Brain Mysteries

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changes to the brain and spinal cord, many doctors and patients still labor under misguided cultural notions and outdated scientific dogmas.

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The blockbuster bestseller that kickstarted a new genre--the medical thriller--is now available in trade paperback for the first time. They called it "minor surgery," but Nancy Greenly, Sean Berman and a dozen others--all admitted to Boston Memorial Hospital for routine procedures--were victims...

Things never seem to go as easily for 13-year-old Frankie as they do for her sister, Tess. Unlike Tess, Frankie is neurodivergent. In her case, that means she can't stand to be touched, loud noises bother her, she's easily distracted, she hates changes in her routine, and she has to go see a therapist while other kids get to hang out at the beach. It also means Frankie has trouble making friends. She did have one - Colette - but they're not friends anymore. It's complicated. Then, just weeks before the end of seventh grade, Colette unexpectedly shows up at Frankie's door.

In 1848 Vermont, railroad foreman Phineas Gage sat above a hole, preparing to blast through some granite. A 13-pound iron rod fell from his hands into the hole, triggering the explosion and sending the rod straight through Phineas' head. Thirty minutes after this terrible accident, Phineas sat on the steps of a hotel, patiently waiting for the town doctor to arrive. He chatted with his amazed coworkers as if nothing had happened. But something terrible had happened.

In Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?, neuroscientists and zombie enthusiasts Timothy Verstynen and Bradley Voytek apply their neuro-know-how to dissect the puzzle of what has happened to the zombie brain to make the undead act differently than their human prey. Combining tongue-in-cheek analysis with modern neuroscientific principles, Verstynen and Voytek show how zombism can be understood in terms of current knowledge regarding how the brain works.

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.

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.

There are plenty of books that profess to tell you the meaning of life. But where can you go to find answers to the little mysteries of life that drive you nuts until you find their solution? Imponderables are questions that cannot be answered by numbers or measurements or standard reference books, and Feldman has devoted his life to the eradication of all imponderables.

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.

Do you perform unnecessary rituals in your daily routine? Are you a hoarder, afraid to throw out anything, no matter how useless? Are you unable to control runaway thoughts? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you may be among the five million Americans who suffer from OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), a mental disorder that can wreak havoc in the daily lives of its sufferers and their families. Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz can help.

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.

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.

Matt, a shy but engaging and resourceful student, discovers that his recently deceased father was involved in research that could enable the construction of the world's first conscious machine. Matt's enquiries lead to him being kidnapped, as he is caught in the crossfire between two groups pursuing that goal - one led by a Russian billionaire and another backed by the US military. Matt has to do more than simply survive. He has to harness these powerful forces to his own ends, and his life as well as his family's is at stake.

Is she insane or psychic? Private investigator Taylor Morrison has just managed to put her life back together after the death of her husband when strange things begin to happen around her. Things that can’t be explained. Taylor begins her desperate search for answers only to discover that others know what she can do, and they’ll stop at nothing to control her and the ability she now possesses - even if it means using the people she cares about against her.

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.

Multiple sclerosis. Parkinson’s disease. Alzheimer’s. ALS. Chances are that you know someone with a neurologic disease. Because the brain controls so much and is integral to our identity, the diseases that affect it are uniquely devastating both to patients and families. And because it remains the most mysterious of our vital organs, treating the brain is an ongoing puzzle.

Ashton is an electrician. Julie waits tables. Both are broke and trapped in their dead-end jobs, rundown apartment, and bitterly cold hometown of Fridley, Minnesota. There’s nothing they could want more than to escape to someplace warm and sunny. So, when they find an ad in a magazine offering them one thousand dollars each and an all-expenses paid trip to a “tropical destination” for participating in a research study, they both jump at the opportunity.

Chapter one in book one of the groundbreaking Lightning Brain action-adventure series that extrapolates the latest science, political intrigue, and contemporary lifestyles while tracing the twists and turns in the life of Electra “Kit” Kittner. She grows up in a frightened, intolerant America threatened by “Techno-Plague” and Middle East terrorism. The action builds relentlessly, from lighter childhood adventures to darker realities caused by America’s threats that are exacerbated by a harsh government that would treat her badly if it were to discover what she is.

What is this strange mental world that seems so essential to being human? The conscious mind brings together sensations, perceptions, thoughts and memories to generate the seamless movie of a person's life. It makes us aware of the world around us and our own self. How all this emerges from a kilogram of brain cells is one of the greatest unanswered questions.