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9780470500484

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 ;
  • ISBN13:

    9780470500484

  • ISBN10:

    0470500484

  • Format: eBook
  • Copyright: 2009-08-01
  • Publisher: Jossey-Bass
  • Purchase Benefits
List Price: $25.95
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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
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

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