those weak parts.

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And this was the beginning of 
my transformation and of my life's work.

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And I had to believe that humans must have
at least as much neuroplasticity,

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and hopefully more, than rats.

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So, I went on to create my first exercise.

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And I used clocks, because clocks 
are form of relationship,

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and I had never been able to tell time.

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So I started with the two-handed clock,

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to force my brain 
to process relationships,

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and then I added a third hand, 
and then a fourth hand,

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because I wanted to make my brain 
to work harder, and harder, and harder,

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to pull together concepts 
and understand their connection.

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And about three to four months in,

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I knew something significant had changed.

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I'd always wanted to read philosophy, 
and had never been able to understand it.

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And I just happened to have access 
to a philosophy library.

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So I went in, 
and I pulled a book off the shelf,

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and I opened it to a page at random,

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and I read that page, 
and I understood it as I was reading it.

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This had never happened in my entire life.

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And then I thought, maybe it's a fluke, 
maybe that was just an easy book.

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So I pulled another book off the shelf, 
opened it, read it, and understood it.

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And by the time I was finished, I was 
surrounded by a pile of a hundred books,

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and I had been able to read 
and understand each page.

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So I knew that something had changed.

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(Applause)

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Thank you. My experiment had worked.

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The human brain was capable of change.

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And then I decided to create an exercise

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for that alien part of my body,

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and for that I knew I had to work 
on an area in the right hemisphere,

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the somatosensory cortex 
that registers sensation.

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I created an exercise for that 
and I am no longer a danger to myself.

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And then I decided, that spatial problem,

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because I was really tired 
of getting lost,

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and so I created 
another exercise for that,

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and I don't get lost, I can actually 
read maps -- I don't like GPS's,

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because I like to read maps now, 
because I can. (Laughter)

165
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So, I knew now, the brain could change.

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I was living proof 
of human neuroplasticity.

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And what really breaks my heart

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is that I still meet people today,

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children, individuals, that are struggling
with learning problems,

170
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and they're still being told 
what I was told in 1957,

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that they need to learn to live 
with their limitations,

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they don't dare to dream.

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And what I learned since 1977,

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when I met Zasetsky and Luria, 
and Rosenzweig,

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is that, yes, our brain does shape us,

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it impacts how we can engage, 
and participate, and be in the world,

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and every single one of us

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has our own unique profile 
of cognitive strengths and weaknesses.

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And if there's a limitation, 
we don't necessarily have to live with it.

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We now know about neuroplasticity,

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and we can harness 
the brain's changeable characteristics,

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to create programs to actually strengthen 
and stimulate and change our brain.

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And in 1966, Rosenzweig 
threw down the gauntlet.

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He said, his challenge was: 
"Let's take what he'd learned with rats,

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and apply it to human learning."

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And we need to embrace that challenge,

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we need to also challenge 
current practices

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that are still operating out of 
that paradigm of the unchangeable brain.

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We need to work together to take 
what we know now about neuroplasticity,

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and develop programs 
that actually shape our brains,

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to change the future of learning.

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My vision is of a world that we create,

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in which no child has to live

194
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with the ongoing struggle and pain 
of a learning disability.

195
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My vision is that cognitive exercises 
become just a normal part of curriculum.

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My vision is that school becomes a place 
that we go to strengthen our brain,

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to become really efficient 
and effective learners,

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engaged in a learning process,

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where not only, as learners, 
can we dare to dream,

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but we can realize our dream.

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And to me, this is the perfect marriage 
between neuroscience and education.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)