Brain Science

The father of cognitive neuroscience and author of Human offers a provocative argument against the common belief that our lives are wholly determined by physical processes and we are therefore not responsible for our actions.

Did you know you can beat stress, lift your mood, fight memory loss, sharpen your intellect, and function better than ever simply by elevating your heart rate and breaking a sweat? The evidence is incontrovertible: Aerobic exercise physically remodels our brains for peak performance. In Spark, John J. Ratey, MD, embarks upon a fascinating and entertaining journey through the mind-body connection, presenting startling research to prove that exercise is truly our best defense against everything from depression to ADD to addiction to aggression to menopause to Alzheimer's.

The truth is, most of the things we want - health, happiness, wealth, love - are governed by our ability to think, feel, and act - in other words, by our brain. Dr. Swart combines the insights and inspiration of The Secret with the practical lessons of The Master Key System to help a new generation fulfill their dreams. The Source is a rigorous, proven toolkit for unlocking our minds - and reaching our fullest potential.

No listener curious about our "little gray cells" will want to pass up Harvard neuroscientist John E. Dowling's brief introduction to the brain. In this up-to-date revision of his 1998 book Creating Mind, Dowling conveys the essence and vitality of the field of neuroscience - examining the progress we've made in understanding how brains work, and shedding light on discoveries having to do with aging, mental illness, and brain health.

Healing the Addicted Brain is a breakthrough work that focuses on treating drug and alcohol addiction as a biological disease - based on the Recovery Science program that has helped thousands of patients defeat their addictions. It combines the best behavioral addiction treatments with the latest scientific research into brain functions, providing tools and strategies designed to overcome the biological factors that cause addictive behavior along with proven treatments and medications.

Why are women more verbal than men? Why do women remember details of fights that men can't remember at all? Why do women tend to form deeper bonds with their female friends than men do with their male counterparts? These and other questions have stumped both sexes throughout the ages. Now, pioneering neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, M.D., brings together the latest findings to show how the unique structure of the female brain determines how women think and what they value.

Dr. Faith G. Harper explains the emerging science of the gut-brain connection and the vagus nerve so that everyone can understand what’s going on in your body and how to make friends with it again, especially if you’ve experienced trauma or chronic stress. Filled with straight talk and practical exercises so you can reconnect with your physical needs and reactions, work through body shame, manage illness and disability, and implement small changes that make a huge difference in how you feel every day. You are a whole person, and it’s time to reconnect with yourself!

Carl Sagan, writer and scientist, returns from the frontier to tell us about how the world works. In his delightfully down-to-earth style, he explores and explains a mind-boggling future of intelligent robots, extraterrestrial life and its consequences, and other provocative, fascinating quandaries of the future that we want to see today.

From a course they created for professionals, Mark Waldman and Chris Manning adapted their lectures and present simple brain exercises, based on the latest neuroscience research, to guide listeners on what makes us happy, wealthy, and wise. The promise of their original class - and now of this book - is to help people create more "wealth" in their lives, defined as the combination of money, happiness, and success. The book presents both the scientific background and sets of NeuroWisdom exercises that will help everyone transform their environment.

Investigating how your senses work, how you move, and how you think and feel, Neuroscience for Dummies, 2nd Edition is your straightforward guide to the most complicated structure known in the universe: the brain. Covering the most recent scientific discoveries and complemented with engaging anecdotes that help bring the information to life, this updated edition offers a compelling and plain-English look at how the brain and nervous system function.

Menopause and perimenopause are still a black box to most doctors, leaving patients exasperated as they grapple with symptoms ranging from hot flashes to insomnia to brain fog. As a leading neuroscientist and women’s brain health specialist, Dr. Mosconi unravels these mysteries by revealing how menopause doesn’t just impact the ovaries—it’s a hormonal show in which the brain takes center stage.

In Brain Rules for Baby, Dr. John Medina shares what the latest science says about how to raise smart and happy children from zero to five. This book is destined to revolutionize parenting. Just one of the surprises: The best way to get your children into the college of their choice? Teach them impulse control. Brain Rules for Baby bridges the gap between what scientists know and what parents practice.

In every area of life, from business to relationships to health, we act on outdated instincts that were built to help us survive a world ruled by scarcity and danger. But in today's world, those same instincts stop us from succeeding in the environment in which we actually live: a diverse world of abundant choices, and almost limitless connections. Now evolutionary biologist Dr. Rebecca Heiss offers a new approach that harnesses the power of our instincts, and redirects them to work for us rather than against us.

Why is it easier to ruminate over hurt feelings than it is to bask in the warmth of being appreciated? Because your brain evolved to learn quickly from bad experiences and slowly from good ones, but you can change this.

Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals?

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.

In this revolutionary audiobook, Dr. Lisa Mosconi, director of the Women's Brain Initiative at Weill Cornell Medical College, provides women with the first plan to address the unique risks of the female brain. Until now, medical research has focused on "bikini medicine", assuming that women are essentially men with breasts and tubes. Yet women are far more likely than men to suffer from anxiety, depression, migraines, brain injuries, and strokes. They are also twice as likely to end their lives suffering from Alzheimer's disease, even when their longer lifespans are taken into account.

The Mind Illuminated is the first how-to meditation guide from a neuroscientist who is also an acclaimed meditation master. This innovative book offers a 10-stage program that is deeply grounded in ancient spiritual teachings about mindfulness and holistic health and also draws from the latest brain science to provide a road map for anyone interested in achieving the benefits of mindfulness.

In this extraordinary follow-up to the critically acclaimed The Lucifer Principle, Howard Bloom - one of today's preeminent thinkers - offers us a bold rewrite of the evolutionary saga. Global Brain is more than just a brilliantly original contribution to the ongoing debate on the inner workings of evolution; it is a "grand vision," says the eminent evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, a work that transforms our very view of who we are and why.

Whether you load your iPod with Bach or Bono, music has a significant role in your life - even if you never realized it. Why does music evoke such powerful moods? The answers are at last becoming clear, thanks to revolutionary neuroscience and the emerging field of evolutionary psychology. Both a cutting-edge study and a tribute to the beauty of music itself, This Is Your Brain on Music unravels a host of mysteries that affect everything from pop culture to our understanding of human nature.