Winning the Brain Race
Author: David T. Kearns
Publisher:
Published: 1988
Total Pages: 176
ISBN-13:
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Race on the Brain
Author: Jonathan Kahn
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2017-11-07
Total Pages: 292
ISBN-13: 023154538X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOf the many obstacles to racial justice in America, none has received more recent attention than the one that lurks in our subconscious. As social movements and policing scandals have shown how far from being “postracial” we are, the concept of implicit bias has taken center stage in the national conversation about race. Millions of Americans have taken online tests purporting to show the deep, invisible roots of their own prejudice. A recent Oxford study that claims to have found a drug that reduces implicit bias is only the starkest example of a pervasive trend. But what do we risk when we seek the simplicity of a technological diagnosis—and solution—for racism? What do we miss when we locate racism in our biology and our brains rather than in our history and our social practices? In Race on the Brain, Jonathan Kahn argues that implicit bias has grown into a master narrative of race relations—one with profound, if unintended, negative consequences for law, science, and society. He emphasizes its limitations, arguing that while useful as a tool to understand particular types of behavior, it is only one among several tools available to policy makers. An uncritical embrace of implicit bias, to the exclusion of power relations and structural racism, undermines wider civic responsibility for addressing the problem by turning it over to experts. Technological interventions, including many tests for implicit bias, are premised on a color-blind ideal and run the risk of erasing history, denying present reality, and obscuring accountability. Kahn recognizes the significance of implicit social cognition but cautions against seeing it as a panacea for addressing America’s longstanding racial problems. A bracing corrective to what has become a common-sense understanding of the power of prejudice, Race on the Brain challenges us all to engage more thoughtfully and more democratically in the difficult task of promoting racial justice.
The Winner Effect
Author: Ian Robertson
Publisher: A&C Black
Published: 2012-01-01
Total Pages: 322
ISBN-13: 1408824736
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhat makes a winner? Why do some succeed both in life and in business, and others fail? And why do a few individuals end up supremely powerful, while many remain powerless? Are men more likely to be power junkies than women?The 'winner effect' is a term used in biology to describe how an animal that has won a few fights against weak opponents is much more likely to win later bouts against stronger contenders. As Ian Robertson reveals, it applies to humans, too.Success changes the chemistry of the brain, making you more focused, smarter, more confident and more aggressive. The effect is as strong as any drug. And the more you win, the more you will go on to win. But the downside is that winning can become physically addictive.By understanding what the mental and physical changes are that take place in the brain of a 'winner', how they happen, and why they affect some people more than others, Robertson answers the question of why some people attain and then handle success better than others. He explains what makes a winner - or a loser - and how we can use the answers to these questions to understand better the behaviour of our business colleagues, employees, family and friends.
The Great Brain Race
Author: Ben Wildavsky
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2012-08-26
Total Pages: 266
ISBN-13: 0691154554
DOWNLOAD EBOOKReveals how international competition for university students is impacting higher education and explains the benefits of this competition, which allows students to choose from diverse educational settings and programs.
The Hidden Brain
Author: Shankar Vedantam
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2010-08-31
Total Pages: 290
ISBN-13: 0385525222
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe hidden brain is the voice in our ear when we make the most important decisions in our lives—but we’re never aware of it. The hidden brain decides whom we fall in love with and whom we hate. It tells us to vote for the white candidate and convict the dark-skinned defendant, to hire the thin woman but pay her less than the man doing the same job. It can direct us to safety when disaster strikes and move us to extraordinary acts of altruism. But it can also be manipulated to turn an ordinary person into a suicide terrorist or a group of bystanders into a mob. In a series of compulsively readable narratives, Shankar Vedantam journeys through the latest discoveries in neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science to uncover the darkest corner of our minds and its decisive impact on the choices we make as individuals and as a society. Filled with fascinating characters, dramatic storytelling, and cutting-edge science, this is an engrossing exploration of the secrets our brains keep from us—and how they are revealed.
Brain Storms
Author: Jon Palfreman
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Published: 2015-09-15
Total Pages: 302
ISBN-13: 0374711852
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA Top 10 Science Book of Fall 2015 - Publishers Weekly A star science journalist with Parkinson's reveals the inner workings of this perplexing disease Seven million people worldwide suffer from Parkinson's, and doctors, researchers, and patients continue to hunt for a cure. In Brain Storms, the award-winning journalist Jon Palfreman tells their story, a story that became his own when he was diagnosed with the debilitating illness. Palfreman chronicles how scientists have worked to crack the mystery of what was once called the shaking palsy, from the earliest clinical descriptions of tremors, gait freezing, and micrographia to the cutting edge of neuroscience, and charts the victories and setbacks of a massive international effort to best the disease. He takes us back to the late 1950s and the discovery of L-dopa. He delves into a number of other therapeutic approaches to this perplexing condition, from partial lobotomies and deep brain stimulation to neural grafting. And he shares inspiring stories of brave individuals living with Parkinson's, from a former professional ballet dancer who tricks her body to move freely again to a patient who cannot walk but astounds doctors when he is able to ride a bicycle with no trouble at all. With the baby boom generation beginning to retire and the population steadily aging, the race is on to discover a means to stop or reverse neurodegenerative conditions like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Brain Storms is the long-overdue, riveting, and deeply personal story of that race, and a passionate, insightful, and urgent look into the lives of those affected.
So You Want to Talk About Race
Author: Ijeoma Oluo
Publisher: Seal Press
Published: 2019-09-24
Total Pages: 214
ISBN-13: 1541619226
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this #1 New York Times bestseller, Ijeoma Oluo offers a revelatory examination of race in America Protests against racial injustice and white supremacy have galvanized millions around the world. The stakes for transformative conversations about race could not be higher. Still, the task ahead seems daunting, and it’s hard to know where to start. How do you tell your boss her jokes are racist? Why did your sister-in-law hang up on you when you had questions about police reform? How do you explain white privilege to your white, privileged friend? In So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from police brutality and cultural appropriation to the model minority myth in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race, and about how racism infects every aspect of American life. "Simply put: Ijeoma Oluo is a necessary voice and intellectual for these times, and any time, truth be told." ―Phoebe Robinson, New York Times bestselling author of You Can't Touch My Hair
The Brain Electric
Author: Malcolm Gay
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2015-10-20
Total Pages: 289
ISBN-13: 0374139849
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLeading neuroscience researchers are racing to unlock the secrets of the mind. On the cusp of decoding brain signals that govern motor skills, they are developing miraculous technologies that will enable paraplegics and wounded soldiers to move prosthetic limbs and will give all of us the power to manipulate computers and other objects through thought alone. These fiercely competitive scientists are vying for government and venture capital funding, prestige, and wealth. Part life-altering cure, part science fiction, part Defense Department dream, these cutting edge brain-computer interfaces promise to improve lives-but they also hold the potential to augment soldiers' combat capabilities. In The Brain Electric, Malcolm Gay follows the dramatic emergence of these technologies, taking us behind the scenes in operating rooms, startups, and research labs, where the future is unfolding. With access to many of the field's top scientists, Gay illuminates this extraordinary race-where science, medicine, profit, and war converge-for the first time. But this isn't just a story about technology. At the heart of the scientists' research is a group of brave patient-volunteers, whose lives are given new meaning through these experiments. The Brain Electric asks us to rethink our relationship to technology, our bodies, even consciousness itself, challenging our assumptions about what it means to be human.
The Molecule of More
Author: Daniel Z. Lieberman
Publisher: BenBella Books
Published: 2018-08-14
Total Pages: 240
ISBN-13: 1946885290
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhy are we obsessed with the things we want only to be bored when we get them? Why is addiction perfectly logical to an addict? Why does love change so quickly from passion to indifference? Why are some people die-hard liberals and others hardcore conservatives? Why are we always hopeful for solutions even in the darkest times—and so good at figuring them out? The answer is found in a single chemical in your brain: dopamine. Dopamine ensured the survival of early man. Thousands of years later, it is the source of our most basic behaviors and cultural ideas—and progress itself. Dopamine is the chemical of desire that always asks for more—more stuff, more stimulation, and more surprises. In pursuit of these things, it is undeterred by emotion, fear, or morality. Dopamine is the source of our every urge, that little bit of biology that makes an ambitious business professional sacrifice everything in pursuit of success, or that drives a satisfied spouse to risk it all for the thrill of someone new. Simply put, it is why we seek and succeed; it is why we discover and prosper. Yet, at the same time, it's why we gamble and squander. From dopamine's point of view, it's not the having that matters. It's getting something—anything—that's new. From this understanding—the difference between possessing something versus anticipating it—we can understand in a revolutionary new way why we behave as we do in love, business, addiction, politics, religion—and we can even predict those behaviors in ourselves and others. In The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and will Determine the Fate of the Human Race, George Washington University professor and psychiatrist Daniel Z. Lieberman, MD, and Georgetown University lecturer Michael E. Long present a potentially life-changing proposal: Much of human life has an unconsidered component that explains an array of behaviors previously thought to be unrelated, including why winners cheat, why geniuses often suffer with mental illness, why nearly all diets fail, and why the brains of liberals and conservatives really are different.
Race After Technology
Author: Ruha Benjamin
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2019-07-09
Total Pages: 172
ISBN-13: 1509526439
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFrom everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. Presenting the concept of the “New Jim Code,” she shows how a range of discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies; by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions; or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. Moreover, she makes a compelling case for race itself as a kind of technology, designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice in the architecture of everyday life. This illuminating guide provides conceptual tools for decoding tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, it challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold but also the ones we ourselves manufacture. Visit the book's free Discussion Guide: www.dropbox.com
