Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism
Ron Suskind - 2014
It is the saga of Owen Suskind, who happens to be the son of one of America's most noted writers, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Ron Suskind. He's also autistic. The twisting, 20-year journey of this boy and his family will change that way you see autism, old Disney movies, and the power of imagination to heal a shattered, upside-down world.
Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body
Jo Marchant - 2016
Recently, however, serious scientists from a range of fields have been uncovering evidence that our thoughts, emotions and beliefs can ease pain, heal wounds, fend off infection and heart disease and even slow the progression of AIDS and some cancers.In Cure, award-winning science writer Jo Marchant travels the world to meet the physicians, patients and researchers on the cutting edge of this new world of medicine. We learn how meditation protects against depression and dementia, how social connections increase life expectancy and how patients who feel cared for recover from surgery faster. We meet Iraq war veterans who are using a virtual arctic world to treat their burns and children whose ADHD is kept under control with half the normal dose of medication. We watch as a transplant patient uses the smell of lavender to calm his hostile immune system and an Olympic runner shaves vital seconds off his time through mind-power alone.Drawing on the very latest research, Marchant explores the vast potential of the mind's ability to heal, lays out its limitations and explains how we can make use of the findings in our own lives. With clarity and compassion, Cure points the way towards a system of medicine that treats us not simply as bodies but as human beings.
What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite
David DiSalvo - 2011
In fact, much of what makes our brains "happy" leads to errors, biases, and distortions, which make getting out of our own way extremely difficult. Author David DiSalvo presents evidence from evolutionary and social psychology, cognitive science, neurology, and even marketing and economics. And he interviews many of the top thinkers in psychology and neuroscience today. From this research-based platform, DiSalvo draws out insights that we can use to identify our brains’ foibles and turn our awareness into edifying action. Ultimately, he argues, the research does not serve up ready-made answers, but provides us with actionable clues for overcoming the plight of our advanced brains and, consequently, living more fulfilled lives.
The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind
Michio Kaku - 2014
For the first time in history, the secrets of the living brain are being revealed by a battery of high tech brain scans devised by physicists. Now what was once solely the province of science fiction has become a startling reality. Recording memories, telepathy, videotaping our dreams, mind control, avatars, and telekinesis are not only possible; they already exist. The Future of the Mind gives us an authoritative and compelling look at the astonishing research being done in top laboratories around the world—all based on the latest advancements in neuroscience and physics. One day we might have a "smart pill" that can enhance our cognition; be able to upload our brain to a computer, neuron for neuron; send thoughts and emotions around the world on a "brain-net"; control computers and robots with our mind; push the very limits of immortality; and perhaps even send our consciousness across the universe. Dr. Kaku takes us on a grand tour of what the future might hold, giving us not only a solid sense of how the brain functions but also how these technologies will change our daily lives. He even presents a radically new way to think about "consciousness" and applies it to provide fresh insight into mental illness, artificial intelligence and alien consciousness. With Dr. Kaku's deep understanding of modern science and keen eye for future developments, The Future of the Mind is a scientific tour de force--an extraordinary, mind-boggling exploration of the frontiers of neuroscience.
Best Journals: Maybe You Should Talk To Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, And Our Lives Revealed: Lori Gottlieb: Journal Your Thoughts And Progress In Real Time As You Read
S Lewis - 2019
Consider this Journal your workbook. Write your thoughts in real time as you read and measure your real world progress after the reading is done. Best Seller Journals provides a keepsake of your journey of self-efficiency.
Dating (The Love Series)
The School of Life - 2019
Dating sits on top of some of the largest themes of love: how to know whether or not someone is right for us; how soon to settle and how long to search; how to be at once honest and seductive; how to politely extricate oneself without causing offence. This indispensable guide teaches us about the history of dating, the reason why our dating days can be so anxious, how to optimise our attempts at dating and how to digest and overcome so-called ‘bad’ dates. The book is at once heartfelt and perceptive, and never minimises the agony, joys and confusions of our dating days and nights. It provides us with a roadmap to the varied, sometimes delightful, sometimes daunting realities of dating.
The New Mind Readers: What Neuroimaging Can and Cannot Reveal about Our Thoughts
Russell A. Poldrack - 2018
The New Mind Readers provides a compelling look at the origins, development, and future of these extraordinary tools, revealing how they are increasingly being used to decode our thoughts and experiences--and how this raises sometimes troubling questions about their application in domains such as marketing, politics, and the law.Russell Poldrack takes readers on a journey of scientific discovery, telling the stories of the visionaries behind these breakthroughs. Along the way, he gives an insider's perspective on what is perhaps the single most important technology in cognitive neuroscience today--functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, which is providing astonishing new insights into the contents and workings of the mind. He highlights both the amazing power and major limitations of these techniques and describes how applications outside the lab often exceed the bounds of responsible science. Poldrack also details the unique and sometimes disorienting experience of having his own brain scanned more than a hundred times as part of a landmark study of how human brain function changes over time.Written by one of the world's leading pioneers in the field, The New Mind Readers cuts through the hype and misperceptions surrounding these emerging new methods, offering needed perspective on what they can and cannot do--and demonstrating how they can provide new answers to age-old questions about the nature of consciousness and what it means to be human.
The Science of Happiness: How Our Brains Make Us Happy-and What We Can Do to Get Happier
Stefan Klein - 2002
In the last 30 years, neuroscientists have made major headway in the understanding of the sources of anger, depression, and fear. Today, whole industries profit from this knowledge -- producing pills for every sort of pathological mood disturbance. But until recently, few neuroscientists focused on the subject of happiness. Now, in The Science of Happiness, leading German science journalist Stefan Klein ranges widely across the latest frontiers of neuroscience and neuropsychology to explain how happiness is fostered in our brains and what biological purpose it serves (and, importantly, how we can control our negative feelings and emotions). In addition, he explains the neurophysiology of our passions (the elementary rules of which are hardwired into our brains), the power of consciousness, and how we can use it. In a final section, Klein explores the conditions required to foster the "pursuit of happiness." A remarkable synthesis of a growing body of research that has not heretofore been brought together in one accessible book, The Science of Happiness will ultimately help each of us understand our own quest for happiness -- and our fostering of it, as well.
The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep
Guy Leschziner - 2019
Guy Leschziner's patients, there is no rest for the weary in mind and body. Insomnia, narcolepsy, night terrors, sleep apnea, and sleepwalking are just a sampling of conditions afflicting sufferers who cannot sleep--and their experiences in trying are the stuff of nightmares. Demoniac hallucinations frighten people into paralysis. Restless legs rock both the sleepless and their sleeping partners with unpredictable and uncontrollable kicking. Out-of-sync circadian rhythms confuse the natural body clock's days and nights.Then there are the extreme cases. A woman in a state of deep sleep who gets dressed, unlocks her car, and drives for several miles before returning to bed. The man who has spent decades cleaning out kitchens while "sleep-eating." The teenager prone to the serious, yet unfortunately nicknamed "Sleeping Beauty Syndrome" stuck in a cycle of excessive unconsciousness, binge eating, and uncharacteristic displays of aggression and hyper-sexuality while awake.With compassionate stories of his patients and their conditions, Dr. Leschziner illustrates the neuroscience behind our sleeping minds, revealing the many biological and psychological factors necessary in getting the rest that will not only maintain our physical and mental health, but improve our cognitive abilities and overall happiness.
The Truth About Magic
Atticus Poetry - 2019
The Truth About Magic builds on the pains and joys of romance explored in Love Her Wild and the New York Times bestseller, The Dark Between Stars—heartbreaks and falling in love, looking back and looking inwards—by taking a fresh, awakened journey outward. An adventure into the great unknown. It’s about finding ourselves, our purpose, and the simple joys of life. It’s about lavender fields, drinking white wine out of oak barrels on vineyards, laughing until you cry, dancing in old barns until the sun comes up, and making love on sandy beaches. The Truth About Magic is a vibrant, transcendent journey into growth, which will leave you energized and eager to explore the wider world.
A Beautiful Mind, A Beautiful Life: The Bubz Guide to Being Unstoppable
Lindy Tsang - 2017
From humble beginnings as an outsider, growing up one of the few Chinese students at her primary school in Ireland, to YouTube stardom and her own line of beauty products, Lindy Tsang, aka Bubzbeauty, has earned a unique perspective that she’s shared with her nearly 3 million YouTube subscribers.Now, for the first time ever, Lindy’s experiences and insights have been put into a brand-new book, A Beautiful Mind, a Beautiful Life: The Bubz Guide to Being Unstoppable.In A Beautiful Mind, a Beautiful Life, Lindy details her childhood, her family, the ups, downs, and most importantly, the lessons that she’s learned along the way.
Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD): The Essential Guide for Parents
Keri Williams - 2018
These kids often have violent outbursts, steal, engage in outlandish lying, play with feces, and hoard food. They are broken children who too often break even the most loving of caregivers. Many parents of these children feel utterly isolated as family, friends, and professionals minimize their struggles. Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) - The Essential Guide for Parents is written by a parent who is in the trenches with you. Keri has lived the journey of raising a son with RAD and has navigated the mental health system for over a decade. This is the resource you’ve been waiting for – you won’t find platitudes or false hopes. What you will find is essential information, practical suggestions, and resource recommendations to provide a way forward. If you desperately need help navigating the difficult RAD journey with your child, this book is for you.
The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained
Will Buckingham - 2010
From moral ethics to the philosophies of religions, The Philosophy Book sheds a light on the famous ideas and thinkers from the ancient world through the present day. Including theories from Pythagoras to Voltaire and Mary Wollstonecraft to Noam Chomsky, The Philosophy Book offers anyone with an interest in philosophy an essential resource to the great philosophers and the views that have shaped our society.
The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good
David J. Linden - 2010
Whether eating, taking drugs, engaging in sex, or doing good deeds, the pursuit of pleasure is a central drive of the human animal. In The Compass of Pleasure Johns Hopkins neuroscientist David J. Linden explains how pleasure affects us at the most fundamental level: in our brain. As he did in his award-winning book, The Accidental Mind, Linden combines cutting-edge science with entertaining anecdotes to illuminate the source of the behaviors that can lead us to ecstasy but that can easily become compulsive. Why are drugs like nicotine and heroin addictive while LSD is not? Why has the search for safe appetite suppressants been such a disappointment? The Compass of Pleasure concludes with a provocative consideration of pleasure in the future, when it may be possible to activate our pleasure circuits at will and in entirely novel patterns.
Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry
Randolph M. Nesse - 2019
With his classic Why We Get Sick, Dr. Randolph Nesse helped to establish the field of evolutionary medicine. Now he returns with a book that transforms our understanding of mental disorders by exploring a fundamentally new question. Instead of asking why certain people suffer from mental illness, Nesse asks why natural selection has left us all with fragile minds.Drawing on revealing stories from his own clinical practice and insights from evolutionary biology, Nesse shows how negative emotions are useful in certain situations, yet can become overwhelming. Anxiety protects us from harm in the face of danger, but false alarms are inevitable. Low moods prevent us from wasting effort in pursuit of unreachable goals, but they often escalate into pathological depression. Other mental disorders, such as addiction and anorexia, result from the mismatch between modern environment and our ancient human past. And there are good evolutionary reasons for sexual disorders and for why genes for schizophrenia persist. Taken together, these and many more insights help to explain the pervasiveness of human suffering, and show us new paths for relieving it by understanding individuals as individuals.