The Woman Who Changed Her Brain (Barbara Arrowsmith-Young)

This book made me think about all the times I've sat down with someone who has done a learning assessment where they've told me all the areas where the child has a deficit. There were so many times when I thought of various people I've known over the years. If there are exercises someone can do to work on specific areas of the brain and change people's lives, I need to know the exercises! Unfortunately, they're not in this book.

Goodreads says:

Born with severe learning disabilities that caused teachers to label her slow, stubborn, or worse, Barbara Arrowsmith-Young read and wrote everything backwards, struggled to process concepts in language, continually got lost, and could make no sense of an analog clock. But through her formidable memory and determination, she made her way to graduate school, where she chanced upon research that inspired her to invent cognitive exercises to "fix" her brain. Now the Director of Arrowsmith School, the author interweaves her personal tale with riveting case histories from her more than 30 years of working with both children and adults to restructure their own brains.

The Woman Who Changed Her Brain powerfully and poignantly illustrates how the lives of children and adults struggling with learning disorders can be dramatically transformed. This remarkable book by a brilliant pathbreaker deepens our understanding of how the brain works and of the brain’s profound impact on how we participate in the world. Our brains shape us, but this book offers clear and hopeful evidence of the corollary: we can shape our brains.