Mental Brain

An "elegant", "engrossing" (Carol Tavris, Wall Street Journal) examination of what we think we know about the brain and why - despite technological advances - the workings of our most essential organ remain a mystery.

An internationally renowned neuroscientist, Dr. Wenk has been educating college and medical students about the brain and lecturing around the world for more than 40 years. With this essential book, he vividly demonstrates how a little knowledge about the foods and drugs we eat can teach us a lot about how our brain functions. The information is presented in an irreverent and non-judgmental manner, making it highly accessible to high school teenagers, inquisitive college students, and worried parents.

Attention is not just receptive, but actively creative of the world we inhabit. How we attend makes all the difference to the world we experience. And nowadays in the West we generally attend in a rather unusual way: governed by the narrowly focused, target-driven left hemisphere of the brain.

This breakthrough book presents a disarmingly simple idea: The way we pay attention in daily life can play a critical role in our health and well-being. According to Dr. Les Fehmi, a clinical psychologist and researcher, many of us have become stuck in “narrow-focus attention”: a tense, constricted, survival mode of attention that holds us in a state of chronic stress - and which lies at the root of common ailments including anxiety, depression, ADD, stress-related migraines, and more.

We all know how to nudge our brains to perform better. A strong cup of coffee helps us get through a dull meeting, and a brisk walk helps us think more clearly. But what if some nudges could optimise how we focus, create and process information even more effectively, to take mental performance to new heights?

*Modern Man in Search of a Soul* by Carl Jung is a well-known book in psychology that introduces listeners to his key ideas. Jung explores many topics, including dream analysis, the purpose of psychotherapy, and his theory of personality types. He also discusses different stages of life, compares his ideas with Freud’s, and reflects on psychology’s connection to literature.

Barbara Arrowsmith-Young was born with severe learning disabilities that caused teachers to label her slow, stubborn - or worse. As a child, she read and wrote everything backward, struggled to process concepts in language, continually got lost, and was physically uncoordinated. She could make no sense of an analogue clock. But by relying on her formidable memory and iron will, she made her way to graduate school, where she chanced upon research that inspired her to invent cognitive exercises to “fix” her own brain.

Attention Deficit Disorder, the most common learning and behavioral problem among children, also affects millions of adult Americans, more of which are being diagnosed with this potentially disabling condition every day.

Two New York Times best-selling authors unveil new research showing what meditation can really do for the brain. In the last 20 years, meditation and mindfulness have gone from being kind of cool to becoming an omnipresent Band-Aid for fixing everything from your weight to your relationship to your achievement level. Unveiling here the kind of cutting-edge research that has made them giants in their fields, Daniel Goleman and Richard J Davidson show us the truth about what meditation can really do for us.

From pioneering therapist Cathy A. Malchiodi, this book synthesizes the breadth of research on trauma and the brain and presents an innovative framework for treating trauma through the expressive arts.

Happiness is a brain function. With a healthier brain always comes a happier life. After studying more than 200,000 brain scans of people from 155 countries, Dr. Amen has discovered five primary brain types and seven neuroscience secrets that influence happiness. In You, Happier, he explains them and offers practical science-based strategies for optimizing your happiness.

You can either take your thoughts captive or be held captive by them. The choice is yours. Scripture declares we will be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Manny Arango describes this process as God washing our brains, and it is the surest way to overcome anxious thoughts, self-doubt, bitterness, and other mental struggles. But how can we experience this healing power? This book is a biblical roadmap for winning the battles in your mind. Identify faulty ways of thinking and learn how to take every thought captive under the authority of Christ.

Most of us would agree that there’s a clear—and even obvious—connection between the things we believe and the way we behave. But what if our actions are driven not by our conscious values and beliefs but by hidden motivations we’re not even aware of? The “hidden brain” is Shankar Vedantam’s shorthand for a host of brain functions, emotional responses, and cognitive processes that happen outside our conscious awareness but have a decisive effect on how we behave.

From ADHD and dyslexia to autism, the number of diagnosis categories listed by the American Psychiatric Association has tripled in the last fifty years. With so many affected, it is time to revisit our perceptions of people with disabilities. Psychologist and educator Thomas Armstrong illuminates a new understanding of neuropsychological disorders. He argues that if they are a part of the natural diversity of the human brain, they cannot simply be defined as illnesses. Armstrong explores the evolutionary advantages, special skills, and other positive dimensions of these conditions.

In The Dopamine Reset—21 Day Detox, Leo Black offers a transformative plan to help you break free from the addictive behaviors that keep you distracted, overwhelmed, and unfulfilled. Whether you're constantly glued to your phone, chasing instant gratification, or struggling with other unhealthy habits, this book provides the tools you need to reset your brain’s reward system and rebuild mental clarity.

This groundbreaking book explores the revolution in psychotherapy that brought an understanding of the social nature of people's brains into a therapeutic context. Louis Cozolino is a master at synthesizing neuroscience and demonstrating how it applies to psychotherapy practice. Here, he argues that all forms of psychotherapy are successful to the extent to which they enhance change in relevant neural circuits.

Between the ages of twelve and twenty-four, the brain changes in important and, at times, challenging ways. In Brainstorm, the renowned psychiatrist and bestselling author of Parenting from the Inside Out, The Whole-Brain Child, and Mindsight, Daniel Siegel busts a number of commonly held myths about adolescence — for example, that it is merely a stage of “immaturity” filled with often “crazy” behavior — to reveal how it is in fact a vital time in our lives in terms of charting the course for the adults we ultimately become.

The quest for enlightenment has occupied mankind for millennia. And from the depictions we’ve seen—monks sitting on meditation cushions, nuns kneeling in prayer, shamans communing with the universe—it seems that this elusive state is reserved for a chosen few. But now, neuroscientist David Perlmutter and medical anthropologist and shaman Alberto Villoldo have come together to explore the commonalities between their specialties with the aim of making enlightenment possible for anyone.

It's time to outsmart your worry and anxiety. Drawing on the same cutting-edge psychology presented in author David Carbonell's The Worry Trick, this irreverent, on-the-go guide offers 10 powerful "counter-intuitive" strategies to help you put worry in its place-anytime, anywhere.

Strengthen your social and emotional intelligence by cultivating your innate somatic intelligence. This is powerful applied mind-body science, in the workplace and beyond. Tap the intelligence hidden in posture, gesture, and sensation and you will open the door to more meaning, greater courage, deeper connection, and more powerful leadership than you imagined possible.