Human Brain

The entirety of the human brain’s 4-billion-year story can be summarised as the culmination of five evolutionary breakthroughs, starting from the very first brains, all the way to the modern human brains. Each breakthrough emerged from new sets of brain modifications, and equipped animals with a new suite of intellectual faculties. These five breakthroughs are the organising map to this book, and they make up our itinerary for our adventure back in time. Each breakthrough also has fascinating corollaries to breakthroughs in AI.

Using musical examples from Bach to the Beatles, Levitin reveals the role of music in human evolution, shows how our musical preferences begin to form even before we are born and explains why music can offer such an emotional experience. Music is an obsession at the heart of human nature, even more fundamental to our species than language. In This Is Your Brain on Music Levitin offers nothing less than a new way to understand it and its role in human life.

Sharing stories and advice rooted in the science of evolutionary psychology, father and son authors Doug Kenrick and David Lundberg-Kenrick pinpoint the dangers of stone-age problem solving for our lives today, and present a new, systematic way to survive and be happy in the modern world.

An entertaining, scientifically rigorous exploration of the social and biological effects of our wireless world. The way we use technology is affecting our health and happiness. Engaging and entertaining yet scientifically rigorous, this fully revised and updated second edition of i-Minds comprehensively explores an era of screen-based technology's assimilation into our lives, pondering it as both godsend and plague. i-Minds is for anyone interested in fostering health and happiness or who is struggling with the role of screened technology in our lives.

Nothing is more familiar and yet less understood than the human mind. It defines the experience of being human, and yet its workings contain some of the deepest mysteries ever encountered. Written by one of the world's greatest teachers of psychology, The Human Mind provides a masterful and riveting guide to all that we have learned since modern science began probing those mysteries.

Psychologists and neuroscientists struggle with how best to interpret human motivation and decision making. The assumption is that below a mental "surface" of conscious awareness lies a deep and complex set of inner beliefs, values, and desires that govern our thoughts, ideas, and actions, and that to know this depth is to know ourselves. In this profoundly original book, behavioral scientist Nick Chater contends just the opposite: Rather than being the plaything of unconscious currents, the brain generates behaviors in the moment based entirely on our past experiences.

Are we "noble in reason"? Perfect, in God's image? Far from it, says New York University psychologist Gary Marcus. In this lucid and revealing book, Marcus argues that the mind is not an elegantly designed organ but a "kluge", a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption. He unveils a fundamentally new way of looking at the human mind - think duct tape, not supercomputer - that sheds light on some of the most mysterious aspects of human nature.

In the wake of a divorce, science writer and single mother Kayt Sukel made herself a guinea pig in the labs of some unusual love experts to find out. This Is Your Brain on Sex is her lively and hilarious examination of the big questions about love and sex, previously published in hardcover as Dirty Minds. Each chapter of this edgy romp through the romantic brain looks at a different aspect of love above the belt.

Locked away, remote from the rest of the body in its own custom-built casing of skull bone, with no intrinsic moving parts, the human brain remains a tantalising mystery. But now, more than ever before, we have the expertise to tackle this mystery - the last 20 years have seen astounding progress in brain research. Susan Greenfield begins by exploring the roles of different regions of the brain.

Pornography is powerful. Our contemporary culture as been pornified, and it shapes our assumptions about identity, sexuality, the value of women and the nature of relationships. Countless Christian men struggle with the addictive power of porn. But common spiritual approaches of more prayer and accountability groups are often of limited help.

What does a three-pound brain have to do with one’s sex life? A lot, actually. Hooked is about what’s happening to your brain when you’re having sex. Learn about your brain, the positive effects of sex within permanently committed relationships, and how you can protect yourself (especially your brain) from the dangers of casual sex.

Perception marries academic rigor with mainstream accessibility. The research presented and the personalities profiled will show what it means to not only have, but be, your unique human body. The positive ramifications of viewing ourselves from this embodied perspective include greater athletic, academic, and professional achievement, more nourishing relationships, and greater personal well-being. The better we can understand what our bodies are - what they excel at, what they need, what they must avoid - the better we can live our lives.

What is it like to try to heal the body when the mind is under attack? In this gripping and illuminating audiobook, Dr Allan Ropper reveals the extraordinary stories behind some of the life-altering afflictions that he and his staff are confronted with at the Neurology Unit of Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital.Neurologists diagnose and treat serious illnesses of the brain by combining the hard science of medical knowledge with the art of intuitive reasoning.

This is a book of ideas—possibly different and unusual ideas—that are often anti-intuitive, politically incorrect and contrary. It is about how humans view themselves, their world and the Universe. It is about something called a worldview—a collection of mental models that form a structure or frame-work with which the brain classifies and interprets incoming and existing input and forms the basis for what is though, believed, retained or dismissed.

A psychological trigger is something that causes us to act out of urgency - not correctness or even happiness. It’s a switch that is flipped outside of our consciousness. This is fertile ground for some of the worst decisions of our lives. Seize control and of your impulses and make better decisions. Psychological Triggers is an introduction to yourself - your impulses, your desires, and everything in your subconscious that drives you to action.

Daniel Levitin follows up his acclaimed New York Times best-selling first book, This Is Your Brain on Music, with The World in Six Songs, an audacious look at how the brain evolved to play and listen to music in six fundamental forms and gave rise to human culture.

El estudio de la anatomía y el funcionamiento del sistema nervioso y el cerebro se conoce como neurociencia. Para mapear el cerebro de manera mecánica, los neurocientíficos recurren a la biología celular y molecular, la anatomía y la fisiología, el comportamiento y la cognición humanos, y otros campos. Cada neurona, o célula cerebral, en un ser humano adulto tiene aproximadamente 100 mil millones de conexiones con otras neuronas. Todo aprendizaje se basa en la capacidad del cerebro para construir nuevos circuitos y conexiones neuronales, o neuroplasticidad.

Over the past decade neuroscience has uncovered a wealth of new information about our senses and how they serve as our gateway to the world. This splendidly accessible book explores the most intriguing findings of this research. With infectious enthusiasm, Rob DeSalle illuminates not only how we see, hear, smell, touch, taste, maintain balance, feel pain, and rely on other less familiar senses, but also how these senses shape our perception of the world aesthetically, artistically, and musically.

This book by Sufi scholar and thinker Ahmed Hulusi explores the holistic elements that are at the core of the formation of human beings. What are the factors that effect our composition, what must we do to achieve a higher, more enlightened state of existence, what awaits us in the ever after… Great emphasis and analysis is made on understanding the human brain as a means to deciphering the human enigma as well as the resulting effects of religious practices on the brain and their vehemence. Like all of his works, this book has been written for curious minds that wonder what their place ...

At thirty-seven, Dr. Stephanie Cacioppo was content to be single. She was fulfilled by her work on the neuroscience of romantic love—how finding and growing with a partner literally reshapes our brains. That was, until she met the foremost neuroscientist of loneliness. A whirlwind romance led to marriage, to sharing an office at the University of Chicago. After seven years of being inseparable at work and home, she lost her beloved husband following a devastating battle with cancer.