Brain Science

An astonishing new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Norman Doidge, M.D., traveled the country to meet both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives...

In the New York Times bestseller Brain Rules, Dr. John Medina, a molecular biologist, shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences might influence the way we teach our children and the way we work. In each chapter, he describes a brain rule - what scientists know for sure about how our brains work - and then offers transformative ideas for our daily lives. Medina’s fascinating stories and infectious sense of humor breathe life into brain science.

One of the most complicated and advanced computers on Earth can't be purchased in any store. This astonishing device, responsible for storing and retrieving vast quantities of information that can be accessed at a moment's notice, is the human brain. How does such a dynamic and powerful machine make memories, learn a language, and remember how to drive a car? What habits can we adopt in order to learn more effectively throughout our lives? The answers to these questions are merely the tip of the iceberg in The Learning Brain.

Are art and science separated by an unbridgeable divide? Can they find common ground? In this book, neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel, whose remarkable scientific career and deep interest in art give him a unique perspective, demonstrates how science can inform the way we experience a work of art and seek to understand its meaning. Kandel illustrates how reductionism - the distillation of larger scientific or aesthetic concepts into smaller, more tractable components - has been used by scientists and artists alike to pursue their respective truths.

The Mind Illuminated is a comprehensive, accessible and - above all - effective book on meditation, providing a nuts-and-bolts stage-based system that helps all levels of meditators establish and deepen their practice. Providing step-by-step guidance for every stage of the meditation path, this uniquely comprehensive guide for a Western audience combines the wisdom from the teachings of the Buddha with the latest research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. 

When high speed Internet became widely available a few years ago, growing numbers of people began to worry that their porn use was running out of control. Far from preparing them for fulfilling relationships, viewing an endless stream of porn videos led to unexpected symptoms.

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.

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.

Menopause and perimenopause are still baffling 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.

Following on the heels of Lisa Cron's breakout first book, Wired for Story, this writing guide reveals how to use cognitive storytelling strategies to build a scene-by-scene blueprint for a riveting story. It’s every novelist’s greatest fear: pouring their blood, sweat, and tears into...

Human beings are primates, and primates are political animals. Our brains, therefore, are designed not just to hunt and gather but also to help us get ahead socially, often via deception and self-deception. But while we may be self-interested schemers, we benefit by pretending otherwise. The less we know about our own ugly motives, the better - and thus, we don't like to talk, or even think, about the extent of our selfishness. This is "the elephant in the brain". 

In Beyond Behaviors, internationally known pediatric psychologist Dr. Mona Delahooke describes behaviors as the tip of the iceberg, important signals that we should address by seeking to understand a child's individual differences in the context of relational safety. This accessible book offers professionals, educators, and parents tools and techniques to reduce behavioral challenges and promote psychological resilience and satisfying, secure relationships.

Zweig, a veteran financial journalist, draws on the latest research in neuroeconomics, a fascinating new discipline that combines psychology, neuroscience, and economics to better understand financial decision making. He shows why we often misunderstand risk and why we tend to be overconfident about our investment decisions. Your Money and Your Brain offers some radical new insights into investing and shows investors how to take control of the battlefield between reason and emotion. Your Money and Your Brain is as entertaining as it is enlightening. 

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.

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.

This book is about the discovery that the human brain has its own unique way of healing. For centuries we believed that the price we paid for our brain's complexity was that, compared to other organs, it was fixed and unregenerative - unable to recover from damage or illness. In his revolutionary new book, Norman Doidge turns this belief on its head.

How do our brains give rise to our conscious minds? How do our minds learn and consciously experience miraculous creations of our civilizations, such as visual art, music, and the languages whose meanings enable us to think and communicate about our experiences in the world?

The enthusiasm for and expectation of happiness are so widespread today that fundamental questions about it are often overlooked. For starters, the most basic question of all: where does happiness come from? Is it your brain - a mere concoction of chemicals or network of neurons? Is it in fact your gut? (Spoiler alert: yes. Sort of) Or is it external? Is it love or sex or money or success? And what are these doing to our brains anyway? In The Happy Brain, Neuroscientist Dean Burnett delves into our most private selves to investigate what causes happiness.

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.

“As ‘The Secret’ meets the scientist in Dawson’s work, the boundaries of what you’ve believed possible will be stretched far beyond your existing picture of reality.” — Jack Canfield, co-author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Chicken Soup series and featured teacher in The...