Credit: Madman Entertainment

Last year, Toronto psychiatrist Norman Doidge released a documentary based on his best-selling book, The Brain That Changes Itself. It's a compelling companion to the book, introducing us to the so-called "first generation of neuroplasticians" that are applying our current understanding of the brain's ability to change itself to treat some pretty extraordinary cases.

There's a blind man who can sink a basketball based on cues delivered to the surface of his tongue; a girl born with half a brain who lives a normal life; a man who can feel pain where his arm would be had it not been amputated - phenomena that have to be seen to be believed.

Now Doidge has released Changing Your Mind, a sequel that highlights both the positives and the negatives of neuroplasticity. While researchers can take advantage of the brain's fluidity to treat some mental disorders, this characteristic is also the root of other, more common, mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and post traumatic stress disorder.

These rigid behaviours occur when repeated negative thoughts get wired more and more deeply in the brain, and researchers are now figuring out how to combat this using some deceptively simple but ingenious cognitive exercises. As Doidge says, "Neuroplasticity is no one's friend... but understanding it is."

Changing Your Mind has been released on a double feature DVD with The Brain That Changes Itself. It's a fascinating sequel, and while it lacks the bizarre individual cases of the original, it provides an insight into the revolutionary treatments being developed for disorders that currently affect millions worldwide.