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Summary
Summary
Puzzles and brain twisters to keep your mind sharp and your memory intact are all the rage today. More and more people -- Baby Boomers and information workers in particular -- are becoming concerned about their gray matter's ability to function, and with good reason. As this sensible and entertaining guide points out, your brain is easily your most important possession. It deserves proper upkeep.
Your Brain: The Missing Manual is a practical look at how to get the most out of your brain -- not just how the brain works, but how you can use it more effectively. What makes this book different than the average self-help guide is that it's grounded in current neuroscience. You get a quick tour of several aspects of the brain, complete with useful advice about:
Learn about the built-in circuitry that makes office politics seem like a life-or-death struggle, causes you to toss important facts out of your memory if they're not emotionally charged, and encourages you to eat huge amounts of high-calorie snacks. With Your Brain: The Missing Manual you'll discover that, sometimes, you can learn to compensate for your brain or work around its limitations -- or at least to accept its eccentricities.
Exploring your brain is the greatest adventure and biggest mystery you'll ever face. This guide has exactly the advice you need.
Author Notes
Matthew MacDonald is an author and programmer extraordinaire
Table of Contents
The Missing Credits | p. vii |
Introduction | p. 1 |
Part 1 Warming Up | |
Chapter 1 A Lap Around the Brain | p. 7 |
A First Look at Your Brain | p. 8 |
The Brain: An Archeological Site | p. 9 |
The Brain's Wiring | p. 15 |
Mental Fitness | p. 22 |
Chapter 2 Brain Food: Healthy Eating | p. 27 |
The Brain's Energy Use | p. 28 |
Brain Fuel | p. 29 |
A Brain-Friendly Diet | p. 33 |
The Secret Gears of Appetite | p. 38 |
Chapter 3 Sleep: Taking Your Brain Offline | p. 45 |
Your Biological Clock | p. 46 |
Why We Sleep | p. 48 |
The Sleep Cycle | p. 55 |
REM Sleep | p. 57 |
Dream Analysis | p. 62 |
Part 2 Exploring Your Brain | |
Chapter 4 Perception | p. 65 |
The Doors of Perception | p. 66 |
Optical Illusions | p. 68 |
Your Shifty Eyes | p. 70 |
Distortions and Mismeasurements | p. 75 |
Seeing Things | p. 82 |
Ignoring Things | p. 86 |
Other Perception-Distorting Assumptions | p. 88 |
Dizzy Yourself Silly with Optical Illusions on the Web | p. 89 |
Chapter 5 Memory | p. 93 |
The Remembrance of Things Past | p. 94 |
Short-Term Memory | p. 95 |
Long-Term Memory | p. 97 |
Techniques for Better Remembering | p. 107 |
Better Learning | p. 120 |
Chapter 6 Emotions | p. 123 |
Understanding Emotion | p. 124 |
Pleasure: The Reward System | p. 128 |
Fear: Avoiding Death | p. 133 |
Stress | p. 138 |
In Search of Happiness | p. 140 |
Chapter 7 Reason | p. 147 |
The Thinking Brain | p. 148 |
Common Sense | p. 150 |
Moral Calculus | p. 154 |
Statistical Blunders | p. 156 |
Critical Thinking | p. 163 |
Problem Solving | p. 169 |
Creative Thinking Tools | p. 171 |
Chapter 8 Your Personality | p. 179 |
The Building Blocks of Personality | p. 180 |
A Personality Test | p. 183 |
Dissecting Your Personality | p. 186 |
The Personality Fit | p. 194 |
Part 3 Understanding Other People's Brains | |
Chapter 9 The Battle of the Sexes | p. 199 |
Gender in the Brain | p. 200 |
Are Gender Differences Real? | p. 206 |
Love and Relationships | p. 215 |
Chapter 10 The Developing Brain | p. 223 |
Before Birth | p. 224 |
Childhood | p. 226 |
The Teenage Years | p. 232 |
Old Age | p. 235 |
Nature vs. Nurture | p. 239 |
Index | p. 249 |