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Brain Repair. Donald G. Stein, Simon Brailowsky, and Bruno Will. 1995. New York: Oxford University Press. 140 pp., $12.95.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 1999
This optimistic book about recovery of function after brain injury or disease is written by three neuroscientists specifically to counter the belief that brain injury is permanent and that the brain cannot be repaired. They point out that this belief leads to often inappropriate or no treatment, which then makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy. However there is an increasingly extensive body of evidence from laboratories around the world that given the right conditions and specific chemicals, for example, normal function can be restored. This literature is highly specialized, highly technical, and often apparently unrelated to human recovery. It is also produced at a prodigious rate. According to a 1989 survey, fact-based knowledge doubled every 18 months at that time, and it was predicted that by the year 2010 it will double every 4 weeks. It is not surprising, therefore, that members of a health-professional team have difficulty keeping up with the clinical rehabilitation literature, and that they do not have the time or the energy to read studies on laboratory animals or tissue studies which are not seen as high priority or of relevance to their work.