Book picks similar to
Scatterbrain: How the Mind's Mistakes Make Humans Creative, Innovative and Successful by Henning Beck
non-fiction
science
nonfiction
psychology
The Brain Fog Fix: Reclaim Your Focus, Memory, and Joy in Just 3 Weeks
Mike Dow - 2015
Some people call it “ADHD,” “scatter brain,” or “brain fog.” And some people simply say they “just don’t feel like themselves”—and haven’t for a long time. People are thinking and feeling worse than ever. Why? Because our brains are not getting the support they need to produce the essential brain chemicals that keep us energized, calm, focused, and inspired. In fact, if you look at the way that most of us live, it’s almost as though we had chosen a lifestyle deliberately intended to undermine our brain chemistry. Fortunately, there is a solution. The Brain Fog Fix is a three-week program designed to help you naturally restore three of your brain’s most crucial chemicals: serotonin, dopamine, and cortisol. Rebalancing these three brain chemicals will, in turn, enable the rest of your brain’s chemistry to reach optimal levels. You will find yourself thinking more clearly, remembering more accurately, learning more quickly, and unleashing the floodgates of your creativity. You will also find yourself feeling more optimistic, calm, energized, connected, and inspired. The good news is that this is easier than you think. Instead of trying to ambitiously overhaul one aspect of your life entirely with some difficult-to-maintain resolution, begin by making small and achievable changes in many different areas of your life. “If I’ve learned one thing from the thousands of people I’ve treated, it’s that you have to take the whole person into account if you want to think and feel better.” —Dr. Mike Dow
How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed
Ray Kurzweil - 2012
In How to Create a Mind, Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization—reverse engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines.Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges from the brain, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence in addressing the world’s problems. He thoughtfully examines emotional and moral intelligence and the origins of consciousness and envisions the radical possibilities of our merging with the intelligent technology we are creating.Certain to be one of the most widely discussed and debated science books of the year, How to Create a Mind is sure to take its place alongside Kurzweil’s previous classics which include Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever and The Age of Spiritual Machines.
The Ultimate Book of Mind Maps
Tony Buzan - 2005
This practical book explains how this incredible thinking tool works and how you can use it to achieve your full potential.
The Art of Creative Thinking
Rod Judkins - 2015
Rod Judkins, a lecturer in creativity at the world-famous St Martin's College of Art, will examine the behaviour of successful creative thinkers and explain how all of us can learn from them to improve our lives. Judkins will draw on an extraordinary range of reference points, from the Dada Manifesto to Andy Warhol's studio, via Steve Jobs, Nobel Prize winning economists and many others, and distil a lifetime's expertise into 90 succinct chapters. Along the way he shares the story of most successful class in educational history (in which every single student won a Nobel prize); shows why graphic nudity during public speaking can be both a curse and surprisingly persuasive; and reveals why, in the twenty-first century, it's technically illegal to be as good as good as Michelangelo.
The Fear Factor: How One Emotion Connects Altruists, Psychopaths, and Everyone In-Between
Abigail Marsh - 2017
She used the tools she had available to get what she wanted, like all children. But unlike other children, she didn't care about the damage she inflicted. A few miles away, Lenny Skutnik cared so much about others that he jumped into an ice-cold river to save a drowning woman. What is responsible for the extremes of generosity and cruelty humans are capable of? By putting psychopathic children and extreme altruists in an fMRI, acclaimed psychologist Abigail Marsh found that the answer lies in how our brain responds to others' fear. While the brain's amygdala makes most of us hardwired for good, its variations can explain heroic and psychopathic behavior.A path-breaking read, The Fear Factor is essential for anyone seeking to understand the heights and depths of human nature."You won't be able to put it down."--Daniel Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Stumbling on Happiness"[It] reads like a thriller... One of the most mind-opening books I have read in years." --Matthieu Ricard, Author of Altruism
The Enigma of Reason
Hugo Mercier - 2017
If reason is so useful, why didn't it also evolve in other animals? If reason is that reliable, why do we produce so much thoroughly reasoned nonsense? In their groundbreaking account of the evolution and workings of reason, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber set out to solve this double enigma. Reason, they argue with a compelling mix of real-life and experimental evidence, is not geared to solitary use, to arriving at better beliefs and decisions on our own. What reason does, rather, is help us justify our beliefs and actions to others, convince them through argumentation, and evaluate the justifications and arguments that others address to us.In other words, reason helps humans better exploit their uniquely rich social environment. This interactionist interpretation explains why reason may have evolved and how it fits with other cognitive mechanisms. It makes sense of strengths and weaknesses that have long puzzled philosophers and psychologists--why reason is biased in favor of what we already believe, why it may lead to terrible ideas and yet is indispensable to spreading good ones.Ambitious, provocative, and entertaining, The Enigma of Reason will spark debate among psychologists and philosophers, and make many reasonable people rethink their own thinking.
How to Train Your Mind: Exploring the Productivity Benefits of Meditation
Chris Bailey - 2021
Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life
Susan Forward - 2002
But Susan Forward pulls no punches when it comes to those whose deficiencies cripple their children emotionally. Her brisk, unreserved guide to overcoming the stultifying agony of parental manipulation—from power trips to guilt trips and all other killers of self worth—will help deal with the pain of childhood and move beyond the frustrating relationship patterns learned at home.Source: Amazon.com
The Memory Illusion: Remembering, Forgetting, and the Science of False Memory
Julia Shaw - 2016
We rely on them every day of our lives. They make us who we are. And yet the truth is they are far from being the accurate record of the past we like to think they are. True, we can all admit to having suffered occasional memory lapses, such as entering a room and immediately forgetting why, or suddenly being unable to recall the name of someone we've met dozens of times. But what if our minds have the potential for more profound errors, that enable the manipulation or even outright fabrication of our memories?In The Memory Illusion, forensic psychologist and memory expert Dr Julia Shaw uses the latest research to show the astonishing variety of ways in which our brains can indeed be led astray. She shows why we can sometimes misappropriate other people's memories, subsequently believing them to be our own. She explains how police officers can imprison an innocent man for life on the basis of many denials and just one confession. She demonstrates the way radically false memories can be deliberately implanted, leading people to believe they had tea with Prince Charles, or committed crimes that never happened. And she reveals how, in spite of all this, we can improve our memory through simple awareness of its fallibility. Fascinating and unnerving in equal measure, The Memory Illusion offers a unique insight into the human brain, challenging you to question how much you can ever truly know about yourself.
How to Develop a Brilliant Memory Week by Week: 52 Proven Ways to Enhance Your Memory Skills
Dominic O'Brien - 2005
This book is an expert course in memory enhancement, organized in 52 key lessons, complete with self-testing. Dominic O'Brien offers us tried and tested strategies and tips that will expand your mental capacities at a realistic but impressive rate to make your memory bigger, better and sharper, week-by-week.
The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live--and How You Can Change Them
Richard J. Davidson - 2012
For more than thirty years, Richard Davidson has been at the forefront of brain research. Now he gives us an entirely new model for understanding our emotions, as well as practical strategies we can use to change them.Davidson has discovered that personality is composed of six basic emotional "styles," including resilience, self-awareness, and attention. Our emotional fingerprint results from where on the continuum of each style we fall. He explains the brain chemistry that underlies each style in order to give us a new model of the emotional brain, one that will even go so far as to affect the way we treat conditions like autism and depression. And, finally, he provides strategies we can use to change our own brains and emotions-if that is what we want to do.Written with bestselling author Sharon Begley, this original and exciting book gives us a new and useful way to look at ourselves, develop a sense of well-being, and live more meaningful lives.
Mnemonics Memory Palace Book One: Memory Palaces and Mnemonics. The Forgotten Craft of Memorization and Memory Improvement With Total Recall. (How To Build a Mnemonics Memory Palace 1)
Sjur Midttun - 2016
In it you will learn:
What is a memory palace?
How to build your first couple of memory palace.
Learn the one secret to why some information stick to your mind, and other types don't
How to easily build up to 15 memory palaces, based on the first two.
Building memory palaces based on walks/journeys.
How to build virtual memory palaces.
How to memorize any fact or information using memory palaces.
Unlike other popular books on the subject, like "Moonwalking with Einstein", the book "How to Build a Mnemonic Memory Palace" focuses on practical, hands on advice. Information that will get you started making your own memory palaces from day one.
This short, but informative book is virtually packed with information. Tips that simply work. Memory palaces are an ancient, yet somehow forgotten method of memorizing all kinds of information. Before the printing press was invented, content was passed on verbally from person to person. And using the Greek tradition of memory palaces, scholars could store vast amounts of information.
These techniques have seen an increased interest lately, and many people who have been inspired by memory palaces from TV-series like "Sherlock" or books like "Hannibal", want to find a way to easily get started making memory palaces. "How to Build a Mnemonic Memory Palace" literally takes you by the hand and walks you through the process, step by step. And thanks to the many examples, these ancient methods become very clear. In many ways, this book starts where others, like "Moonwalking With Einstein" stop.
Download a sample, or get the set of two books today. Learn how you can use the powerful techniques of memory palaces in order to memorize vitually anything.
A full, practical guide to getting started memorizing all types of information using memory palaces
Equally useful for students, as adults
Find out the perfect method for memorizing speeches
Never forget another keyword
Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind
Annaka Harris - 2019
But the very existence of consciousness raises profound questions: Why would any collection of matter in the universe be conscious? How are we able to think about this? And why should we?In this wonderfully accessible book, Annaka Harris guides us through the evolving definitions, philosophies, and scientific findings that probe our limited understanding of consciousness. Where does it reside, and what gives rise to it? Could it be an illusion, or a universal property of all matter? As we try to understand consciousness, we must grapple with how to define it and, in the age of artificial intelligence, who or what might possess it. Conscious offers lively and challenging arguments that alter our ideas about consciousness—allowing us to think freely about it for ourselves, if indeed we can.
Why?: What Makes Us Curious
Mario Livio - 2017
Why does half a conversation make us more curious than a whole conversation? In the ever-fascinating Why? Mario Livio interviewed scientists in several fields to explore the nature of curiosity. He examined the lives of two of history’s most curious geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci and Richard Feynman. He also talked to people with boundless curiosity: a superstar rock guitarist who is also an astrophysicist; an astronaut with degrees in computer science, biology, literature, and medicine. What drives these people to be curious about so many subjects? Curiosity is at the heart of mystery and suspense novels. It is essential to other forms of art, from painting to sculpture to music. It is the principal driver of basic scientific research. Even so, there is still no definitive scientific consensus about why we humans are so curious, or about the mechanisms in our brain that are responsible for curiosity. Mario Livio—an astrophysicist who has written about mathematics, biology, and now psychology and neuroscience—explores this irresistible subject in a lucid, entertaining way that will captivate anyone who is curious about curiosity.
Louder Than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning
Benjamin K. Bergen - 2012
You can use it to talk about all sorts of things -- from your new labradoodle puppy to the expansive gardens at Versailles, from Roger Federer's backhand to things that don't exist at all, like flying pigs. And when you talk, your listener fills in lots of details you didn't mention -- the curliness of the dog's fur or the vast statuary on the grounds of the French palace. What's the trick behind this magic? How does meaning work?In Louder than Words, cognitive scientist Benjamin Bergen draws together a decade’s worth of research in psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience to offer a new theory of how our minds make meaning. When we hear words and sentences, Bergen contends, we engage the parts of our brain that we use for perception and action, repurposing these evolutionarily older networks to create simulations in our minds. These embodied simulations, as they're called, are what makes it possible for us to become better baseball players by merely visualizing a well-executed swing; what allows us to remember which cupboard the diapers are in without looking, and what makes it so hard to talk on a cell phone while we're driving on the highway. Meaning is more than just knowing definitions of words, as others have previously argued. In understanding language, our brains engage in a creative process of constructing rich mental worlds in which we see, hear, feel, and act.Through whimsical examples and ingenious experiments, Bergen leads us on a virtual tour of the new science of embodied cognition. A brilliant account of our human capacity to understand language, Louder than Words will profoundly change how you read, speak, and listen.
