Brain Mysteries

Chandler Hendricks hates his life. Socially awkward and a near shut-in, Chandler spends his time caring for his ailing mother and watching the neighbors from his window. His favorite person to watch is his next-door neighbor Samantha. Young and beautiful, she would be the woman of any man’s dreams. Chandler knows he will make Samantha happy, if she just gave him a chance. Chandler’s finally ready to make a change and live the life he always wanted…even if it already belongs to someone else.

Why do you love? Why do you lie? What makes you happy? Every thought you have comes from one place: your brain. But what makes it tick? How much of it have we decoded, and how much of it remains an impenetrable mystery? Join author and cartoonist Jorge Cham and neuroscientist Dwayne Godwin on a deep dive into the fascinating world of the human brain, in which they will explore questions such as: What is consciousness? Where is you in the brain? And do we have free will? All while illuminating everything we know (and DON’T know) about one of the most complex objects in the known universe.

Every time surgeons operate, they're betting their skills are better than the brain tumor, the faulty heart valve, the fractured femur. Sometimes, they're wrong. At Chelsea General, surgeons answer for bad outcomes at the Morbidity and Mortality conference, known as M & M. This extraordinary peek behind the curtain into what is considered the most secretive meeting in all of medicine is the back drop for the entire book.

When CIA Agent Cameron Hansen receives a call from his friend Mitzi Lenz, an FBI pathologist, regarding her missing father, they soon are embroiled in a desperate race to thwart Hansen's old enemy, Juan Carlos Perez, a powerful tech magnate and international drug trafficker. Perez is doing secret experimental brain implant operations on victims kidnapped from Mexican farms. As Cameron and Mitzi struggle to understand the purpose of the hi-tech implants, Perez draws closer to his ambitious goal.

In Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?, neuroscientists and zombie enthusiasts Timothy Verstynen and Bradley Voytek apply their neuro-know-how to dissect the puzzle of what has happened to the zombie brain to make the undead act differently than their human prey. Combining tongue-in-cheek analysis with modern neuroscientific principles, Verstynen and Voytek show how zombism can be understood in terms of current knowledge regarding how the brain works.

People behave in strange ways. We sometimes giggle when someone falls down, swear we've been to places we haven't, or continue believing in something despite scientific evidence to the contrary. For more than a decade, Scientific American MIND's long-running feature "Ask the Brains" has addressed questions from their readers on the quirks and quandaries of human behavior, psychology, and neurology. Here, in Ask the Brains, Part 1, they’ve compiled some of the best and most interesting inquiries about the human brain.

There are plenty of books that profess to tell you the meaning of life. But where can you go to find answers to the little mysteries of life that drive you nuts until you find their solution? Imponderables are questions that cannot be answered by numbers or measurements or standard reference books, and Feldman has devoted his life to the eradication of all imponderables.

Deep within the confines of his sheltered delusion, Bill Butler is a loving father and husband, and a successful corporate executive, but his reality is far different. Bill is estranged from his wife, detached from his daughter, and is a constant target of ridicule at his job—and he is on a straight path to mental breakdown.

Each of us will know physical pain in our lives, but none of us knows when it will come or how long it will stay. Today as much as 10 percent of the population of the United States suffers from chronic pain. It is more widespread, misdiagnosed, and undertreated than any major disease. While recent research has shown that pain produces pathological changes to the brain and spinal cord, many doctors and patients still labor under misguided cultural notions and outdated scientific dogmas.

In 1918, a world war raged, and a lethal strain of influenza circled the globe. In the midst of all this death, a bizarre disease appeared in Europe. Eventually known as encephalitis lethargica, or sleeping sickness, it spread worldwide, leaving millions dead or locked in institutions. Then, in 1927, it disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived. Asleep, set in 1920s and '30s New York, follows a group of neurologists through hospitals and asylums as they try to solve this epidemic and treat its victims - who learned the worst fate was not dying of it, but surviving it.

Dr. Allison Perez appears to have it all - a brilliant career in nanotechnology, a comfortable home, and the promise of a medical revolution on the horizon. Yet, beneath the surface, a sense of restlessness gnaws at her, her life reduced to a monotonous cycle of work and routine. But opening her heart to anything more since her brother died is too dangerous. Until everything changes when a sinister plot unfolds, threatening to seize control of her groundbreaking nanocytes, the very innovation she believed would benefit humanity.

Nick Hall, ausgestattet mit revolutionären Gehirnimplantaten, kann mit seinem Geist Gedanken lesen und auf das Internet zugreifen. Als eine skrupellose Terrorgruppe damit droht, internationale Stars live und vor den Augen der Welt zu töten, ist Nick die einzige Rettung. Doch stattdessen wird er zur Zielscheibe der mächtigsten Kräfte der Welt und erlebt einen schmerzhaften Verrat in seinem engsten Kreis – ein brutales Rennen gegen die Zeit beginnt! Gedankennetz basiert auf den realen Forschungen zu neuronalen Implantaten von Pionieren wie Elon Musk (Neuralink).

On the verge of signing the most important document in African history, Agent Six and Detective Reggie Kona must race against the clock to get the document in the right hands before the big day. The powers-that-be have other plans. Six and Reggie find the job tougher at every turn, meeting elite operatives and killers all after one thing: a document that could change the future of Africa.

Imagine what it would be like to one day wake up and find that you were suddenly completely blind. This is what happened to Vanessa Potter. Her condition is unique. It has no name. Over the course of the next six months, Vanessa slowly recovered her vision. This mesmerising account tells the story of Patient H69 in her own words, based on these detailed diaries she kept during her time of blindness and through the scientific research that was to follow.

“Dr. Barlow’s book, Code Breaker, is the embodiment of brilliance in our profession, a true visionary masterpiece with the potential to revolutionize healthcare as we know it. His innate ability to unravel the intricate code of health and disease and produce innovative solutions is a testament to his genius.”—DR. MARIANNE ABATE, DC, CACCP

Is she insane or psychic? Private investigator Taylor Morrison has just managed to put her life back together after the death of her husband when strange things begin to happen around her. Things that can’t be explained. Taylor begins her desperate search for answers only to discover that others know what she can do, and they’ll stop at nothing to control her and the ability she now possesses - even if it means using the people she cares about against her.

Lucifer has been expelled to a place worse than Hell...Tucson, Arizona. After a flubbed attempt to overthrow Heaven, Lucifer (Lucious to his friends) is dumped on Earth—the one place he can die. Without options, he does the unthinkable and realigns with his old nemesis, God, for a shot at payback on those who betrayed him. But there is a price. God wants Lucious to join an arm of redemption-seeking degenerates to cleanse the world of demonic influence. Now, Lucious has to learn to put aside his hatred of mankind, or they will not survive.

Chapter one in book one of the groundbreaking Lightning Brain action-adventure series that extrapolates the latest science, political intrigue, and contemporary lifestyles while tracing the twists and turns in the life of Electra “Kit” Kittner. She grows up in a frightened, intolerant America threatened by “Techno-Plague” and Middle East terrorism. The action builds relentlessly, from lighter childhood adventures to darker realities caused by America’s threats that are exacerbated by a harsh government that would treat her badly if it were to discover what she is.

Seventeen-year-old Caleb Shaw's eidetic memory makes him a valuable asset to a government that harvests children like him for their innate ability to create memory modules for the brain drive—an implantable device that stores information in the form of memories. Caleb discovers that his father has been sheltering him from the truth about the brain drive, and he begins to question everything about the world he grew up in. When he is ripped from his home and taken to a government facility, his eyes are opened to the atrocities committed against children for technological advancement.

After an 18-month absence caused by a fire that destroyed her house and nearly incinerated her, Electra Kittner is now ready to re-enter her life’s “multiverse arena”, which she must now reset. She needed the solitude to recalibrate herself, physically and mentally, after a supra-international conspiracy tried to terminate her. And she has a new identity–Native American Indian Professor Electra Alisha Kirchner–for whom Indira the Singularity has created all documentation necessary to cover her early 30s.