Mental Brain

Peter Shankman is a busy guy - a media entrepreneur who runs several businesses, gives keynote speeches around the world, hosts a popular podcast, runs marathons and Iron Mans, is a licensed skydiver, dabbles in angel investing, and is a loving father to his young daughter. Simply put, he always seems to have more than 24 hours in a day. How does he do it? Peter attributes his unusually high energy level and extreme productivity to his ADHD.

Two New York Times best-selling authors unveil new research showing what meditation can really do for the brain. In the last 20 years, meditation and mindfulness have gone from being kind of cool to becoming an omnipresent Band-Aid for fixing everything from your weight to your relationship to your achievement level. Unveiling here the kind of cutting-edge research that has made them giants in their fields, Daniel Goleman and Richard J Davidson show us the truth about what meditation can really do for us.

This breakthrough book presents a disarmingly simple idea: The way we pay attention in daily life can play a critical role in our health and well-being. According to Dr. Les Fehmi, a clinical psychologist and researcher, many of us have become stuck in “narrow-focus attention”: a tense, constricted, survival mode of attention that holds us in a state of chronic stress - and which lies at the root of common ailments including anxiety, depression, ADD, stress-related migraines, and more.

How does a neural network become a brain? While neurobiologists investigate how nature accomplishes this feat, computer scientists interested in AI strive to achieve this through technology. The Self-Assembling Brain tells the stories of both fields, exploring the historical and modern approaches taken by the scientists pursuing answers to the quandary: What information is necessary to make an intelligent neural network? As Peter Robin Hiesinger argues, "the information problem" underlies both fields.

A leading neuroplasticity researcher and the coauthor of the groundbreaking books Brain Lock and The Mind and the Brain, Jeffrey M. Schwartz has spent his career studying the structure and neuronal firing patterns of the human brain. He pioneered the first mindfulness-based treatment program for people suffering from OCD, teaching patients how to achieve long-term relief from their compulsions. In You Are Not Your Brain, Schwartz and Gladding carefully outline their program.

Why is it easier to ruminate over hurt feelings than it is to bask in the warmth of being appreciated? Because your brain evolved to learn quickly from bad experiences and slowly from good ones, but you can change this.

As a pediatrician, Katrina Ubell, MD, always struggled with her weight—she was either 40 pounds overweight, or struggling to lose that weight. Although she'd regularly counsel parents on the importance of keeping their kids healthy and fostering good eating habits, Dr. Ubell, as a busy professional, was never able to do the same for herself. Like everyone else, she tried many different diets and programs, but would always regain the weight.

Neuroscientific discoveries have begun to illuminate the workings of the active brain in intricate detail. In fact, sometimes it seems that in order to be a cutting-edge therapist, not only do you need knowledge of traditional psychotherapeutic models, but a solid understanding of the role the brain plays as well. But theory is never enough. You also need to know how to apply the theories to work with actual clients during sessions.

Stress is our internal response to an experience that our brain perceives as threatening or challenging. Trauma is our response to an experience in which we feel powerless or lacking agency. Until now, researchers have treated these conditions as different, but they actually lie along a continuum. Dr. Elizabeth Stanley explains the significance of this continuum, how it affects our resilience in the face of challenge, and why an event that's stressful for one person can be traumatizing for another.

It has never been harder to focus than it is now. We live in a noisy, crowded, stressful world that changes so fast, we’re always running to catch up. Traditional education doesn’t give us the skills to manage. And if you live largely in your own head, techniques like mindfulness fall short. In extremes, we turn to external solutions like social media, alcohol, and recreational drugs, just to get some space from our own thoughts.

As we age, our memories become unreliable; we misplace things and forget details. In Ultimate Memory Magic, memory expert Jim Karol shows that these side effects of aging are not inevitable. His memory-boosting system, called Cogmental Intelligence, goes beyond preserving mental acuity and actually enhances memory and mental function through lifestyle changes and mental exercises. Concentration, alertness, and focus can all be strengthened - by anyone, at any age.

Throughout our life, we look for ways to keep our minds sharp and effortlessly productive. Now, globetrotting neurosurgeon Dr. Sanjay Gupta offers “the book all of us need, young and old” (Walter Isaacson, number-one New York Times best-selling author of The Code Breaker) with insights from top scientists all over the world, whose cutting-edge research can help you heighten and protect brain function and maintain cognitive health at any age.

Pain is an inevitable part of existence, but severe debilitating or chronic pain is a pathological condition that diminishes the quality of life. The Brain and Pain explores the present and future of pain management, providing a comprehensive understanding based on the latest discoveries from many branches of neuroscience. Richard Ambronthe former director of a neuroscience lab that conducted leading research in this fieldexplains the science of how and why we feel pain.

Why do I feel so overwhelmed? Why did I say that embarrassing thing? Is everyone else achieving more than me? What can I actually do to make a difference? Am I the only one feeling this way? In her internationally bestselling debut book—which draws on her own experience with mental health issues and neurodivergence—writer, podcaster, and advocate Gemma Styles captures the voice of her generation as she gets curious about how we tick in order to better understand and navigate the unique pressures of life today.

A prescriptive guide to restoring cognitive calm, based on Amen Clinics chief psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Annibali’s three decades of treating patients who suffer from overloaded, overstimulated brains. Dr. Joseph Annibali has treated thousands of people with overloaded, overstimulated brains. Some people describe their brain as being “in chaos”; others feel that their brain is “on fire”. But whether they are ultimately diagnosed with anxiety, disabling OCD, depression, bipolar disorder, or even substance abuse, the underlying problem is a "Too-Busy Brain".

The human brain is an extraordinary machine. Its ability to process information and adapt to circumstances by reprogramming itself is unparalleled and it remains the best source of inspiration for recent developments in artificial intelligence. In How We Learn, Stanislas Dehaene decodes the brain's biological mechanisms, delving into the neuronal, synaptic, and molecular processes taking place. He explains why youth is such a sensitive period, but assures us that our abilities continue into adulthood and that we can enhance our learning and memory at any age.

Trouble sleeping, panic attacks, knots in your stomach, excessive worry, doubts, phobias - anxiety comes in many shapes and sizes, and affects millions of people. But you don’t have to suffer anymore. In Retrain Your Anxious Brain, renowned therapist and anxiety expert John Tsilimparis, MFT, shares the groundbreaking program he’s created to help hundreds of people (himself included) free themselves from crippling anxiety and live healthier, happier lives.

What if your best days weren’t left to chance, but something you could control and activate at will? Most of us want to be a little happier, a little more focused, and a lot less stressed. We want simple approaches that are easy to fold into our everyday lives. In Sharp, you’ll discover dozens of evidence-backed strategies to help you unlock your potential and enhance your performance—whether at work, school, home, or in relationships. Cognitive scientist Therese Huston unpacks the latest neuroscience research to deliver a gold mine of techniques to help you feel your sharpest.

In Mind Power, Olivia Stone reveals the latest scientific discoveries on the connection between brain energy and mental health. Through an innovative, research-based approach, this audiobook will guide you in understanding anxiety, depression, PTSD, and other disorders, providing practical strategies to strengthen your mind and regain inner balance.

In Trauma and Memory, best-selling author Dr. Peter Levine (creator of the Somatic Experiencing approach) tackles one of the most difficult and controversial questions of PTSD/trauma therapy: Can we trust our memories? While some argue that traumatic memories are unreliable and not useful, others insist that we absolutely must rely on memory to make sense of past experience. Dr. Levine suggests that there are elements of truth in both camps.