Sergei Korsakoff, Alois Alzheimer, James Parkinson, Hans Asperger and other eminent scientists, are all names which have become synonymous with a disease, a syndrome, or an autistic disorder. Although the names of these psychiatrists and neurologists are familiar, we often know little about the individuals themselves and the circumstances surrounding their discoveries. What exactly did they discover, and who were their patients? Douwe Draaisma expertly reconstructs the lives of these and e...

**“Fascinating. Doidge’s book is a remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain.”—Oliver Sacks, MD, author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a HatWhat is neuroplasticity? Is it possible to change your brain? Norman Doidge’s inspiring guide to the new brain science explains all of this and more**An astonishing new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable, and proving...

A riveting, revelatory, and moving account of the author’s struggles with anxiety, and of the history of efforts by scientists, philosophers, and writers to understand the conditionAs recently as thirty-five years ago, anxiety did not exist as a diagnostic category. Today, it is the most common form of officially classified mental illness. Scott Stossel gracefully guides us across the terrain of an affliction that is pervasive yet too often misunderstood.Dr...

A famed neuroscientist explores the emotions that make life worth living in "clear, accessible, and at times eloquent prose" ( San Francisco Chronicle).In the seventeenth century, the philosopher Spinoza examined the role emotion played in human survival and culture. Yet, the neurobiological roots of joy and sorrow remained a mystery. Today, we spend countless resources doctoring our feelings with alcohol, prescription drugs, health clubs, therapy, vacatio...

"A tour de force: an assessment of the 'culture' of mind–brain relations beginning with the ancients and ending in the present." —Edward Shorter, PhD, National Book Award finalist and author of A History of PsychiatryNeuropsychiatry has a distinguished history, yet its ideals and principles fell out of fashion in the early twentieth century as neurology and psychiatry diverged into separate disciplines. Later, neuropsychiatry reemerged as the two disciplin...

How do our brains store—and then conjure up—past experiences to make us who we are?A twinge of sadness, a rush of love, a knot of loss, a whiff of regret. Memories have the power to move us, often when we least expect it, a sign of the complex neural process that continues in the background of our everyday lives. This process shapes us: filtering the world around us, informing our behavior and feeding our imagination.Psychiatrist Veronica O’Keane has spent ...

What is dreaming, and what causes it? Why are dreams so strange and why are they so hard to remember? Replacing dream mystique with modern dream science, J. Allan Hobson provides a new and increasingly complete picture of how dreaming is created by the brain. Focusing on dreaming to explain the mechanisms of sleep, this book explores how the new science of dreaming is affecting theories in psychoanalysis, and how it is helping our understanding of the causes of mental illness. J. Allan Hob...

Entertaining and educational, Douwe Draaisma's Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older raises almost as many questions as it answers. Draaisma applies a blend of scholarship, poetic sensibility and keen observation in exploring the nature of autobiographical memory, covering subjects such as déjà-vu, near death experiences and the effect of severe trauma on memory recall, as well as human perceptions of time at different stages in life. A highly accessible and personal read, this book will not...

It is the most complex and mysterious object in the universe. Covered by a dull grey membrane, it resembles a gigantic, convoluted fungus. Its inscrutability has captivated scientists, philosophers and artists for centuries. It is, of course, the human brain.With the help of science we can now begin to understand the extraordinary complexity of the brain's circuits: we can see which nerve cells generate electricity as we fall in love, tell a lie or dream o...

How Sane Are You?The boundary between sanity and madness is not as clear as we like to think.The traits we admire in artists, visionaries, leaders, and innovators often overlap with those that, in their extreme forms, can lead to mental disorder. Creativity and bipolar disorder. Inspiration and psychosis. Charisma and psychopathy. Where exactly do we draw the line—and why?In this award-winning book, psychiatrist and philosopher Neel Burton explores ...

A perfect introduction for students and laypeople alike, A Degree in a Book: Psychology provides you with all the concepts you need to understand the fundamental issues.Filled with helpful diagrams, suggestions for further reading, and easily digestible features on the history of psychology, this book makes understanding the human mind easier than ever. Including the theories of Francis Galton, Sigmund Freud, Ivan Pavlov, and many more, it covers the whole range of psychol...

About one American in five receives a diagnosis of major depression over the course of a lifetime. That's despite the fact that many such patients have no mood disorder; they're not sad, but suffer from anxiety, fatigue, insomnia, or a tendency to obsess about the whole business. "There is a term for what they have," writes Edward Shorter, "and it's a good old-fashioned term that has gone out of use. They have nerves." In How Everyone Became Depressed, Edward Shorter, a distinguis...