Key points

A girl written off at birth now walks, reads, and continues improving.

Hope and a belief in possibility can create true changes in the brain.

Being told "nothing can be done" can create learned helplessness in patients.

Dr. Aaron Hartman will never forget the first time he saw Anna. She was 12 months old, sitting in a Bumbo chair on a Winnie the Pooh blanket, her tiny body unable to support itself. An eye patch covered her "strong" eye—not because it was injured, but because her brain had suffered such severe birth trauma that it affected her eye function. Her hands were curled tightly to her chest, classic signs of the brain damage she'd endured before birth.

Anna had been exposed to crystal meth throughout pregnancy and suffered a stroke before she was even born. She

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