Research Catalog

Title

The Scientific American day in the life of your brain / Judith Horstman.

Author

Horstman, Judith.

Publication

San Francisco : Jossey-Bass, ©2009.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Scientific American, inc.

Description

xvi, 236 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : color illustrations; 25 cm.

Summary

"A 24-hour journal of what's happening in your brain as you sleep, dream, wake up, eat, work, play, fight, love, worry, compete, hope, make important decisions, age, and change."--Page [1] Cover.

Series Statement

Scientific American mind

Uniform Title

Scientific American mind.

Alternative Title

Day in the life of your brain

Subject

• Neurosciences
• Brain
• Human behavior
• Mind and body
• Nervous system
• Behavior
• Mind-Body Relations, Metaphysical
• Nervous System
• Neurosciences
• Brain
• brains
• human behavior
• Nervous system
• Human behavior
• Mind and body

Note

• "A 24-hour journal of what's happening in your brain as you sleep, dream, wake up, eat, work, play, fight, love, worry, compete, hope, make important decisions, age, and change." -- [P.1] Cover.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

• Introduction. You gotta know the territory : a short tour of your brain ; Your neurotransmitters ; Charting the day : your body clocks ; The best of times? -- Coming to consciousness : awake and aware 5 A.M. to 8 A.M. 5:00 a.m. Waking to the world (Your inner alarm clocks ; Your brain chemicals ; Larks and owls ; Coming to our senses ; An orchestra of sensory harmony ; Touch and movement : feeling our way ; Varieties of touch) ; 6:00 a.m. Coming to consciousness (The seat of consciousness ; Emotion, memory, and consciousness ; It's always about networking ; Little gray cells and big white matter : myelin in your brain ; Prime time for heart attack and stroke) ; 7:00 a.m. Those morning emotions (Reason needs a neurochemical boost ; Can meditation help master those emotions? ; Is there a God spot in your brain? ; Practice makes compassion) ; 8:00 a.m. Finding your way (Why his brain may not ask for directions ; How we know where to find our lost keys) -- Engaging the world : getting out and about 9:00 A.M. to noon. 9:00 a.m. Encountering others (That face, that familiar face ; Friend or foe? Read my face ; Mirror, mirror : copycat neurons in the brain ; The broken mirror : autism insights from mirror neurons and face perception) ; 10:00 a.m. Peak performance, or stress? (Stress in the brain ; The alarm that doesn't stop : why chronic stress is so bad ; Stress destroys neurons ; Stress ups the risk of Alzheimer's disease ; The very thought of it is enough ; Multitasking -- again? ; The limits of multitasking ; How your brain helps your job kill you ; You can lull your brain away from stress ; Flow versus stress) ; 11:00 a.m. Decisions, decisions, decisions (The brain's CEO ; "Chemo brain" can ambush your CEO ; Choosing economically ; Making an emotional moral choice ; Choosing wearies your brain ; The brain has a section for regret) ; Noon The hungry brain (How hunger works in your brain ; We're losing our scents ; Still hungry? When hunger goes awry ; Why calories taste delicious ; Addicted to ____ (fill in the blank) ; Self-control sucks your energy ; Yes, there is such a thing as brain food) -- The guts of the day : getting down to business 1 P.M. to 4 P.M. 1:00 p.m. The tired brain (Partial recall : why memory fades with age ; Can you help your brain stay young(er)? ; Predicting Alzheimer's disease ; How forgetting is good for the brain ; Asleep at the wheel -- almost? It could be narcolepsy ; 1:54 P.M. Just in time for a 6-minute power nap) ; 2 p.m. Bored, bored, bored (Can't get no satisfaction? Maybe it's ADHD ; ADHD and risk taking could be good -- sometimes ; Wired and hooked : addicted to technology) ; 3 p.m. Your pain is mainly in the brain (How pain hurts your brain ; Mind under matter, mind over brain ; Is hypnosis real? ; A window into traumatic forgetting) ; 4:00 p.m. Exercise your brain (Exercise grows neurons and improves memory ; Why we get food cravings ; The most dangerous time for teens ; The teen brain is still changing ; But don't forget the hormones).
• Time out : letting go and coming home 5 P.M. to 8 P.M. 5:00 p.m. The dimming of the day (Is it really depression, or just a bad patch? ; Searching for the pathway to depression ; Maybe you're just SAD [seasonal affective disorder] ; Magnetic energy may work when meds fail ; A peak time for suicide ; Good grief : addicted to grieving) ; 6:00 p.m. Coming home (An Oxytocin high ; Nobody home? Loneliness hurts ; Oh, those comforting cravings. Or is it addiction? ; Bottoms up : where many alcoholics end ; Is addiction the result rather than the cause of brain damage? ; Still crazy after all these years? Aging isn't stopping drug use) ; 7:00 p.m. Gotta sing, gotta dance (The musical path to the brain ; Music survives brain damage ; Your brain expands to store music ; So you think you can dance? ; Born to rock ; The creative brain ; Right brain, left brain? ; Don't oversimplify that right brain stuff ; The musical ear is learned, not born) ; 8:00 p.m. Humor is healthy (The best medicine ; Tracking your internal laugh track ; TV addiction is no mere metaphor) -- Winding down : fear, sex, sleep, and dreams 9 P.M. to midnight. 9:00 p.m. Things that go bump in the night (How fear works in your brain ; Who's afraid? Not these brain cells ; When the brain decides it's time to scram ; The many parts of a violent brain) ; 10:00 p.m. Lust, sex, and love (Your brain on sex ; Women, men, and orgasms : how alike are they? ; Does the penis have a brain of its own? ; What's love got to do with it? Plenty, it turns out, for women ; Are you born gay? Sexual orientation is biology, not choice) ; 11:00 p.m. Falling asleep (The five stages of sleep ; Insomnia : curse of the night ; Perhaps less is more? ; Interrupted sleep? Don't call it insomnia. It's normal ; Call me sleepless ; Still awake? Can you catch up on lost sleep? ; Is insomnia worse for night owls?) ; Midnight sleeping in the midnight hour (Strolling in your sleep ; Drifting in to dreamland ; Do banished thoughts resurface in dreams? ; Want to dream more? Try sleep deprivation) -- Night crew at work 1 A.M. to 4 A.M. 1:00 a.m. Night crew at work (Cleaning up your neural garbage ; Why your brain doesn't take a break already ; The 10 percent myth) ; 2:00 a.m. Going against the clock in your brain (Disasters on the night shift ; Lack of sleep affects doctors as much as alcohol ; Less sleep? More fat ; Biorhythm and blues : faulty clocks ; Resetting your body clock) ; 3:00 a.m. Awake and anxious (Where the nightmare begins ; A false alarm ; That pill to fix your ills has a price ; 3:30 A.M. Night nurse on duty) ; 4:00 a.m. Last sleep (4:30 a.m. Awake so early? you may be an unlucky lark) -- Your brain tomorrow.

ISBN

• 9780470376232
• 0470376236

LCCN

2009013923

OCLC

• ocn310400268
• 310400268
• SCSB-9761569

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library