Brain Health Neuroscience

Min W. Jung offers a new understanding of the neural basis of innovation in terms of humans' exceptional capacity for imagination and high-level abstraction. He provides an engaging account of recent advances in neuroscience that have shed light on the neural underpinnings of these profoundly important abilities. Jung examines key discoveries concerning the hippocampus and neural circuits that have demystified the processes underlying imagination and abstract thinking. He also considers how these capacities might have evolved as well as possible futures for intelligence.

Bonus: free accompanying audio guides on mindfulness meditation practices. Do you struggle with overthinking and want to begin a mindful journey to help you find clarity, peace, joy? The brain's neuroplasticity, or its ability to adapt and change as we learn from new experiences, allows us to reframe how we practice mindfulness. The miracle of mindfulness lets us develop our brain's potential and better understand ourselves.

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.

The first edition of this book tackled these important questions of interpersonal neurobiology - that the brain is a social organ built through experience - using poignant case examples from the author's years of clinical experience. Elegant explanations of social neuroscience wove together emerging findings from the research literature to bring neuroscience to the stories of our lives.

In Your Brain Is a Time Machine, brain researcher and best-selling author Dean Buonomano draws on evolutionary biology, physics, and philosophy to present his influential theory of how we tell and perceive time. The human brain, he argues, is a complex system that not only tells time but creates it; it constructs our sense of chronological flow and enables "mental time travel" - simulations of future and past events.

If you've ever wondered why you seem to get trapped in an endless cycle of obsessive, compulsive thoughts, you don't have to wonder anymore. Grounded in cutting-edge neuroscience and evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), Rewire Your OCD Brain will show you how and why your brain gets stuck in a loop of obsessive thinking, uncertainty, and worry; and offers the tools you need to short-circuit this response and get your symptoms under control-for good.

Science is now revealing how the flow of thoughts actually sculpts the brain. By combining breakthroughs in neuroscience with insights from thousands of years of contemplative practice, you, too, can use your mind to shape your brain for greater happiness, love, and wisdom.

Neuroscientist Camilla Nord reveals how the small things we do to lift our mood during the course of a day - a piece of chocolate, a coffee, chatting to a friend - often work on the same pathways in our brain as the latest pharmacological treatments for mental health disorders. Whether they help us to manage pain, learn from experience or expend energy on the things that are important for our survival, these conscious actions are part of a complex self-regulating process that is unique to each individual and the constant backdrop to our everyday lives.

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.

How do magicians make us see the impossible? The Illusionist Brain takes you on an unforgettable journey through the inner workings of the human mind, revealing how magicians achieve their spectacular and seemingly impossible effects by interfering with your cognitive processes. Along the way, this lively and informative book provides a guided tour of modern neuroscience, using magic as a lens for understanding the unconscious and automatic functioning of our brains.

Women are far more likely than men to suffer from anxiety, depression, migraines, brain injuries, strokes and Alzheimer's disease. But, until recently, scientific research has focused on 'bikini medicine,' assuming that women are essentially men with different reproductive organs. The XX Brain presents groundbreaking research showing that women's brains age distinctly from men's, due mostly to the decline of a key brain-protective hormone: estrogen.

How does the brain work? How different is a human brain from other creatures' brains? Is the human brain still evolving? In this fascinating book, Michael O'Shea provides a non-technical introduction to the main issues and findings in current brain research, and gives a sense of how neuroscience addresses questions about the relationship between the brain and the mind.

How does the brain generate a conscious thought? And why does so much of our knowledge remain unconscious? Thanks to clever psychological and brain-imaging experiments, scientists are closer to cracking this mystery than ever before. In this lively book, Stanislas Dehaene describes the pioneering work his lab and the labs of other cognitive neuroscientists worldwide have accomplished in defining, testing, and explaining the brain events behind a conscious state.

This groundbreaking book explores the recent revolution in psychotherapy that has brought an understanding of the social nature of people's brains to a therapeutic context. Louis Cozolino is a master at synthesizing neuroscientific information and demonstrating how it applies to psychotherapy practice. New material on altruism, executive function, trauma, and change round out this essential book.

We all want the power and motivation to create change in our lives. But how to get that in a stumbling dance of one step forward and two steps back? Negative emotions run rampant in many people's lives today; a reality that feels like a shrink wrap of suffering. Popular fallback solutions of performance-based goals and tools focus on extrinsic rewards like fame, wealth, or winning. But overuse of those rewards doesn't work for the long term and in fact weakens our confidence and motivation over time, leaving us vulnerable to failure and shame.

What happens to our brain at night? Are we really fully asleep? And if so, how is it that some individuals end up doing what they do? Or can it be the case that perhaps the brain never fully goes to sleep and that in some individuals there is a disconnect between the sleeping part of their brain and the active part of their brain so that the two become confused? Does this happen to all of us in varying degrees, and can the reverse be the case, too - so that some individuals are actually asleep during the day while appearing to be awake?!

What happens in our brains to make us feel fear, love, hate, anger, joy? Do we control our emotions, or do they control us? Do animals have emotions? How can traumatic experiences in early childhood influence adult behavior, even though we have no conscious memory of them? In The Emotional Brain, Joseph LeDoux investigates the origins of human emotions and explains that many exist as part of complex neural systems that evolved to enable us to survive.

Dr. Lisa Mosconi, whose research spans an extraordinary range of specialties including brain science, the microbiome, and nutritional genomics, notes that the dietary needs of the brain are substantially different from those of the other organs, yet few of us have any idea what they might be. Her innovative approach to cognitive health incorporates concepts that most doctors have yet to learn. Busting through advice based on pseudoscience, Dr. Mosconi provides recommendations for a complete food plan, while calling out noteworthy surprises.

Do you ever wonder what is happening inside your brain when you feel anxious, panicked, and worried? In Rewire Your Anxious Brain, psychologist Catherine Pittman and author Elizabeth Karle offer a unique, evidence-based solution to overcoming anxiety, based in cutting-edge neuroscience and research.

Something depressing is happen to humanity, and possibly even you. Our brains are degenerating and – in parallel – we’re seeing a worrying increase in mental illness across the world. Rates of anxiety, depression, dementia, ADHD and autism are all increasing at an alarming rate across the globe. According to the World Health Organisation, our declining brain health is the greatest threat we face. In Upgrade Your Brain, bestselling author Patrick Holford will draw on his 40 years’ of expertise – as well as countless experts from around the world – to teach us all how to reverse the tide.