Making a
Good Brain Great: The Amen Clinic Program
for Achieving and Sustaining Optimal
Mental Performance, by Daniel G. Amen,
MD
Over the past few years, I have read
and often reviewed a number of new books
-- many of them on the cutting-edge --
which have reported on or summarized the
latest research in brain science and
allied disciplines. I am impressed by the
amount of work done in brain science
during the past few decades and even more
impressed with the findings. There is no
question about the importance of the
research. As Dr. Daniel Amen points out in
his new book, "Making a Good Brain Great,"
our brain is involved in everything we do,
it is the most complicated organ in the
universe, and our brain can be changed so
we can improve our lives. And he provides
a program, the "fifteen days to a better
brain," to do just that: improve our
lives. Dr. Jonathan Dolhenty
Why Men
Never Remember and Women Never Forget, by
Marianne J. Legato
Men and women ARE different . . . and
this book from the founder of gender
medicine uncovers the neuroscientific
reasons behind age-old disputes between
men and women, while providing a
groundbreaking, authoritative, and
reader-friendly guide to resolving these
differences
Why won't he ask for directions? Why
does she always want to talk about the
relationship? Why can't he see that
something is bothering her? But perhaps
the biggest questions Why Men Never
Remember and Women Never Forget
resolves are: Why is it so hard for men
and women to understand each other . . .
and what can we do about it?
According to Dr. Marianne Legato, an
internationally recognized expert in
gender-specific medicine, male and female
brains are chemically and structurally
different. And scientists are now finding
out how these differences cause us to
approach problems and experience the world
in such dissimilar ways.
So how do we bridge this physiological
gap? Dr. Legato provides strategies and
tips for learning to "think" like the
other sex in order to get past our
differences-and offers smart advice for
dealing with issues wherever they arise.
This trailblazing book will enable readers
to understand each other-in both personal
and professional relationships-like never
before.
On
Intelligence: How a New Understanding of
the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of
Truly Intelligent Machines,, by Jeff
Hawkins
"Jeff Hawkins is an entrepreneur and
computer expert, responsible for the
invention of the popular device known as
the PalmPilot, as well as the Treo smart
phone and other gadgets. He is also
interested in the human brain and how it
functions. So it should be no surprise
that he has chosen to bring together his
two main interests -- computers and the
human brain -- in a book entitled "On
Intelligence" which presents a new theory
about how the brain works and how we can
finally build "intelligent" machines."
This is from Dr. Dolhenty's review of
this book. Click
Here to read the rest of
his book review.
This book looks back at the simpler
versions of mental life in apes,
Neanderthals, and our ancestors, back
before our burst of creativity started
50,000 years ago. When you can't think
about the future in much detail, you are
trapped in a here-and-now existence with
no 'What if' and 'Why me?' William H.
Calvin takes stock of what we have now and
then explains why we are nearing a
crossroads, where mind shifts gears again.
The mind's big bang came long after our
brain size stopped enlarging.
The book version of the popular PBS
series of the same name, The Secret
Life of the Brain, continues its
strong showing on science bestseller
lists, no doubt attributable to author
Richard Restak's ability to present
complex brain science in an accessible
manner. Through clearly written text and
bright illustrations, you'll learn about
the five stages of brain development:
gestation, childhood, adolescence,
adulthood, and old age.
Emergence:
The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains,
Cities, and Software
Ant colonies, cities, software -- these
three systems form the basis of Steven
Johnson's analysis of how
interconnectivity might lead to
intelligence. Emergence is the
cyberculture hotshot's outline of the
Web's next developmental phase.
The Feeling
of What Happens: Body & Emotion in the
Making of Consciousness
Neurologist Antonio Damasio explains
how the mind-body connection works in his
groundbreaking book, The Feeling of
What Happens. Damasio's erudite yet
accessible style makes this a perfect book
for scholars and curious readers
alike.
The
Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of
Language and the Brain
Terrence Deacon's The Symbolic
Species begins with a question posed
by a 7-year-old child: Why can't animals
talk? Or, as Deacon puts it, if animals
have simpler brains, why can't they
develop a simpler form of language to go
with them? Thus begins the basic line of
inquiry for this breathtakingly ambitious
work, which attempts to describe the
origins of human language and
consciousness.
What separates humans from animals,
Deacon writes, is our capacity for
symbolic representation. Animals can
easily learn to link a sound with an
object or an effect with a cause. But
symbolic thinking assumes the ability to
associate things that might only rarely
have a physical correlation; think of the
word "unicorn," for instance, or the idea
of the future. Language is only the
outward expression of this symbolic
ability, which lays the foundation for
everything from human laughter to our
compulsive search for meaning.
The final section of The Symbolic
Species posits that human brains and
human language have coevolved over
millions of years, leading Deacon to the
remarkable conclusion that many modern
human traits were actually caused by
ideas. Deacon's background in biological
anthropology and neuroscience makes him a
reliable companion through this
complicated multidisciplinary turf.
Rigorously researched and argued in dense
but lively prose, The Symbolic
Species is that rare animal, a book of
serious science that's accessible to
layman and scientist alike.
