States of Mind - New Discoveries About How Our Brains Make Us Who We are (Paperback)

This book compiles public lectures by eight neuroscientists in a series sponsored by the Smithsonian Associates and the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, and edited by a former managing editor for Time-Life Books. Each lecture serves as a primer for the general reader. However, the coverage is a little skewed. While the experts here cut a wide swath in brain research - including development, learning, emotions, mental illness, addiction, and dreaming - nearly all emphasize the rote of stress, fear, anxiety, depression, and kindred downers as essential in building our brains. To be sure, without hardwiring of fear and our responses to it, we would lack the wherewithal "to take arms against a sea of troubles." All the same, from Jerome Kagan's pioneering studies of shyness to J. Allan Hobson's comment that most dreams are unpleasant, one can't help but feel there must be more to the life of the mind. That said, much here is of interest. Kay Redfield Jamison provides a fascinating lecture on depression and manic-depression in relation to creativity; her examples include Byron, Woolf, and Hemingway. Such conditions have genetic components, and she offers evidence that the expansive thinking associated with elevated mood states may lead to making novel connections and combinations of ideas. Elsewhere, in pieces contributed by Bruce McEwen (stress and the brain), Esther Steinberg (emotions and diseases), and Joseph LeDoux (the power of emotions), contributors discuss how emotions can be conditioned and affect unconscious memory, along with the recurrent theme that our nervous systems are intimately connected to the immune and endocrine systems. Potentially, hormones can upset the balance of the immune system and contribute to hypertension, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and other chronic ills. But Steven Hyman, among others, reminds us that the brain is also extraordinarily plastic - capable of unlearning bad habits, as well as learning new tricks. Good as far as it goes. But it would be nice to also have a series of lectures that accentuates the positive. (Kirkus Reviews)

An all-star lineup of scientists takes you to the front lines of brain research…

Are we born to be shy? Why do we remember some events so clearly and others not at all? Are creativity and depression somehow linked? Do our dreams really have deeper meanings?

Now in paperback, here is a wonderfully accessible introduction to the most important recent findings about how our health, behavior, feelings, and identities are influenced by what goes on inside our brains. In this timely book, eight pioneering researchers offer lively and stimulating discussions on the most exciting discoveries as well as a new way of understanding our emotions, moods, memories, and dreams. Inside, you’ll find:

• J. ALLAN HOBSON, author of the groundbreaking The Dreaming Brain, leading a tour of dream states and explaining why we dream and what dream studies reveal about our minds
• ERIC KANDEL, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Medicine, taking us along the chain of biological events that create long-term memories, revealing how we stand at the brink of helping those who suffer from grave mental and memory disorders
• STEVEN HYMAN, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, tracing the links between nature and nurture, particularly in addiction and mental illness, to explain the relationship between inherited tendencies and the impact of life experience
• KAY REDFIELD JAMISON, bestselling author of An Unquiet Mind, explaining manic depression, its prevalence among gifted artists, writers, and musicians, and the societal questions raised by trying to eradicate the "depression gene"

. . . and much, much more. Whether discussing the brain-body connection, the sources of emotion, or the ethereal world of dreams, States of Mind enables you to share in the very latest explorations into the nature and function of the human mind.

General

Imprint:	John Wiley & Sons
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	February 2023
First published:	2001
Editors:	Roberta Conlan • Etc
Dimensions:	216 x 141 x 15mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	224
ISBN-13:	978-0-471-39973-5
Categories:	Books > Social sciences > Psychology > The self, ego, identity, personality Books > Medicine > Clinical & internal medicine > Neurology & clinical neurophysiology Books > Social sciences > Psychology > Philosophy & theory of psychology > Behavioural theory (Behaviourism) Promotions
LSN:	0-471-39973-6
Barcode:	9780471399735

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