Brain Science

Daniel Amen, MD, one of the world's foremost authorities on the brain, has news for you: your brain is involved in everything you do - learn to care for it properly, and you will be smarter, healthier, and happier in as little as 15 days!

The whole situation began when Duncan Dougal was hiding out in a dumpster (it’s a long and smelly story). Stuck in the garbage, he discovered proof that even though the kids drove off the alien named Broxholm the year before, there is still an alien-in-disguise working as one of their seventh-grade teachers! But which teacher is it? That’s the mystery Duncan must solve to protect the school - and himself.

In Teaching with Poverty in Mind: What Being Poor Does to Kids' Brains and What Schools Can Do About It, veteran educator and brain expert Eric Jensen takes an unflinching look at how poverty hurts children, families, and communities across the United States and demonstrates how schools can improve the academic achievement and life readiness of economically disadvantaged students.

Framed by the historical journey and teachings of the Buddha, Siddhartha's Brain shows how meditative and Buddhist practices anticipated the findings of modern neuroscience. Moving from the evolutionary history of the brain to the disorders and neuroses associated with our technology-driven world, James Kingsland explains why the ancient practice of mindfulness has been so beneficial to and so important for human beings across time.

This Is Your Brain on Sports is the audiobook for sports fans searching for a deeper understanding of the games they watch and the people who play them. Sports Illustrated executive editor and best-selling author L. Jon Wertheim teams up with Tufts psychologist Sam Sommers to take listeners on a wild ride into the inner world of sports.

Should you really read to your baby? Can teaching a baby sign language boost IQ? Should you pipe classical music into the nursery? Dr. Jill Stamm translates the latest neuroscience findings into clear explanations and practical suggestions, demonstrating the importance of the simple ways you interact with your child every day. It isn't the right edutainment that nurtures an infant's brain. It is as simple as attention, bonding, and communication, and it's within every parent's ability to provide.

While cells are commonly considered the building block of living things, it is actually the communication between cells that brings us to life, controlling our bodies and brains, determining whether we are healthy or sick, and directly influencing how we think, feel, and behave. In The Secret Language of Cells, doctor and neuroscientist Jon Lieff lets us listen in on these conversations, and reveals their significance for everything from mental health to cancer.

Why is Jane Austen so phenomenally popular? Why do we go back to Pride and Prejudice again and again? Why do we delight in Emma's mischievous schemes? Why do we care that Anne Elliot of Persuasion suffers? We care because the human brain is a social brain. And Austen's characters are so believable, that for many of us, they are not just imaginary beings, but friends whom we know and love. We see ourselves and others reflected in Austen's work.

Who are you? It’s the most fundamental of human questions. Are you the type of person who tilts at windmills, or the one who prefers to view them from the comfort of an air-conditioned motorcoach? Our personalities are endlessly fascinating—not just to ourselves but also to our spouses, our parents, our children, our co-workers, our neighbors. As a highly social species, humans have to navigate among an astonishing variety of personalities.

In accessible language and with periodic references to Star Trek, motorcycle daredevils, and near-classic movies of the '80s, developmental molecular biologist John Medina explores the neurological and evolutionary factors that drive teenage behavior and can affect both achievement and engagement. Then he proposes a research-supported counterattack: a bold redesign of educational practices and learning environments to deliberately develop teens' cognitive capacity to manage their emotions, plan, prioritize, and focus.

What does your brain have to do with experiencing joy? A lot more than most of us realize. In this breakthrough book, Dr. Earl Henslin reveals how the study of brain imaging turned his practice of psychotherapy upside down—with remarkably positive results. Listen to this practical, easy-to-understand, and often entertaining book, and you'll know exactly how to nourish your mind, balance your brain, and help others do the same. After all, the capacity for joy is a terrible thing to waste.

Epilepsy is a lightning storm in the brain - shocking isn't it. A photographer friend once said that epilepsy is a shocking development. Seizures are silent, unless you saw them having a seizure or they told you that they had epilepsy you'd never know. That is why it is called the hidden disability or hidden handicap. Mr. Miller now has had epilepsy for 43 years and four months and has gained, unwanted by him, epilepsy expertise.

Nicolelis undertakes the first attempt to explain the entirety of human history, culture, and civilization based on a series of recently uncovered key principles of brain function. This new cosmology is centered around three fundamental properties of the human brain: its insurmountable malleability to adapt and learn; its exquisite ability to allow multiple individuals to synchronize their minds around a task, goal, or belief; and its incomparable capacity for abstraction.

Joshua R. Eyler identifies five broad themes running through recent scientific inquiry - curiosity, sociality, emotion, authenticity, and failure - devoting a chapter to each and providing practical takeaways for busy teachers. He also interviews and observes college instructors across the country, placing theoretical insight in dialogue with classroom experience.

The human brain can actually grow - and a bigger brain means better memory, creativity, speed of learning, and ability to concentrate. Boost Your Brain is the only book that uses groundbreaking advances in neuroscience to present a clear explanation and prescriptive plan for how to access the benefits of significantly enhanced brain performance - at any age.

To many, the brain is the seat of personal identity and autonomy. But the way we talk about the brain is often rooted more in mystical conceptions of the soul than in scientific fact. This blinds us to the physical realities of mental function. We ignore bodily influences on our psychology, from chemicals in the blood to bacteria in the gut, and overlook the ways that the environment affects our behavior, via factors varying from subconscious sights and sounds to the weather.

In the early days of the Cold War, a spirit of desperate scientific rivalry birthed a different kind of space race: not the race to outer space that we all know, but a race to master the inner space of the human body. While surgeons on either side of the Iron Curtain competed to become the first to transplant organs like the kidney and heart, a young American neurosurgeon had an even more ambitious thought: Why not transplant the brain?

Aphasia is a language disorder often brought on after a stroke that causes a loss of ability to understand or express speech. There are a number of different types of Aphasia, including Broca's and Wernicke's. In this book, you will find explanations for these types of aphasia, among others. It will also tell you who is at risk for aphasia. Learn about the various medications and treatments, both medical and natural.

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.

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.