The Scientific American Day in the Life of Your Brain: A 24 hour Journal of What's Happening in Your Brain as you Sleep, Dream, Wake Up, Eat, Work, Play, Fight, Love, Worry, Compete, Hope, Make Important Decisions, Age and Change

by Scientific American (New York, New York); Judith Horstman

• ISBN13: 9780470500484
• ISBN10: 0470500484
• Format: eBook
• Copyright: 2009-08-01
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• More Book Details
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Summary

Have you ever wondered what's happening in your brain as you go through a typical day and night? This fascinating book presents an hour-by-hour round-the-clock journal of your brain's activities. Drawing on the treasure trove of information from Scientific American and Scientific American Mind magazines as well as original material written specifically for this book, Judith Horstman weaves together a compelling description of your brain at work and at play.The Scientific American Day in the Life of Your Brain reveals what's going on in there while you sleep and dream, how your brain makes memories and forms addictions and why we sometimes make bad decisions. The book also offers intriguing information about your emotional brain, and what's happening when you're feeling love, lust, fear and anxiety-and how sex, drugs and rock and roll tickle the same spots.Based on the latest scientific information, the book explores your brain's remarkable ability to change, how your brain can make new neurons even into old age and why multitasking may be bad for you.Your brain is uniquely yours - but research is showing many of its day-to-day cycles are universal. This book gives you a look inside your brain and some insights into why you may feel and act as you do.The Scientific American Day in the Life of Your Brain is written in the entertaining, informative and easy-to-understand style that fans of Scientific American and Scientific American Mind magazine have come to expect.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

You gotta know the territory: A short tour of your brain

Your neurotransmitters

Charting the day: Your body clocks

The best of times?

Coming to consciousness: Awake and aware. 5:00 A.M. to 8:00 A.M.

5:00 A.M. Waking to the world

Your inner alarm clocks

Your brain chemicals

Larks and owls

Coming to our senses

An orchestra of sensory harmony

Touch and movement: Feeling our way

Varieties of touch

6:00 A.M. Coming to consciousness

The seat of consciousness

Emotion, memory, and consciousness

It's always about networking

Little gray cells and big white matter: Myelin in your brain

Prime time for heart attack and stroke

7:00 A.M. Those morning emotions

Reason needs a neurochemical boost

Can meditation help master those emotions?

Is there a God spot in your brain?

Practice makes compassion

8:00 A.M. Finding your way

Why his brain may not ask directions

How we know where to find our lost keys

Engaging the world: Getting out and about. 9:00 A.M. to Noon

9:00 A.M. Encountering others

That face, that familiar face

Friend or foe? Read my face

Mirror, mirror: Copycat neurons in the brain

The broken mirror: Autism insights from mirror neurons and face perception

10:00 A.M. Peak performance-or stress?

Stress in the brain

The alarm that doesn't stop: Why chronic stress is so bad

Stress destroys neurons

Stress ups the risk of Alzheimer's disease

The very thought of it is enough

Multitasking-again?

The limits of multitasking

How your brain helps your job kill you

You can lull your brain away from stress

Flow versus stress

11:00 A.M. Decisions, decisions, and more decisions

The brain's CEO

"Chemo brain" can ambush your CEO

Choosing economically

Making an emotional moral choice

Choosing wearies your brain

The brain has a section for regret

Noon The hungry brain

How hunger works in your brain

We're losing our scents

Still hungry? When hunger goes awry

Why calories taste delicious

Addicted to _______ (fill in the blank)

Self-control sucks your energy

Yes, there is such a thing as brain food

The guts of the day: Getting down to business. 1:00 P.M. to 4:00 P.M.

1:00 P.M. The tired brain

Partial recall: Why memory fades with age

Can you help your brain stay young(er)?

Predicting Alzheimer's disease

How forgetting is good for the brain

Asleep at the wheel-almost? It could be narcolepsy

1:54 P.M. Just time for a six-minute power nap

2:00 P.M. Bored bored bored

Can't get no satisfaction? Maybe it's ADHD

ADHD and risk taking could be good--sometimes

Wired and hooked: Addicted to technology

3:00 P.M. Your pain is mainly in the brain

How pain hurts your brain

Mind under matter, mind over brain

Is hypnosis real?

A window into traumatic forgetting

4:00 P.M. Exercise your brain

Exercise grows neurons and improves memory

Why we get food cravings

The most dangerous time for teens

The teen brain is still changing

But don't forget hormones

Time out: Letting go and coming home. 5 P.M. to 8 P.M.

5:00 P.M. The dimming of the day

Is it really depression? Or just a bad patch?

Searching for the pathway to depression

Maybe you're just SAD

Magnetic energy may work when meds fail

A peak time for suicide

Good grief: Addicted to grieving

6:00 P.M. Coming home

An oxytocin high

Nobody home? Loneliness hurts

Oh, those comforting cravings. Or is it addiction?

Bottoms up: Where many alcoholics end

Is addiction the result rather than the cause of brain damage?

Still crazy after all these years? Aging isn't stopping drug use

7:00 P.M. Gotta sing, gotta dance

The musical path to the brain

Music survives brain damage

Your brain expands to store music

So you think you can dance?

Born to rock

The creative brain

Right brain, left brain?

Don't oversimplify that right brain stuff

The musical ear is learned, not born

8:00 P.M. Humor is healthy

The best medicine

Tracking your internal laugh track

TV addiction is no mere metaphor

Winding down: Fear, sex, sleep, and dreams. 9:00 P.M. to Midnight

9:00 P.M. Things that go bump in the night

How fear works in your brain

Who's afraid? Not these brain cells

When the brain decides it's time to scram

The many parts of a violent brain

10:00 P.M. Lust, sex, and love

You've got that loving feeling . . .

Your brain on sex

Women, men, and orgasms: How alike are they?

Does the penis have a brain of its own?

What's love got to do with it? Plenty, it turns out-for women

Are you born gay? Sexual orientation is biology, not choice

11:00 P.M. Falling asleep

The five stages of sleep

Insomnia: Curse of the night

Perhaps less is more?

Interrupted sleep? Don't call it insomnia. It's normal

Call me sleepless

Still awake? Can you catch up on lost sleep?

Is insomnia worse for night owls?

Midnight. Sleeping in the midnight hour

Strolling in your sleep

Drifting into dreamland

Was Freud right about dreams?

Do banished thoughts resurface in dreams?

Want to dream more? Try sleep deprivation

Night crew at work: 1:00 A.M. to 4:00 A.M.

1:00 A.M. Night crew at work

Cleaning up your neural garbage

Why your brain doesn't take a break already

The 10 percent myth

2:00 A.M. Going against the clock in your brain

Disasters on the night shift

Lack of sleep affects doctors as much as alcohol

Less sleep? More fat

Biorhythm and blues: Faulty clocks

Resetting your body clock

3:00 A.M. Awake and anxious

Where the nightmare begins

A false alarm

That pill to fix your ills has a price

3:30 A.M. Night nurse on duty

4:00 A.M. Last sleep

4:30 A.M. Awake so early?

Your brain tomorrow

Sources

Glossary

About the Author

Index

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