Brain Talk


Book Description

Have you ever done something you knew would make someone else happy, sad or angry? Have you ever bought a thoughtful gift for someone you love? Or realized someone was being sarcastic with you? Or enjoyed someone else's misfortune? These everyday events involve mind mapping, your brain's ability to create mental pictures of how someone else's mind works. Mind mapping underlies all aspects of daily life, from the best to the worst. You won't find an aspect of your life where mind mapping isn't involved-and you probably never heard about mind mapping before! Brain Talk offers what you need to know about mind mapping and the emerging brain science of interpersonal neurobiology (how interacting with other people affects your brain). Brain Talk is written for the general public in an easy-to-read style and establishes a personal relationship with you. It creates vivid pictures in your mind with attention-grabbling examples, and walks you into powerful new insights about yourself and the important people in your life. Reading Brain Talk can be a life-changing experience. * Part One explains mind mapping and increases your ability to "read" people and map their minds (and your own). It helps you know what they want, what they're feeling and thinking, and what they're likely to do. Part One also covers mind masking (shielding your mind from being mapped), lying and deception. Brain Talk revolutionizes your understandings of yourself, your spouse or romantic partner, and your children, parents, siblings, and coworkers. * Part Two explores the darker aspects of mind mapping, like traumatic mind mapping and antisocial empathy.Traumatic mind mapping occurs when mapping some else's mind leaves your brain/mind traumatized. Did you grow up in a troubled home with experiences that produced vivid "flashbulb memories" lingering in your mind? Do you have recurring thoughts about someone you're dealing with who does disturbing things? Brain Talk helps you understand subtle interpersonal trauma and reveals the short- and long-term negative impacts of traumatic mind mapping. * Part Three shows you how to repair the negative impacts of traumatic mind mapping and effectively handle the difficult people in your life. Brain Talk also details how to use mind mapping to create positive healthy interactions with those you love, and ends on an uplifting note. Brain Talk is based on Crucible(r) Neurobiological Therapy, developed through fifteen years of clinical research with highly troubled clients. Brain Talk is also a crossover book for therapists, educators, and avid readers of brain science. * Four Appendices contain the scientific research underlying the main text and offer in-depth discussions of important topics and treatment details (over 100 pages and 400 references). Brain Talk is available in three versions: paperback and TWO Kindle versions (Standard and Professional). Brain Talk Professional Edition offers the additional functionality of directly downloading FREE scientific brain research articles published online. Consider this electronic edition if you a mental health professional, academic, graduate student, or die-hard brain wonk.(Read about Brain Talk Pro here.) Brain Talk is written by the award-winning clinical psychologist, Dr. David Schnarch, renowned relationship expert and author of the international best-selling books, Passionate Marriage and Intimacy & Desire. He has a proven track record for creating innovative therapies, and making complex brain science understandable and useful to the general public. His ground-breaking professional contributions have received awards from the American Psychological Association, the American Assn. for Marriage and Family Therapy, and the American Assn. of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists. He is Board Certified in Couple and Family Psychology (ABPP), and his textbook Constructing the Sexual Crucible is used by therapist training programs around the world.




Models of the Mind


Book Description

The human brain is made up of 85 billion neurons, which are connected by over 100 trillion synapses. For more than a century, a diverse array of researchers searched for a language that could be used to capture the essence of what these neurons do and how they communicate – and how those communications create thoughts, perceptions and actions. The language they were looking for was mathematics, and we would not be able to understand the brain as we do today without it. In Models of the Mind, author and computational neuroscientist Grace Lindsay explains how mathematical models have allowed scientists to understand and describe many of the brain's processes, including decision-making, sensory processing, quantifying memory, and more. She introduces readers to the most important concepts in modern neuroscience, and highlights the tensions that arise when the abstract world of mathematical modelling collides with the messy details of biology. Each chapter of Models of the Mind focuses on mathematical tools that have been applied in a particular area of neuroscience, progressing from the simplest building block of the brain – the individual neuron – through to circuits of interacting neurons, whole brain areas and even the behaviours that brains command. In addition, Grace examines the history of the field, starting with experiments done on frog legs in the late eighteenth century and building to the large models of artificial neural networks that form the basis of modern artificial intelligence. Throughout, she reveals the value of using the elegant language of mathematics to describe the machinery of neuroscience.




Brainstorm


Book Description

In this New York Times–bestselling book, Dr. Daniel Siegel shows parents how to turn one of the most challenging developmental periods in their children’s lives into one of the most rewarding. Between the ages of twelve and twenty-four, the brain changes in important and, at times, challenging ways. In Brainstorm, Dr. Daniel Siegel busts a number of commonly held myths about adolescence—for example, that it is merely a stage of “immaturity” filled with often “crazy” behavior. According to Siegel, during adolescence we learn vital skills, such as how to leave home and enter the larger world, connect deeply with others, and safely experiment and take risks. Drawing on important new research in the field of interpersonal neurobiology, Siegel explores exciting ways in which understanding how the brain functions can improve the lives of adolescents, making their relationships more fulfilling and less lonely and distressing on both sides of the generational divide.




The Woman Who Changed Her Brain


Book Description

Previously published in hardcover: New York: Free Press, 2012.




Your Brain Is Always Listening


Book Description

New York Times bestselling author Dr. Daniel Amen equips you with powerful weapons to battle the inner dragons that are breathing fire on your brain, driving unhealthy behaviors, and robbing you of joy and contentment. Your brain is always listening and responding to these hidden influences and unless you recognize and deal with them, they can steal your happiness, spoil your relationships, and sabotage your health. This book will teach you to tame the: Dragons from the Past that ignite your most painful emotions; Negative Thought Dragons that attack you, fueling anxiety and depression; They and Them Dragons, people in your life whose own dragons do battle with yours; Bad Habit Dragons that increase the chances you’ll be overweight, overwhelmed, and an underachiever; Addicted Dragons that make you lose control of your health, wealth, and relationships; and Scheming Dragons, advertisers and social media sites that steal your attention. Dr. Daniel Amen shows you how to recognize harmful dragons and gives you the weapons to vanquish them. With these practical tools, you can stop feeling sad, mad, nervous, or out of control and start being happier, calmer, and more in control of your own destiny.




Your Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time


Book Description

"Beautifully written, eloquently reasoned…Mr. Buonomano takes us off and running on an edifying scientific journey." —Carol Tavris, Wall Street Journal In Your Brain Is a Time Machine, leading neuroscientist Dean Buonomano embarks on an "immensely engaging" exploration of how time works inside the brain (Barbara Kiser, Nature). The human brain, he argues, is a complex system that not only tells time, but creates it; it constructs our sense of chronological movement and enables "mental time travel"—simulations of future and past events. These functions are essential not only to our daily lives but to the evolution of the human race: without the ability to anticipate the future, mankind would never have crafted tools or invented agriculture. This virtuosic work of popular science will lead you to a revelation as strange as it is true: your brain is, at its core, a time machine.




How the Brain Talks to Itself


Book Description

How the Brain Talks to Itself synthesizes discoveries in cognitive neuroscience with a psychoanalytic understanding of human dynamics and a working model for clinical diagnosis. In studying how the brain talks to itself to solve survival problems, this text looks at two sets of situations. In the first, neural possibilities mesh adaptively. In the second, dysfunction clouds the picture--something has gone wrong with the brain, in the life, or in a combination that ends in clinical syndromes. Unlike other books in this area that have narrow focuses, How the Brain Talks to Itself gives you an extensive and thorough exploration of the human condition by examining the effect that impairment of the left hemisphere has on goals and ambitions, problemsolving, the formation of syndromes, the use of transitional object transference in stabilizing patient identity, and how the brain registers, organizes, assesses, reflects, and acts on data. You'll find this information gives you a comprehensive framework for diagnosing and treating your patients. Chapters will further enhance your knowledge and help you improve your skills by: amplifying what we can learn from the conventional mental status exam prioritizing and targeting therapeutic interventions providing a framework for fitting advances in psychopharmacology into psychotherapy reconciling disparate forms of psychotherapy in the context of a neural-systems informed “structural therapy” How the Brain Talks to Itself combines vast domains of data so that higher cortical functions consistently relate to their corresponding identity functions. You'll explore the mechanisms that link synaptic potentiation to the emotionally and cognitively organized memories that sustain development. These mechanisms process the cognitive, social, and emotional data that are needed for problemsolving. You'll also see how the ways in which synaptic potentiations are comprised by definable varieties of stress that lead to the spectrum of DSM-IV syndromes. Author Jay E. Harris, MD, derives functional and structural principles from all of the disciplines--psychoanalytic psychology, cognitive neuroscience, clinical psychiatry, neurology, and linguistics--relevant to the brain's development, information processing, problemsolving, and syndrome formation. He includes case histories, clinical vignettes, and diagnostic examples of mental status dialogues with patients to help you in your understanding of this complex topic. You'll find that How the Brain Talks to Itself answers many questions you have about the brain's role in identity formation and resultant clinical sydromes.




Livewired


Book Description

"Eagleman renders the secrets of the brain’s adaptability into a truly compelling page-turner.” —Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner “Livewired reads wonderfully like what a book would be if it were written by Oliver Sacks and William Gibson, sitting on Carl Sagan’s front lawn.” —The Wall Street Journal What does drug withdrawal have in common with a broken heart? Why is the enemy of memory not time but other memories? How can a blind person learn to see with her tongue, or a deaf person learn to hear with his skin? Why did many people in the 1980s mistakenly perceive book pages to be slightly red in color? Why is the world’s best archer armless? Might we someday control a robot with our thoughts, just as we do our fingers and toes? Why do we dream at night, and what does that have to do with the rotation of the Earth? The answers to these questions are right behind our eyes. The greatest technology we have ever discovered on our planet is the three-pound organ carried in the vault of the skull. This book is not simply about what the brain is; it is about what it does. The magic of the brain is not found in the parts it’s made of but in the way those parts unceasingly reweave themselves in an electric, living fabric. In Livewired, you will surf the leading edge of neuroscience atop the anecdotes and metaphors that have made David Eagleman one of the best scientific translators of our generation. Covering decades of research to the present day, Livewired also presents new discoveries from Eagleman’s own laboratory, from synesthesia to dreaming to wearable neurotech devices that revolutionize how we think about the senses.




Brain Rules for Aging Well


Book Description

How come I can never find my keys? Why don't I sleep as well as I used to? Why do my friends keep repeating the same stories? What can I do to keep my brain sharp? Scientists know. Brain Rules for Aging Well, by developmental molecular biologist Dr. John Medina, gives you the facts, and the prescription to age well, in his signature engaging style. With so many discoveries over the years, science is literally changing our minds about the optimal care and feeding of the brain. All of it is captivating. A great deal of it is unexpected. In his New York Times best seller Brain Rules, Medina showed us how our brains really work, and why we ought to redesign our workplaces and schools to match. In Brain Rules for Baby, he gave parents the brain science they need to know to raise happy, smart, moral kids. Now, in Brain Rules for Aging Well, Medina shares how you can make the most of the years you have left. In a book destined to be a classic on aging, Medina's fascinating stories and infectious sense of humor breathe life into the science. Brain Rules for Aging Well is organized into four sections, each laying out familiar problems with surprising solutions. First up, the social brain, in which topics ranging from relationships to happiness and gullibility illustrate how our emotions change with age. The second section focuses on the thinking brain, explaining how working memory and executive function change with time. The third section is all about your body: how certain kinds of exercise, diets, and sleep can slow the decline of aging. Each section is sprinkled with practical advice, for example, the fascinating benefits of dancing, and the brain science behind each intervention. The final section is about the future. Your future. Medina connects all the chapters into a plan for maintaining your brain health. You may already be experiencing the sometimes-unpleasant effects of the aging process. Or you may be deeply concerned about your loved ones who are. Either way, Brain Rules for Aging Well is for you.




My Stroke of Insight


Book Description

"Transformative...[Taylor's] experience...will shatter [your] own perception of the world."—ABC News The astonishing New York Times bestseller that chronicles how a brain scientist's own stroke led to enlightenment On December 10, 1996, Jill Bolte Taylor, a thirty-seven- year-old Harvard-trained brain scientist experienced a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. As she observed her mind deteriorate to the point that she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life-all within four hours-Taylor alternated between the euphoria of the intuitive and kinesthetic right brain, in which she felt a sense of complete well-being and peace, and the logical, sequential left brain, which recognized she was having a stroke and enabled her to seek help before she was completely lost. It would take her eight years to fully recover. For Taylor, her stroke was a blessing and a revelation. It taught her that by "stepping to the right" of our left brains, we can uncover feelings of well-being that are often sidelined by "brain chatter." Reaching wide audiences through her talk at the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference and her appearance on Oprah's online Soul Series, Taylor provides a valuable recovery guide for those touched by brain injury and an inspiring testimony that inner peace is accessible to anyone.