Neuroscience in small bits for the brain-curious. From magazine covers to Hollywood blockbusters, neuroscience is front and center. This popular interest has inspired many questions from people who wonder just what is going on in the three pounds of tissue between their ears. In Brain Bytes, neuroscience educators Eric Chudler and Lise Johnson get right to it, asking and answering more than one hundred questions about the brain. Questions include: Does size matter (do humans have the largest brains)? Can foods make people smarter? Does surfing online kill brain cells? Why do we dream? Why can’t I tickle myself? Why do cats like catnip? Why do we yawn and why are yawns contagious? What can I do to keep my brain healthy? Whether you are interested in serious topics like the history of neuroscience or practical topics like brain health or fun topics like popular culture, this book is sure to provide your brain with some piece of information it didn’t have before.
A fun and fact-filled A–Z treasury for anyone with a head on their shoulders Neuropedia journeys into the mysteries and marvels of the three pounds of tissue between your ears—the brain. Eric Chudler takes you on a breathtaking tour of the nervous system with dozens of entries that explore the structure and function of the brain and cover topics such as the spinal cord and nerve cells, the methods of neuroscientific research, and the visionary scientists who have dedicated their lives to understanding what makes each of us who we are. The brain has fascinated and puzzled researchers, physicians, and philosophers for thousands of years and captivated us with each new discovery. This compendium of neuroscientific wonders is brimming with facts and insights, helping us to make sense of our current understanding of the nervous system while identifying the frontiers in our knowledge that remain unexplored. Chudler guides readers through a variety of rare and common neurological disorders such as alien hand disorder, Capgras syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and stroke, and discusses the latest brain-imaging methods used to diagnose them. He discusses neurochemicals, neurotoxins, and lifesaving drugs, and offers bold perspectives on human consciousness that enable us to better appreciate our place in nature. With marvelous illustrations by Kelly Chudler, Neuropedia is an informative and entertaining trip into the inner world of the brain.
I Love My Job But It’s Killing Me is the step-by-step guide teachers need to get back to the career they love without compromising their health any longer. I Love My Job But It’s Killing Me is a no-nonsense and practical guide to help get teachers started today on the path to improved health and more energy, so they can get back their career – and their life. Within I Love My Job But It’s Killing Me, teachers learn techniques that will: Improve their ability to fall and stay asleep Reduce brain fog and exhaustion brought on by stress Eliminate or greatly minimize aches and pains that interfere with daily work Help them reclaim the energy needed to support their work and family life Gives concrete steps to take when it feels like it’s all falling apart
Neuroscience in small bits for the brain-curious. From magazine covers to Hollywood blockbusters, neuroscience is front and center. This popular interest has inspired many questions from people who wonder just what is going on in the three pounds of tissue between their ears. In Brain Bytes, neuroscience educators Eric Chudler and Lise Johnson get right to it, asking and answering more than one hundred questions about the brain. Questions include: Does size matter (do humans have the largest brains)? Can foods make people smarter? Does surfing online kill brain cells? Why do we dream? Why can’t I tickle myself? Why do cats like catnip? Why do we yawn and why are yawns contagious? What can I do to keep my brain healthy? Whether you are interested in serious topics like the history of neuroscience or practical topics like brain health or fun topics like popular culture, this book is sure to provide your brain with some piece of information it didn’t have before.
Capt. Nick Johns, a wounded and quadriplegic Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War, is approached by assertive government officials, who, unbelievably, recall him to active duty to serve humanity. He is chosen because of his self-sacrificing war record and his unique ability to survive depression resulting from his debilitating injury. To be more precise, they want his disembodied brain to command and become the spaceship, Genesis, for a two hundred year deep-space flight to re-establish the human race doomed to extinction from an asteroid. One selfless but vastly superior, augmented mind must discover a way to honor his commitment to serve humanity and save the human race, even from itself. Capt. Johns must survive centuries of essential medical research and implementation, technical and societal challenges and disasters, long years of loneliness inherent to command, alien encounters, and possibly even Divine Intervention. Can the love of two women provide the balance he so desperately needs to endure or will they cause his demise?
From the inventor of the PalmPilot comes a new and compelling theory of intelligence, brain function, and the future of intelligent machines Jeff Hawkins, the man who created the PalmPilot, Treo smart phone, and other handheld devices, has reshaped our relationship to computers. Now he stands ready to revolutionize both neuroscience and computing in one stroke, with a new understanding of intelligence itself. Hawkins develops a powerful theory of how the human brain works, explaining why computers are not intelligent and how, based on this new theory, we can finally build intelligent machines. The brain is not a computer, but a memory system that stores experiences in a way that reflects the true structure of the world, remembering sequences of events and their nested relationships and making predictions based on those memories. It is this memory-prediction system that forms the basis of intelligence, perception, creativity, and even consciousness. In an engaging style that will captivate audiences from the merely curious to the professional scientist, Hawkins shows how a clear understanding of how the brain works will make it possible for us to build intelligent machines, in silicon, that will exceed our human ability in surprising ways. Written with acclaimed science writer Sandra Blakeslee, On Intelligence promises to completely transfigure the possibilities of the technology age. It is a landmark book in its scope and clarity.
A New York Times bestseller • A New York Times Notable Book “The tale of how Konnikova followed a story about poker players and wound up becoming a story herself will have you riveted, first as you learn about her big winnings, and then as she conveys the lessons she learned both about human nature and herself.” —The Washington Post It's true that Maria Konnikova had never actually played poker before and didn't even know the rules when she approached Erik Seidel, Poker Hall of Fame inductee and winner of tens of millions of dollars in earnings, and convinced him to be her mentor. But she knew her man: a famously thoughtful and broad-minded player, he was intrigued by her pitch that she wasn't interested in making money so much as learning about life. She had faced a stretch of personal bad luck, and her reflections on the role of chance had led her to a giant of game theory, who pointed her to poker as the ultimate master class in learning to distinguish between what can be controlled and what can't. And she certainly brought something to the table, including a Ph.D. in psychology and an acclaimed and growing body of work on human behavior and how to hack it. So Seidel was in, and soon she was down the rabbit hole with him, into the wild, fiercely competitive, overwhelmingly masculine world of high-stakes Texas Hold'em, their initial end point the following year's World Series of Poker. But then something extraordinary happened. Under Seidel's guidance, Konnikova did have many epiphanies about life that derived from her new pursuit, including how to better read, not just her opponents but far more importantly herself; how to identify what tilted her into an emotional state that got in the way of good decisions; and how to get to a place where she could accept luck for what it was, and what it wasn't. But she also began to win. And win. In a little over a year, she began making earnest money from tournaments, ultimately totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. She won a major title, got a sponsor, and got used to being on television, and to headlines like "How one writer's book deal turned her into a professional poker player." She even learned to like Las Vegas. But in the end, Maria Konnikova is a writer and student of human behavior, and ultimately the point was to render her incredible journey into a container for its invaluable lessons. The biggest bluff of all, she learned, is that skill is enough. Bad cards will come our way, but keeping our focus on how we play them and not on the outcome will keep us moving through many a dark patch, until the luck once again breaks our way.
A neuroscientist and Zen practitioner interweaves the latest research on the brain with his personal narrative of Zen. Aldous Huxley called humankind's basic trend toward spiritual growth the "perennial philosophy." In the view of James Austin, the trend implies a "perennial psychophysiology"—because awakening, or enlightenment, occurs only when the human brain undergoes substantial changes. What are the peak experiences of enlightenment? How could these states profoundly enhance, and yet simplify, the workings of the brain? Zen and the Brain presents the latest evidence. In this book Zen Buddhism becomes the opening wedge for an extraordinarily wide-ranging exploration of consciousness. In order to understand which brain mechanisms produce Zen states, one needs some understanding of the anatomy, physiology, and chemistry of the brain. Austin, both a neurologist and a Zen practitioner, interweaves the most recent brain research with the personal narrative of his Zen experiences. The science is both inclusive and rigorous; the Zen sections are clear and evocative. Along the way, Austin examines such topics as similar states in other disciplines and religions, sleep and dreams, mental illness, consciousness-altering drugs, and the social consequences of the advanced stage of ongoing enlightenment.
Using engaging prose, Mary E. Harrington introduces neuroscience students to the principles of scientific research including selecting a topic, designing an experiment, analyzing data, and presenting research. This new third edition updates and clarifies the book's wealth of examples while maintaining the clear and effective practical advice of the previous editions. New and expanded topics in this edition include techniques such as optogenetics and conditional transgenes as well as a discussion of rigor and reproducibility in neuroscience research. Extended coverage of descriptive and inferential statistics arms readers with the analytical tools needed to interpret data. Throughout, practical guidelines are provided on avoiding experimental design problems, presenting research including creating posters and giving talks, and using a '12-step guide' to reading scientific journal articles.
The author of the acclaimed Proust and the Squid follows up with a lively, ambitious, and deeply informative book that considers the future of the reading brain and our capacity for critical thinking, empathy, and reflection as we become increasingly dependent on digital technologies. A decade ago, Maryanne Wolf’s Proust and the Squid revealed what we know about how the brain learns to read and how reading changes the way we think and feel. Since then, the ways we process written language have changed dramatically with many concerned about both their own changes and that of children. New research on the reading brain chronicles these changes in the brains of children and adults as they learn to read while immersed in a digitally dominated medium. Drawing deeply on this research, this book comprises a series of letters Wolf writes to us—her beloved readers—to describe her concerns and her hopes about what is happening to the reading brain as it unavoidably changes to adapt to digital mediums. Wolf raises difficult questions, including: Will children learn to incorporate the full range of "deep reading" processes that are at the core of the expert reading brain? Will the mix of a seemingly infinite set of distractions for children’s attention and their quick access to immediate, voluminous information alter their ability to think for themselves? With information at their fingertips, will the next generation learn to build their own storehouse of knowledge, which could impede the ability to make analogies and draw inferences from what they know? Will all these influences change the formation in children and the use in adults of "slower" cognitive processes like critical thinking, personal reflection, imagination, and empathy that comprise deep reading and that influence both how we think and how we live our lives? How can we preserve deep reading processes in future iterations of the reading brain? Concerns about attention span, critical reasoning, and over-reliance on technology are never just about children—Wolf herself has found that, though she is a reading expert, her ability to read deeply has been impacted as she has become increasingly dependent on screens. Wolf draws on neuroscience, literature, education, and philosophy and blends historical, literary, and scientific facts with down-to-earth examples and warm anecdotes to illuminate complex ideas that culminate in a proposal for a biliterate reading brain. Provocative and intriguing, Reader, Come Home is a roadmap that provides a cautionary but hopeful perspective on the impact of technology on our brains and our most essential intellectual capacities—and what this could mean for our future.
