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

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

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

I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine

Daniel J. Levitin

Into the Silent Land: Travels in Neuropsychology

Paul Broks · 246 pages

The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity

Norman Doidge · 432 pages

"The New York Times bestselling author of The Brain That Changes Itself presents astounding advances in the treatment of brain injury and illness. In The Brain That Changes Itself, Norman Doidge described the most important breakthrough in our understanding of the brain in four hundred years: the discovery that the brain can change its own structure and function in response to mental experience-wh

The Man Who Tasted Shapes

Richard E. Cytowic · 296 pages

Brain Maker: The Power of Gut Microbes to Heal and Protect Your Brain–for Life

David Perlmutter, Kristin Loberg · 310 pages

Debilitating brain disorders are on the rise-from children diagnosed with autism and ADHD to adults developing dementia at younger ages than ever before. But a medical revolution is underway that can solve this problem: Astonishing new research is revealing that the health of your brain is, to an extraordinary degree, dictated by the state of your microbiome - the vast population of organisms that

The Man Who Wasn't There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self

Anil Ananthaswamy · 312 pages

"In the tradition of Oliver Sacks, a tour of the latest neuroscience of schizophrenia, autism, Alzheimer's disease, ecstatic epilepsy, Cotard's syndrome, out-of-body experiences, and other disorders--revealing the awesome power of the human sense of self from a master of science journalism Anil Ananthaswamy's extensive in-depth interviews venture into the lives of individuals who offer perspective

The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human

V.S. Ramachandran · 384 pages

Explores why the human brain is so unique and how it became so enchantingly complex. This title reveals what baffling and extreme case studies can teach us about the brain and how it evolved.

The Other Brain: From Dementia to Schizophrenia, How New Discoveries about the Brain Are Revolutionizing Medicine and Science

R. Douglas Fields · 371 pages

Despite everything that has been written about the brain, a very important part of this vital organ has been overlooked in most books until now. This book is the story of glia, which make up approximately 85 percent of the cells in the brain. Long neglected as little more than cerebral packing material ("glia" means glue), glia are sparking a revolution in brain science. Glia are completely differ

Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science

John Fleischman · 96 pages

Phineas Gage was truly a man with a hole in his head. Phineas, a railroad construction foreman, was blasting rock near Cavendish, Vermont, in 1848 when a thirteen-pound iron rod was shot through his brain. Miraculously, he survived to live another eleven years and become a textbook case in brain science. At the time, Phineas Gage seemed to completely recover from his accident. He could walk, ta

Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping

Robert M. Sapolsky, H. Lee Hetherington · 560 pages

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

Barbara Arrowsmith-Young

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

Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body

Jo Marchant · 336 pages

"A rigorous, skeptical, deeply reported look at the new science behind the mind's extraordinary ability to heal the body ... While we accept that stress or anxiety can damage our health, the idea of "healing thoughts" was long ago hijacked by New Age gurus and spiritual healers. Recently, however, serious scientists from a range of fields have been uncovering evidence that our thoughts, emotions,

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.

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.

Head Trip

Jeff Warren · 391 pages

Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind

V.S. Ramachandran, Sandra Blakeslee · 352 pages

Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief

Andrew B. Newberg, Eugene G. D'Aquili, Vince Rause · 240 pages

I Am a Strange Loop

Douglas R. Hofstadter · 424 pages

Hofstadter's long-awaited return to the themes of Gödel, Escher, Bach--an original and controversial view of the nature of consciousness and identity. What do we mean when we say "I"? Can a self, a soul, a consciousness, an "I" arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? This book argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is a special kind of abstract

Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction

Susan Blackmore · 554 pages

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Robert M. Sapolsky · 790 pages

Why do we do the things we do? Over a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky's genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise mo

Smarter: The New Science of Building Brain Power

Dan Hurley · 275 pages

With vivid stories of lives transformed, science journalist Dan Hurley delivers practical findings for people of every age and ability. Along the way, he narrates with acid-tongued wit his experiences as a human guinea pig, road-testing commercial brain-training programs, learning to play the Renaissance lute, getting physically fit, even undergoing transcranial direct current stimulation.