Psychology Brain

Human beings are primates, and primates are political animals. Our brains, therefore, are designed not just to hunt and gather but also to help us get ahead socially, often via deception and self-deception. But while we may be self-interested schemers, we benefit by pretending otherwise. The less we know about our own ugly motives, the better - and thus, we don't like to talk, or even think, about the extent of our selfishness. This is "the elephant in the brain".

The science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology. Leading the charge is psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, whose research overturns the long-standing belief that emotions are automatic, universal, and hardwired in different brain regions. Instead, Barrett shows, we construct each instance of emotion through a unique interplay of brain, body, and culture.

In Brain Rules for Baby, Dr. John Medina shares what the latest science says about how to raise smart and happy children from zero to five. This book is destined to revolutionize parenting. Just one of the surprises: The best way to get your children into the college of their choice? Teach them impulse control. Brain Rules for Baby bridges the gap between what scientists know and what parents practice.

Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent more than three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust.

We've all seen the happiness on the face of a child while playing in the school yard. Or the blissful abandon of a golden retriever racing across a lawn. This is the joy of play. By definition, play is purposeless, all-consuming, and fun. But as Dr. Stuart Brown illustrates, play is anything but trivial. It is a biological drive as integral to our health as sleep or nutrition. We are designed by nature to flourish through play.

From the author of the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller The Female Brain, here is the eagerly awaited follow-up book that demystifies the puzzling male brain.

Dr. Louann Brizendine, the founder of the first clinic in the country to study gender differences in brain, behavior, and hormones, turns her attention to the male brain, showing how, through every phase of life, the "male reality" is fundamentally different from the female one. Exploring the latest breakthroughs in male psychology and neurology with her trademark accessibility and candor, she reveals that the male brain:

*is a lean, mean, problem-solving machine. Faced with a personal problem, a man will use his analytical brain structures, not his emotional ones, to find a solution.

*thrives under competition, instinctively plays rough and is obsessed with rank and hierarchy.

*has an area for sexual pursuit that is 2.5 times larger than the female brain, consuming him with sexual fantasies about female body parts.

*experiences such a massive increase in testosterone at puberty that he perceive others' faces to be more aggressive.


The Male Brain finally overturns the stereotypes. Impeccably researched and at the cutting edge of scientific knowledge, this is a book that every man, and especially every woman bedeviled by a man, will need to own.

Praise for The Female Brain:
"Louann Brizendine has done a great favor for every man who wants to understand the puzzling women in his life. A breezy and enlightening guide to women and a must-read for men."
—Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence






From the Hardcover edition.

In this pioneering, practical book, Daniel J. Siegel, neuropsychiatrist and author of the bestselling Mindsight, and parenting expert Tina Payne Bryson offer a revolutionary approach to child rearing with twelve key strategies that foster healthy brain development, leading to calmer, happier children. The authors explain—and make accessible—the new science of how a child’s brain is wired and how it matures.

Whether it’s meditation or a walk in nature, reading a sacred text or saying a prayer, there are many ways to tap into a heightened awareness of the world around you and your place in it. In The Awakened Brain, psychologist Dr. Lisa Miller shows you how. Weaving her own deeply personal journey of awakening with her groundbreaking research, Dr. Miller’s book reveals that humans are universally equipped with a capacity for spirituality, and that our brains become more resilient and robust as a result of it.

Zweig, a veteran financial journalist, draws on the latest research in neuroeconomics, a fascinating new discipline that combines psychology, neuroscience, and economics to better understand financial decision making. He shows why we often misunderstand risk and why we tend to be overconfident about our investment decisions. Your Money and Your Brain offers some radical new insights into investing and shows investors how to take control of the battlefield between reason and emotion. Your Money and Your Brain is as entertaining as it is enlightening.

John Ratey, best-selling author and clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, lucidly explains the human brain's workings, and paves the way for a better understanding of how the brain affects who we are. Ratey provides insight into the basic structure and chemistry of the brain, and demonstrates how its systems shape our perceptions, emotions, and behavior. By giving us a greater understanding of how the brain responds to the guidance of its user, he provides us with knowledge that can enable us to improve our lives.

Whether you load your iPod with Bach or Bono, music has a significant role in your life - even if you never realized it. Why does music evoke such powerful moods? The answers are at last becoming clear, thanks to revolutionary neuroscience and the emerging field of evolutionary psychology. Both a cutting-edge study and a tribute to the beauty of music itself, This Is Your Brain on Music unravels a host of mysteries that affect everything from pop culture to our understanding of human nature.

This fascinating book draws on Dr. Jandial's broad-spectrum expertise and brings together the best of various fields - surgery, science, brain structure, the conscious mind - all to explain the bigger picture of brain health and rejuvenation. It is a journey into his operating room, around the world on his surgical missions, inside his laboratory, and to the outer edges of neuroscience to reveal the latest brain breakthroughs that are turning science fiction into reality, translating their implications for everyday life.

This pioneering account sets out to understand the structure of the human brain - the place where mind meets matter. Until recently, the left hemisphere of our brain has been seen as the "rational" side, the superior partner to the right. But is this distinction true? Drawing on a vast body of experimental research, Iain McGilchrist argues while our left brain makes for a wonderful servant, it is a very poor master.

As humans, we think in stories—stories that allow us to feel and share emotions. In order for this phenomenon to work, our brains and the ways in which we tell stories must be attuned to each other. But how exactly does this happen? Tapping into the essence of thinking in stories, Fritz Breithaupt draws on the latest scientific research, including a retelling study (comparable to the telephone game) with more than 12,000 participants, and experiments in which ChatGPT functions as storyteller.

What is art? Many of us think of the arts as entertainment—a luxury of some kind. In Your Brain on Art, authors Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross show how activities from painting and dancing to expressive writing, architecture, and more are essential to our lives.

New York Times best-selling author Dr. Daniel Amen equips you with powerful weapons to battle the inner dragons that are breathing fire on your brain, driving unhealthy behaviors, and robbing you of joy and contentment.

We are in the midst of a global mental health crisis, and mental illnesses are on the rise. But what causes mental illness? And why are mental health problems so hard to treat? Drawing on decades of research, Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Chris Palmer outlines a revolutionary new understanding that for the first time unites our existing knowledge about mental illness within a single framework: mental disorders are metabolic disorders of the brain. Brain Energy will transform the field of mental health, and the lives of countless people around the world.

In Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, renowned neuropsychiatrist Daniel Amen, M.D., includes new, cutting-edge research gleaned from more than 100,000 SPECT brain scans over the last quarter century and scientific evidence that your anxiety, depression, anger, obsessiveness, or impulsiveness could be related to how specific structures work in your brain.

Happiness is a brain function. With a healthier brain always comes a happier life. After studying more than 200,000 brain scans of people from 155 countries, Dr. Amen has discovered five primary brain types and seven neuroscience secrets that influence happiness. In You, Happier, he explains them and offers practical science-based strategies for optimizing your happiness.

Have you ever found yourself wondering “Why do I want more than I have?” Michael Easter, author of The Comfort Crisis and one of the world’s leading experts on behavior change, shows that the problem isn’t you. The problem is your scarcity mindset, left over from our ancient ancestors. They had to constantly seek and consume to survive because vital survival tools like food, material goods, information, and power were scarce and hard to find. But with our modern ability to easily fulfill our ancient desire for more, our hardwired “scarcity brain” is now backfiring.