Brain Mysteries

From the renowned neuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author of Incognito comes the companion volume to the international PBS series about how your life shapes your brain, and how your brain shapes your life. "An ideal introduction to how biology generates the mind.... Clear...

Can the mind be explained by what we know about the brain? Is a person’s being determined by their body alone or by their mind and body as separate elements? In this incisive and engaging book, Wilder Penfield, whose work pioneered such research, shares insights into these and other questions, providing an in-depth look at the function of the brain and its relationship to the action of the mind.

Detective Erin O’Reilly is no stranger to close calls. She and her K-9 Rolf have dodged more than their share of blades, blasts, and bullets as they’ve taken on the worst New York City has to offer. But the last perp came a little too close, leaving one of Erin’s fellow officers with a bullet-hole in his head and her own brain scrambled. Erin needs a break, but as her long-running infiltration of the O’Malley gang enters its final act, she can’t afford to slack off. And that’s not her only headache.

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.

From the creator of WE HAVE NO IDEA, an introductory journey into your own mind—if your inner voice had a Ph.D. in brain science, cracked jokes, and drew cartoons. Why do you love? Why do you lie? What makes you happy? Every single thought you have comes from one place: your brain. But what...

Kate Bennett vanished from a parking lot eleven years ago, leaving behind her husband and young daughter. When she shows up at a Montana gas station, clutching an infant and screaming for help, investigators believe she may have been abducted by a cult. Kate’s return flips her family’s world upside down—her husband is remarried, and her daughter barely remembers her. Kate herself doesn’t look or act like she did before.

Written by Dr. Teri James Bellis, one of the world's foremost authorities on APD, this is the first book on the subject that is completely accessible to the public. Through helpful case studies, you'll finally discover the answers you need, as well as proven strategies for living with APD. Comprehensive and powerfully prescriptive, this book contains vital information for anyone who suffers from this serious disorder.

"One of America's most courageous young journalists" and the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Brain on Fire investigates the shocking mystery behind the dramatic experiment that revolutionized modern medicine (NPR). Doctors have struggled for centuries to define insanity--how...

The current state of confusion about the real nature of spiritual experience is due to a lack of understanding of how the brain functions as a channel for the expression of consciousness. In this book, Gopi Krishna challenges scientists and psychiatrists alike to stop ignoring the important part the physical brain plays in our development.

Each of us will know physical pain in our lives, but none of us knows when it will come or how long it will stay. Today as much as 10 percent of the population of the United States suffers from chronic pain. It is more widespread, misdiagnosed, and undertreated than any major disease. While recent research has shown that pain produces pathological changes to the brain and spinal cord, many doctors and patients still labor under misguided cultural notions and outdated scientific dogmas.

The 20th anniversary edition of the definitive classic on defeating obsessive-compulsive behavior, with all-new material from the author. An estimated 5 million Americans suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and live diminished lives in which they are compelled to obsess about...

In Sweden, hundreds of refugee children fall into a state that resembles sleep for months or years at a time. In Le Roy, a town in upstate New York, teenage girls develop involuntary twitches and seizures that spread like a conta­gion. In the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, employees experience headaches...

How does one begin to treat such cases, to counsel people whose lives may be changed forever? How does one train the next generation of clinicians to deal with the moral and medical aspects of brain disease? Dr. Ropper and his colleague answer these questions by taking the listener into a rarified world where lives and minds hang in the balance.

Archaeologist Louise Cantor returns home to Sweden, and makes a devastating discovery: her only child, twenty-eight-year-old Henrik, dead in his bed. The police rule his death a suicide, but she knows he was murdered; her quest to find out what really happened to Henrik takes her across the globe to Barcelona, where her son kept a secret apartment; Sydney, Australia, to find Aron, her estranged ex-husband and Henrik's father; and to Maputo, Mozambique, where she learns the awful truth behind an AIDS hospice.

""A breakthrough book. In a world of increasingly specialized knowledge, it takes a particular gift and some stubbornness to cut across the fields of neuroscience, psychiatry, philosophy and psychology and to ask the fundamental question: Why it is that we can allow our best selves to be...

People behave in strange ways. We sometimes giggle when someone falls down, swear we've been to places we haven't, or continue believing in something despite scientific evidence to the contrary. For more than a decade, Scientific American MIND's long-running feature "Ask the Brains" has addressed questions from their readers on the quirks and quandaries of human behavior, psychology, and neurology. Here, in Ask the Brains, Part 1, they’ve compiled some of the best and most interesting inquiries about the human brain.

The long-awaited craft book from Steve Almond, based on three decades of writing, failing, and trying again. In Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow, Steve Almond shares the insights gleaned from three decades as a beloved teacher and mentor, and a considerably less-beloved literary rabble...

When Mia Sinclair-Kroner wakes from a coma, all she can remember are the movies she’s known and loved. Her college friends quickly assemble for a weekend party, in an effort to help her remember. But with old friends come old wounds, and it soon becomes clear that Mia’s accident might not have been an accident at all.

The Memory Thief is the remarkable true story of a team of doctors who - through years of scientific sleuthing and observant care - discover a surprising connection between opioids and memory, one that holds promise and peril for any one of us.

When CIA Agent Cameron Hansen receives a call from his friend Mitzi Lenz, an FBI pathologist, regarding her missing father, they soon are embroiled in a desperate race to thwart Hansen's old enemy, Juan Carlos Perez, a powerful tech magnate and international drug trafficker. Perez is doing secret experimental brain implant operations on victims kidnapped from Mexican farms. As Cameron and Mitzi struggle to understand the purpose of the hi-tech implants, Perez draws closer to his ambitious goal.