The Woman Who Changed Her Brain: Stories of Transformation from the Frontier of Brain Science

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain

Maryanne Wolf · 320 pages

In the Book. Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Harper Perennial, 2008. This is an account of how our brains change as we learn to read.

Awakenings

Oliver Sacks · 344 pages

This is the extraordinary account of a group of 20 patients, survivors of the great sleeping-sickness epidemic which swept the world in the 1920s, and the astonishing, explosive "awakening" effect they experienced 40 years later through a new drug L-DOPA administered by Dr Sacks. The stories he tells of these remarkable individuals are moving, often courageous and sometimes tragic. Through them he

Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention

Stanislas Dehaene · 388 pages

A renowned cognitive neuroscientist's fascinating and highly informative account of how the brain acquires readingHow can a few black marks on a white page evoke an entire universe of sounds and meanings? In this riveting investigation, Stanislas Dehaene provides an accessible account of the brain circuitry of reading and explores what he calls the "reading paradox": Our cortex is the product of m

The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum

Temple Grandin, Richard Panek · 256 pages

I have before me as a reviewer for amazon.com/vine an Advance Reading Copy of Grandin's THE AUTISTIC BRAIN (2013). Notably absent are a score or more of illustrations.

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School

John Medina · 304 pages

Most of us have no idea what's really going on inside our heads. Yet brain scientists have uncovered details every business leader, parent, and teacher should know—such as the brain's need for physical activity to work at its best.How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget—and so important to repeat new knowledge? Is

The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain

Alice W. Flaherty · 321 pages

Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey into Seeing in Three Dimensions

Susan R. Barry · 260 pages

When neuroscientist Susan Barry was fifty years old, she took an unforgettable trip to Manhattan. As she emerged from the dim light of the subway into the sunshine, she saw a view of the city that she had witnessed many times in the past but now saw in an astonishingly new way. Skyscrapers on street corners appeared to loom out toward her like the bows of giant ships. Tree branches projected upwar

My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey

Jill Bolte Taylor · 188 pages

Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect

Matthew D. Lieberman · 379 pages

We are profoundly social creatures. Here, renowned psychologist Matthew Lieberman explores groundbreaking research in social neuroscience revealing that our need to connect with other people is even more fundamental than our need for food or shelter. Because of this, our brain uses its spare time to learn about the social world--other people and our relation to them. He argues that our need to rea

Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist

Christof Koch · 181 pages

"What links conscious experience of pain, joy, color, and smell to bioelectrical activity in the brain? How can anything physical give rise to nonphysical, subjective, conscious states? Christof Koch has devoted much of his career to bridging the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the physics of the brain and phenomenal experience. This engaging book--part scientific overview, part memoir, part fu

Making Up the Mind

Chris Frith · 234 pages

"Making up the Mind is the first accessible account of experimental studies showing how the brain creates our mental world. Using evidence from brain imaging, psychological experiments, and studies with patients, Chris Frith, one of the world's leading neuroscientists, explores the relationship between the mind and the brain."--Jacket.

Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain

Patricia S. Churchland · 304 pages

What happens when we accept that everything we feel and think stems not from an immaterial spirit but from electrical and chemical activity in our brains? Churchland grounds the philosophy of mind in the essential ingredients of biology. She reflects with humor on how she came to harmonize science and philosophy, the mind and the brain, abstract ideals and daily life.

A Mother's Brain

Susana Carmona

The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain

James Fallon · 246 pages

A compelling career memoir by an award-winning neuroscientist describes how while studying his own family's brain scans for research he made the disturbing discovery that his own reflected a pattern he recognized from those in the brains of serial killers, a finding that offered new insights into the role of biology in behavior.

The Man Who Couldn't Stop

David Adam · 324 pages

**An intimate look at the power of intrusive thoughts, how our brains can turn against us, and living with obsessive compulsive disorder** Have you ever had a strange urge to jump from a tall building or steer your car into oncoming traffic? You are not alone. In this captivating fusion of science, history, and personal memoir, David Adam explores the weird thoughts that exist within every mind

This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

Daniel J. Levitin · 321 pages

This book explores the connection between music and its performances, its composition, how we listen to it, why we enjoy it and the human brain.

The Female Brain

Louann Brizendine · 279 pages

While doing research as a medical student at Yale and then as a resident and faculty member at Harvard, Dr. Brizendine discovered that almost all of the clinical data on neurology, psychology, and neurobiology focused exclusively on males. In response to the need for information on the female mind, Brizendine established the first clinic in the country to study and treat women's brain function. At

Proust Was a Neuroscientist

Jonah Lehrer · 242 pages

"Quick book recommendation for you. I finished reading this about a week ago and it's still lingering in my thoughts. I always intend to blog the dogeared pages, but never get around to it. In a nutshell: Jonah Lehrer explores how artists from various disciplines and eras have pre-empted neuroscience by intuiting or reflecting particular parts of brain function. Lovely, accessible, thoughtful, a s

Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves

Sharon Begley · 304 pages

Is it really possible to change the structure and function of the brain, and in so doing alter how we think and feel? The answer is a resounding yes. In late 2004, leading Western scientists joined the Dalai Lama at his home in Dharamsala, India, to address this very question--and in the process brought about a revolution in our understanding of the human mind. In this fascinating and far-reaching

The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness

Antonio R. Damasio · 396 pages

Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences

Cordelia Fine · 320 pages

Subtitle: How our minds, society, and neurosexism create difference Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience and psychology, the author criticizes claims about innate biological differences between men and women's minds as being faulty and exaggerated and considers how cultural and societal beliefs contribute to sex differences. Cornelia Fine is an academic psychologist.

Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday Deceptions

Stephen L. Macknik, Susana Martinez-Conde, Sandra Blakeslee · 291 pages

Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde, the founders of the new discipline of neuromagic, have convinced some of the world's greatest magicians to allow scientists to study their techniques for tricking the brain. This book is the result of the authors' yearlong, world-wide exploration of magic and how its principles apply to our behavior. Magic tricks fool us because humans have hardwired proc

Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys But Never Forget How To Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Behavior

Sandra Aamodt, Sam Wang · 248 pages

Neurocomic

Hana Ros · 136 pages

Nonfiction graphic novel explaining the physiology of the brain and describing theoretical and experimental developments that led to our present understanding.