Brain Science Neuroscience

Are art and science separated by an unbridgeable divide? Can they find common ground? In this book, neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel, whose remarkable scientific career and deep interest in art give him a unique perspective, demonstrates how science can inform the way we experience a work of art and seek to understand its meaning. Kandel illustrates how reductionism - the distillation of larger scientific or aesthetic concepts into smaller, more tractable components - has been used by scientists and artists alike to pursue their respective truths.

There's a revolution taking place that most businesses are still unaware of. The understanding of how our brains work has radically shifted, exploding long-held myths about our everyday cognitive performance and fundamentally changing the way we engage and succeed in the workplace. Combining their expertise in both neuropsychology and management consulting, neuropsychologist Friederike Fabritius and leadership expert Dr. Hans W. Hagemann present simple yet powerful strategies.

The brain is made up of 85 billion neurons, which are connected by over 100 trillion synapses. For over a century, a diverse array of researchers have been trying to find a language that can 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.

The march of climate change is stunning and vicious, with rising seas, extreme weather, and oppressive heat blanketing the globe. But its effects on our very brains constitute a public-health crisis that has gone largely unreported. Based on seven years of research, this book by the award-winning journalist and trained neuroscientist Clayton Page Aldern, synthesizes the emerging neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics of global warming and brain health. A masterpiece of literary journalism, this book shows readers how a changing environment is changing us today, from the inside out.

For decades, modern medicine has predominantly focused on restoring health to a conventionally “normal” state for our age and medical history. But shouldn’t we aim to go beyond normal? Whether you’re twenty or eighty years old, have experienced a stroke, battle PTSD, or want to excel as an athlete or top executive, recent breakthroughs in molecular biology have granted us the means not just to repair but to enhance our physical and mental capacities.

At thirty-seven, Dr. Stephanie Cacioppo was content to be single. She was fulfilled by her work on the neuroscience of romantic love—how finding and growing with a partner literally reshapes our brains. That was, until she met the foremost neuroscientist of loneliness. A whirlwind romance led to marriage, to sharing an office at the University of Chicago. After seven years of being inseparable at work and home, she lost her beloved husband following a devastating battle with cancer.

Exciting new developments in brain science are continuing the debates on these issues, and the field has now expanded to include biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers. This controversial book clarifies the potentially confusing arguments, and the major theories, while also outlining the amazing pace of discoveries in neuroscience. Covering areas such as the construction of self in the brain, mechanisms of attention, the neural correlates of consciousness, and the physiology of altered states of consciousness, Susan Blackmore highlights our latest findings.

Parker describes the discovery of tetrahydocannbinol (THC), the main psychoactive component of cannabis, and the further discovery of cannabinoid receptors in the brain. She explains that the brain produces chemicals similar to THC, which act on the same receptors as THC, and shows that the endocannabinoid system is involved in all aspects of brain functioning.

Alzheimer’s disease, a haunting and harrowing ailment, is one of the world’s most common causes of death. Alzheimer’s lingers for years, with patients’ outward appearance unaffected while their cognitive functions fade away. Patients lose the ability to work and live independently, to remember and recognize. There is still no proven way to treat Alzheimer’s because its causes remain unknown. Mind Thief is a comprehensive and engaging history of Alzheimer’s that demystifies efforts to understand the disease.

How does a neural network become a brain? While neurobiologists investigate how nature accomplishes this feat, computer scientists interested in AI strive to achieve this through technology. The Self-Assembling Brain tells the stories of both fields, exploring the historical and modern approaches taken by the scientists pursuing answers to the quandary: What information is necessary to make an intelligent neural network? As Peter Robin Hiesinger argues, "the information problem" underlies both fields.

Our brains are the most complex machines known to humankind, but they have an Achilles heel: The very molecules that allow us to exist can also sabotage our minds. Here are true accounts of unruly molecules and the diseases that form in their wake, from total loss of inhibitions to florid psychosis to compulsive lying.

Throughout history, two perspectives on the world have dueled in our minds: the extrinsic—that of mechanism and physics—and the intrinsic—that of feelings, thoughts, and ideas. The intrinsic perspective allows us to tell stories about our lives, to chart our anger and our lust, to understand our psychologies. The extrinsic allows us to chart the physical world, to build upon it, and to travel across it. These perspectives have never been reconciled; they almost seem to exist on different planes of thought.

Written by two world-renowned sleep and dream researchers, When Brains Dream debunks common myths while acknowledging the mysteries that persist around both the science and experience of dreaming.

Brilliantly exploring today's cutting edge brain research, Mind Wide Open allows readers to understand themselves and the people in their lives as never before. Using a mix of experiential reportage, personal storytelling, and fresh scientific discovery, Steven Johnson describes how the brain works and how its systems connect to the day-to-day realities of individual lives.

In The Brain in Context, the bioethicist Jonathan D. Moreno and the neuroscientist Jay Schulkin provide an accessible and thought-provoking account of the evolution of neuroscience and the neuroscience of evolution. They emphasize that the brain is not an isolated organ - it extends into every part of the body and every aspect of human life. Understanding the brain requires studying the environmental, biological, chemical, genetic, and social factors that continue to shape it.

From adrenaline to dopamine, most of us are familiar with the chemicals that control us. They are the hormones and neurotransmitters that our brains run on, and Overloaded looks at the role they play in every aspect of our lives, from what we remember, how we make decisions and who we love to basic survival drives such as hunger, fear and sleep.

With the lucid verve and solid scientific grounding of an Oliver Sacks or Malcolm Gladwell, Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler guides listeners on a fascinating tour of the bedrock of our existence - the way our senses perceive everything and everyone in the world around us. Why does one person see Jesus in a shower curtain, get a "bad feeling" about someone they've just met, or hear a conversation so differently than the other person? Boxer Wachler describes some of the mysterious medical conditions that cause non-psychiatric hallucinations and neurological mix-ups.

John Parrington draws on the latest research on the human brain to show how it differs strikingly from those of other animals in its structure and function at a molecular and cellular level. And he argues that this 'shift', enlarging the brain, giving it greater flexibility and enabling higher functions such as imagination, was driven by tool use, but especially by the development of one remarkable tool - language.

A path-breaking journey into the brain, showing how perception, thought, and action are products of "maps" etched into your gray matter - and how technology can use them to read your mind.

Nurturing Our Humanity offers a new perspective on our personal and social options in today's world, showing how we can build societies that support our great human capacities for consciousness, caring, and creativity. It brings together findings—largely overlooked—from the natural and social sciences debunking the popular idea that we are hard-wired for selfishness, war, rape, and greed. Its groundbreaking new approach reveals connections between disturbing trends like climate change denial and regressions to strongman rule.