Neuropsychology Books

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Revised and Expanded Edition

Oliver Sacks

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 80 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Musicophilia 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I received the book I ordered very promptly. It was in excellent condition just as stated by the seller. Thank you for such good service.

Musicophilia 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Oliver Sacks has written many books for lay people. As they all are, this book is informative, interesting, funny, personal. It shows how important music is to humankind. In case vignettes and in discussion Sacks shows how music affects us positively and sometimes, alas, negatively. It is throughout very compelling.

Editorial Review:

Amazon Best of the Month, December 2007: Legendary R&B icon Ray Charles claimed that he was "born with music inside me," and neurologist Oliver Sacks believes Ray may have been right. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain examines the extreme effects of music on the human brain and how lives can be utterly transformed by the simplest of harmonies. With clinical studies covering the tragic (individuals afflicted by an inability to connect with any melody) and triumphant (Alzheimer's patients who find order and comfort through music), Sacks provides an erudite look at the notion that humans are truly a "musical species." --Dave Callanan

The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (James H. Silberman Books)

Norman Doidge

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Total reviews: 97 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Setting New Goals 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I was impressed by the various examples presented of the plasticity of the brain and realized that this carefully written book would be helpful to anyone challenged by the effects of aging on one's capabilities. I have benefited from Posit Science's Brain Fitness and Cortex Insight programs and this book encouraged me to continue to exercise my brain to enjoy improvement that comes in small steps.

Editorial Review:

An astonishing new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. In this revolutionary look at the brain, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge, M.D., provides an introduction to both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they’ve transformed. From stroke patients learning to speak again to the remarkable case of a woman born with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, The Brain That Changes Itself will permanently alter the way we look at our brains, human nature, and human potential.

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (Book & DVD)

John Medina

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Total reviews: 40 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Most of us have no idea what's really going on inside our heads. Yet brain scientists have uncovered details every business leader, parent, and teacher should know--such as the brain's need for physical activity to work at its best.

How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget--and so important to repeat new information? Is it true that men and women have different brains?

In Brain Rules, molecular biologist Dr. John Medina shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences might influence the way we teach our children and the way we work. In each chapter, he describes a brain rule--what scientists know for sure about how our brains work--and then offers transformative ideas for our daily lives.

Medina's fascinating stories and sense of humor breathe life into brain science. You'll learn why Michael Jordan was no good at baseball. You'll peer over a surgeon's shoulder as he finds, to his surprise, that we have a Jennifer Aniston neuron. You'll meet a boy who has an amazing memory for music but can't tie his own shoes.

You will discover how:

- Every brain is wired differently
- Exercise improves cognition
- We are designed to never stop learning and exploring
- Memories are volatile
- Sleep is powerfully linked with the ability to learn
- Vision trumps all of the other senses
- Stress changes the way we learn

In the end, you'll understand how your brain really works--and how to get the most out of it.

About the DVD The Brain Rules DVD, included with this book, is a lively tour of the 12 brain rules. You will experience firsthand Medina's rare gift for making science fun, accessible, and relevant. The DVD will take your understanding of the book to the next level.

This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

Daniel J. Levitin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 106 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this groundbreaking union of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin explores the connection between music—its performance, its composition, how we listen to it, why we enjoy it—and the human brain. Drawing on the latest research and on musical examples ranging from Mozart to Duke Ellington to Van Halen, Levitin reveals:
• How composers produce some of the most pleasurable effects of listening to music by exploiting the way our brains make sense of the world
• Why we are so emotionally attached to the music we listened to as teenagers, whether it was Fleetwood Mac, U2, or Dr. Dre
• That practice, rather than talent, is the driving force behind musical expertise
• How those insidious little jingles (called earworms) get stuck in our heads

And, taking on prominent thinkers who argue that music is nothing more than an evolutionary accident, Levitin argues that music is fundamental to our species, perhaps even more so than language. This Is Your Brain on Music is an unprecedented, eye-opening investigation into an obsession at the heart of human nature.

Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently

Gregory Berns

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

No organization can survive without iconoclasts -- innovators who single-handedly upturn conventional wisdom and manage to achieve what so many others deem impossible.



Though indispensable, true iconoclasts are few and far between. In Iconoclast, neuroscientist Gregory Berns explains why. He explores the constraints the human brain places on innovative thinking, including fear of failure, the urge to conform, and the tendency to interpret sensory information in familiar ways.



Through vivid accounts of successful innovators ranging from glass artist Dale Chihuly to physicist Richard Feynman to country/rock trio the Dixie Chicks, Berns reveals the inner workings of the iconoclast's mind with remarkable clarity. Each engaging chapter goes on to describe practical actions we can each take to understand and unleash our own potential to think differently -- such as seeking out new environments, novel experiences, and first-time acquaintances.



Packed with engaging stories, science-based insights, potent practices, and examples from a startling array of disciplines, this engaging book will help you understand how iconoclasts think and equip you to begin thinking more like an iconoclast yourself.

Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves

Sharon Begley

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 69 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this fascinating and far-reaching book, Newsweek science writer Sharon Begley reports on how cutting-edge science and the ancient wisdom of Buddhism have come together to reveal that, contrary to popular belief, we have the power to literally change our brains by changing our minds. Recent pioneering experiments in neuroplasticity–the ability of the brain to change in response to experience–reveal that the brain is capable of altering its structure and function, and even of generating new neurons, a power we retain well into old age. The brain can adapt, heal, renew itself after trauma, compensate for disabilities, rewire itself to overcome dyslexia, and break cycles of depression and OCD. And as scientists are learning from studies performed on Buddhist monks, it is not only the outside world that can change the brain, so can the mind and, in particular, focused attention through the classic Buddhist practice of mindfulness.

With her gift for making science accessible, meaningful, and compelling, Sharon Begley illuminates a profound shift in our understanding of how the brain and the mind interact and takes us to the leading edge of a revolution in what it means to be human.

“There are two great things about this book. One is that it shows us how nothing about our brains is set in stone. The other is that it is written by Sharon Begley, one of the best science writers around. Begley is superb at framing the latest facts within the larger context of the field. . . . This is a terrific book.”
–Robert M. Sapolsky, author of Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers

“Excellent . . . elegant and lucid prose . . . an open mind here will be rewarded.”
–Discover magazine

“A strong dose of hope along with a strong does of science and Buddhist thought.”
–The San Diego Union-Tribune

Making a Good Brain Great: The Amen Clinic Program for Achieving and Sustaining Optimal Mental Performance

Daniel G. Md Amen

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Total reviews: 36 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Daniel Amen, M.D., one of the world’s foremost authorities on the brain, has news for you: your brain is involved in everything you do—learn to care for it properly, and you will be smarter, healthier, and happier in as little as 15 days!

You probably run, lift weights, or do yoga to keep your body in great shape; you put on sunscreen and lotions to protect your skin; but chances are you simply ignore your brain and trust it to do its job. People unknowingly endanger or injure their brains, stress them by working at a frenzied pace and not getting enough sleep, pollute them with caffeine, alcohol, and drugs, and deprive them of proper nutrients. Brain dysfunction is the number one reason people fail at school, work, and relationships. The brain is the organ of learning, working, and loving—the supercomputer that runs our lives. It’s very simple: when our brains work right, we work right—and when our brains have trouble, we have trouble in our lives.

Luckily, it’s never too late: the brain is capable of change, and when you care for it, the results are amazing. Making a Good Brain Great gives you the tools you need to optimize your brain power and enrich your health and your life in the process. The principles and exercises in this book, based on years of cutting-edge neuroscience research and the experiences of thousands of people, provide a wealth of practical information to teach you how to achieve the best brain possible. You will learn:

•how to eat right to think right

•how to protect your brain from injuries and toxic substances

•how to nourish your brain with vitamins and do mental workouts to keep it strong

•the critical component of physical exercise, and which kinds work best

•how to rid your brain of negative thoughts, counteract stress, and much more

Full of encouraging anecdotes from Dr. Amen’s many years of experience, Making a Good Brain Great is a positive and practical road map for enriching and improving your own greatest asset—your brain.


From the Hardcover edition.

Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

Judith Herman

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Total reviews: 52 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

When Trauma and Recovery was first published in 1992, it was hailed as a groundbreaking work. In the intervening years, Herman’s volume has changed the way we think about and treat traumatic events and trauma victims. In a new afterword, Herman chronicles the incredible response the book has elicited and explains how the issues surrounding the topic have shifted within the clinical community and the culture at large.Trauma and Recovery brings a new level of understanding to a set of problems usually considered individually. Herman draws on her own cutting-edge research in domestic violence as well as on the vast literature of combat veterans and victims of political terror, to show the parallels between private terrors such as rape and public traumas such as terrorism. The book puts individual experience in a broader political frame, arguing that psychological trauma can be understood only in a social context. Meticulously documented and frequently using the victims’ own words as well as those from classic literary works and prison diaries, Trauma and Recovery is a powerful work that will continue to profoundly impact our thinking.

The Female Brain

Louann Brizendine

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Total reviews: 114 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Why are women more verbal than men? Why do women remember details of fights that men can’t remember at all? Why do women tend to form deeper bonds with their female friends than men do with their male counterparts? These and other questions have stumped both sexes throughout the ages.

Now, pioneering neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, M.D., brings together the latest findings to show how the unique structure of the female brain determines how women think, what they value, how they communicate, and who they love. While doing research as a medical student at Yale and then as a resident and faculty member at Harvard, Louann Brizendine discovered that almost all of the clinical data in existence on neurology, psychology, and neurobiology focused exclusively on males. In response to the overwhelming need for information on the female mind, Brizendine established the first clinic in the country to study and treat women’s brain function.

In The Female Brain, Dr. Brizendine distills all her findings and the latest information from the scientific community in a highly accessible book that educates women about their unique brain/body/behavior.

The result: women will come away from this book knowing that they have a lean, mean, communicating machine. Men will develop a serious case of brain envy.

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain

Maryanne Wolf

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Part Science, Part Guilt Trip 3 out of 5 stars.
12 of 13 people found this review helpful.

I have nothing against a good sermon. I found Barack Obama's sermon to the Democratic convention to be at least as exciting as any of Kennedy's or King's great exhortations. I do think, however, that sermons need to be preached outside the choir. The irony of writing a book to exhort non-reading parents to read more to their children is not lost on anyone, I hope.

The human brain has evolved in such a way that it can, and must, learn. That is, it is 'plastic' enough in its first years of life to program itself in response to environmental cues. In the case of learning to read, Maryanne Wolf, argues, the brains of all of us literate people have been exquisitely programmed and refined by our reading skills, developed in cahoots with our own evolution over millennia. The physical details of that programming are becoming observable through brain scans and such technology, and it's the science of brain plasticity that interested me in reading this book. I'm already quite convinced, by experience and observation, that the only way to become a skilled reader is by reading a lot, i.e. that reading is a self-programming activity long into the adolescent years. The scanting of reading - even recreational self-selected reading of ephemeral stuff like sci-fi - in schools and in the life experience of our youth these days worries me a lot. I rather hoped this book would get scientific enough to allow me to consider my opinion verified.

Alas, much more than half of Wolf's overall text is more sermon than science, and in my case she is clearly preaching to the choir. The parents whose children might profit if said parents read thsi and other books more eagerly just won't read Proust and the Squid. Period. What Wolf really has in mind is influencing public policy, persuading legislators to spend taxpayers' money on early childhood education. Her exhortation is wasted therefore, unless it has the sort of substance that will focus the voters on change and intimidate the legislators into action. It doesn't have that kind of intensity, and then it squanders the impact its early chapters may have built up by straying into vague thoughts about a fuzzy future in which "digital" info-interfacing replaces reading and jeopardizes the sophisticated programming that reading has implanted in our culture.

It's not because this is a bad book, or a badly written book, that I don't recommend it highly. Some people, I'm sure, will be delighted by its loose style and others will be educated about important insights of neuropsychology in recent years. But it's not the book it could be if its purpose were clearer and if it addressed itself to a proper audience rather than to the world at large.

Post script: Reading the comments that have followed this review, I discover that I've given some people the false impression that the "science of reading" is scanted in Proust and the Squid. There's plenty of science, and it's expressed in a form accessible to non-scientists. But it's interspersed with anecdote and homily to the point where I find it hard to assemble into a scientific understanding. Still, my three-star rating was probably too harsh; four stars would be more suitable.

Editorial Review:

"Human beings were never born to read," writes Tufts University cognitive neuroscientist and child development expert Maryanne Wolf. Reading is a human invention that reflects how the brain rearranges itself to learn something new. In this ambitious, provocative book, Wolf chronicles the remarkable journey of the reading brain not only over the past five thousand years, since writing began, but also over the course of a single child's life, showing in the process why children with dyslexia have reading difficulties and singular gifts.

Lively, erudite, and rich with examples, Proust and the Squid asserts that the brain that examined the tiny clay tablets of the Sumerians was a very different brain from the one that is immersed in today's technology-driven literacy. The potential transformations in this changed reading brain, Wolf argues, have profound implications for every child and for the intellectual development of our species.