CEREBRAL REORGANIZATION OF FUNCTION AFTER BRAIN DAMAGE.: Edited by Harvey S. Levin and Jordan Grafman. 2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Price pound39.50. Pp. 392. ISBN 0-19512-026-4.

All neurologists encounter patients with significant CNS damage for which the only treatment option is some form of rehabilitation therapy. This is often embarked upon more out of a sense that something has to be done than a real expectation that it will dramatically help the situation. However, every so often a patient will surprise the clinician by making a significant and near complete recovery, and under such circumstances it is often hard to know why, and the extent to which the rehabilitation process has helped reorganize and retrain the CNS. This book attempts to help us understand how the CNS can recover and how this may ultimately translate into the clinical setting.The processes underlying repair of the CNS have recently gained much attention, not least because many of the well-known doctrines relating to this no longer appear to be true. Cajal stated back in the early part of the 20th century that the adult brain was unable to recover from injury and neuronal cell loss and thus, once damaged, the neurones of the adult …