Wouldn't you think that a medical professional who suffered a brain injury would attempt to regain function by traditional medical means? One doc who didn't but achieved a notable recovery is Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. She's written a book about her experience and been interviewed on the radio. Sandra Kiume has published an interview with Taylor about her recovery on her Neurofuture blog.
With grittiness, family support and her professional knowledge about the brain and its plasticity, she regained capabilities in innovative ways beyond traditional stroke rehabilitation methods.
One of those innovative ways was creating stained glass brain models. Sounds really beautiful. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any images of those models to post here. But Taylor does offer some insight into how all this helped her along:
1. Balance and equilibrium to stand still in front of a workspace and manipulate the project.2. Gross motor movement, handling glass is very delicate and dangerous, I was highly motivated to be very careful for both the glass and myself.
3. Fine motor dexterity, cutting glass is a precise activity, grinding glass requires holding my body firm - equilibrium, pushing into the grinder - gross motor and then lining all of the pieces up - fine motor.
4. Cognitive development - this type of a project is a long term project with lots of steps. It helped me in my linear thinking.
5. Cartoon development of the original image required a combination of intuition and sensory organization.
6. Focus and concentration balanced with sleep.
7. Artistry - how does one tweak it all to make it remarkable and beautiful.
I think this is a beautiful example of plasticity in action: engage repeatedly in a challenging activity involving lots of body awareness, and the nervous system adapts to it.