Mental Brain

What makes you the way you are - and what makes each of us different from everyone else? In Innate, leading neuroscientist and popular science blogger Kevin Mitchell traces human diversity and individual differences to their deepest level: in the wiring of our brains.

Have you ever wondered why you have a brain? Let renowned neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett demystify that big gray blob between your ears. In seven short essays (plus a bite-sized story about how brains evolved), this slim, entertaining, and accessible collection reveals mind-expanding lessons from the front lines of neuroscience research. You'll learn where brains came from, how they're structured (and why it matters), and how yours works in tandem with other brains to create everything you experience.

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.

In Your Brain at Work, Dr. David Rock goes inside Emily and Paul's brains to see how they function as each attempts to sort, prioritize, organize, and act on the vast quantities of information they receive in one typical day. Dr. Rock is an expert on how the brain functions in a work setting. By analyzing what is going on in their heads, he offers solutions Emily and Paul (and all of us) can use to survive and thrive in today's hyperbusy work environment - and still feel energized and accomplished at the end of the day.

Psychologists and neuroscientists struggle with how best to interpret human motivation and decision making. The assumption is that below a mental "surface" of conscious awareness lies a deep and complex set of inner beliefs, values, and desires that govern our thoughts, ideas, and actions, and that to know this depth is to know ourselves. In this profoundly original book, behavioral scientist Nick Chater contends just the opposite: Rather than being the plaything of unconscious currents, the brain generates behaviors in the moment based entirely on our past experiences.

The science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology. Leading the charge is psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, whose research overturns the long-standing belief that emotions are automatic, universal, and hardwired in different brain regions. Instead, Barrett shows, we construct each instance of emotion through a unique interplay of brain, body, and culture.

We live in a gendered world, where we are ceaselessly bombarded by messages about sex and gender. On a daily basis, we face deeply ingrained beliefs that sex determines our skills and preferences, from toys and colors to career choice and salaries. But what does this constant gendering mean for our thoughts, decisions, and behavior? And what does it mean for our brains? Drawing on her work as a professor of cognitive neuroimaging, Gina Rippon unpacks the stereotypes that surround us from our earliest moments and shows how these messages mold our ideas of ourselves.

Are you struggling with attention problems, mood swings, food obsession, or depression? Whatever the issue, you have far more control over your thoughts, feelings, and behavior than you realize. Although medications may bring some relief, in Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind, Dr. Georgia Ede reveals that the most powerful way to change brain chemistry is with food, because that’s where brain chemicals come from in the first place. In this provocative, illuminating guide, Dr. Ede explains why nearly everything we think we know about brain-healthy diets is wrong.

This paradigm-shattering book provides an even-handed, science-based understanding of who women are, both on and off the pill. It will change the way that women think about their hormones and how they view themselves. It also serves as a rallying cry for women to demand more information from science about how their bodies and brains work and to advocate for better research. This book will help women make more informed decisions about their health, whether they're on the pill or off of it.

Collectively, anxiety disorders are our most prevalent psychiatric problem, affecting about 40 million adults in the United States. In Anxious, Joseph LeDoux, whose NYU lab has been at the forefront of research efforts to understand and treat fear and anxiety, explains the range of these disorders, their origins, and discoveries that can restore sufferers to normalcy. LeDoux's groundbreaking premise is that we've been thinking about fear and anxiety in the wrong way.

Over her decades as a clinical psychologist, Dr. Mona Delahooke has routinely counseled distraught parents who struggle to manage their children’s challenging, sometimes oppositional behaviors. These families are understandably focused on correcting or improving a child’s lack of compliance, emotional outbursts, tantrums, and other “out of control” behavior. But, as she has shared with these families, a perspective shift is needed. Behavior, no matter how challenging, is not the problem but a symptom; a clue about what is happening in a child’s unique physiologic makeup.

Filled with simple, everyday actions we can take to avoid disease, promote vitality, and prevent dementia and late onset Alzheimer's, The Aging Brain is an easy-to-use guide to maintaining brain and body health throughout our lives. Based on solid, up-to-date scientific research, the interventions explained in this book not only prevent progression toward dementia even in those who have already shown mild cognitive impairment, they also reduce disability and depression and keep people living independently longer than those who do not practice these methods.

This riveting narrative explores the world of placebos, hypnosis, false memories, and neurology to reveal the groundbreaking science of our suggestible minds. Could the secrets to personal health lie within our own brains? Journalist Erik Vance explores the surprising ways our expectations and beliefs influence our bodily responses to pain, disease, and everyday events.

With schools becoming more competitive and technology becoming increasingly distracting, today's students face a minefield of obstacles to academic success. Doing well in school isn't just a matter of smarts or more studying: It takes good habits, practical tools - and a healthy brain. Change Your Brain, Change Your Grades draws on Dr. Amen's experience as a neuroscientist and psychiatrist as well as the latest brain science to help you study more effectively, learn faster, and stay focused so you can achieve your academic goals.

In this book, we will provide you with everything you need to know about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as well as the reasons why it's being considered one of the most effective treatments for certain emotional disorders. We'll go through the basics and essentials that beginners have to understand before they start their treatments, as well as the different benefits one can gain from it. Included are the different issues it is known to effectively treat, and the philosophy behind it. Aside from this, we also provide you with introductions into the different techniques used in CBT. Many of these techniques are meant to tackle very specific issues, and that is one of the great things about CBT. It provides very focused treatments, and sets specific goals for the therapist and their client to achieve. We delve into the connection between our thoughts, feelings, and behavior - how all three affect each other and how making small changes can result in significant positive results in our lives.

For the modern world, it seems as if sexuality and spirituality have always been at odds. But what if the two are actually deeply connected? And what if science could prove this connection? From neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, Sex, God, and the Brain argues that our religious and spiritual experiences derive directly from our sexual being. While others have speculated on a connection between religion and sex, Newberg is the first to demonstrate that the underlying biological mechanism of religious, spiritual, and sexual experiences are identical.

From the author of the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller The Female Brain, here is the eagerly awaited follow-up book that demystifies the puzzling male brain.

Dr. Louann Brizendine, the founder of the first clinic in the country to study gender differences in brain, behavior, and hormones, turns her attention to the male brain, showing how, through every phase of life, the "male reality" is fundamentally different from the female one. Exploring the latest breakthroughs in male psychology and neurology with her trademark accessibility and candor, she reveals that the male brain:

*is a lean, mean, problem-solving machine. Faced with a personal problem, a man will use his analytical brain structures, not his emotional ones, to find a solution.

*thrives under competition, instinctively plays rough and is obsessed with rank and hierarchy.

*has an area for sexual pursuit that is 2.5 times larger than the female brain, consuming him with sexual fantasies about female body parts.

*experiences such a massive increase in testosterone at puberty that he perceive others' faces to be more aggressive.


The Male Brain finally overturns the stereotypes. Impeccably researched and at the cutting edge of scientific knowledge, this is a book that every man, and especially every woman bedeviled by a man, will need to own.

Praise for The Female Brain:
"Louann Brizendine has done a great favor for every man who wants to understand the puzzling women in his life. A breezy and enlightening guide to women and a must-read for men."
—Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence






From the Hardcover edition.

Bullying and abuse are at the source of much misery in our lives. Because we are not taught about our brains, let alone how much they are impacted by bullying and abuse, we do not have a way to avoid this misery, heal our scars, or restore our health. In The Bullied Brain, listeners learn about the evidence doctors, psychiatrists, neuropsychologists and neuroscientists have gathered, that shows the harm done by bullying and abuse to your brain, and how you can be empowered to protect yourself and all others.

For half a century, we have been trained to believe that our right brain hemisphere is our emotional brain, while our left brain houses our rational thinking. Now neuroscience shows that it's not that simple: In fact, our emotional limbic tissue is evenly divided between our two hemispheres. Consequently, each hemisphere has both an emotional brain and a thinking brain. In this groundbreaking new book, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor presents these four distinct modules of cells as four characters that make up who we are.

In Neurodharma, the follow up to his classic Buddha’s Brain, New York Times best-selling author Rick Hanson, PhD, not only explores the new neuroscience of awakening, but also offers a bold yet plausible plan for reverse-engineering peak experiences, sense of oneness, and even enlightenment itself. And he does so with his trademark blend of solid science and warm encouragement, guiding you along this high-reaching path with good humor, accessible tools, and personal examples.