I first encountered Neuroplasticity in V. S. Ramachandran’s book, Phantoms in the Brain. Don’t be intimidated! The author wrote most of the book in layman’s terms and leaves most of the technical details in footnotes.
The author teaches at UCSD, but I also found two classes that either use the book or elaborate on concepts of the book at other universities.
One is intro to Neurobiology @ Cornell Univeristy http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/bionb2220/Resources.htm
The other is Neural Plasticity in Learning and Development @ MIT http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Brain-and-Cognitive-Sciences/9-301JNeural-Plasticity-in-Learning-and-DevelopmentSpring2002/CourseHome/index.htm
From Scientific American
People who suffer from certain illusions, such as sensations from a missing limb or a conviction that look- alike impostors have replaced one’s parents, are often treated as psychiatric cases or neurological curiosities. Ramachandran, a brain researcher, sees them instead as “our guides into the inner workings of the human brain.” He tells the stories of several such people and what their illusions suggest about how the brain works. Along the way the reader learns of Charles Bonnet syndrome, the vivid visual hallucinations experienced by some blind people (James Thurber probably among them); hemineglect, a condition that often follows a stroke in the right brain and causes the patient to be profoundly indifferent to objects and events on her left side; and pseudocyesis, or false pregnancy. Ramachandran thinks the line of research he describes may reach an epochal goal–the answer to “a question that has been steeped in mysticism and metaphysics for millennia: What is the nature of the self?
