Pictures of the Mind: What the New Neuroscience Tells Us About Who We Are

by Miriam Boleyn-Fitzgerald

Overview

Neuroscientists once believed your brain was essentially "locked down" by adulthood. No new cells. No major changes. If you grew up depressed, angry, sad, aggressive, or nasty, you'd be that way for life. And, as you grew older, there'd be nowhere to go but down, as disease, age, or injury wiped out precious, irreplaceable brain cells. But over the past five, ten, twenty years, all that's changed. Using fMRI and PET scanning technology, neuroscientists can now look deep inside the human brain and they've discovered that it's amazingly flexible, resilient, and plastic.

 

Pictures of the Mind: What the New Neuroscience Tells Us About Who We Are shows you what they've discovered and what it means to all of us. Through author Miriam Boleyn-Fitzgerald’s masterfully written narrative and use stunning imagery, you'll watch human brains healing, growing, and adapting to challenges. You'll gain powerful new insights into the interplay between environment and genetics, begin understanding how people can influence their own intellectual abilities and emotional makeup, and understand the latest stunning discoveries about coma and "locked-in" syndrome. You'll learn about the tantalizing discoveries that may lead to cures for traumatic brain injury, stroke, emotional disorders, PTSD, drug addiction, chronic pain, maybe even Alzheimer's. Boleyn-Fitzgerald shows how these discoveries are transforming our very understanding of the "self", from an essentially static entity to one that can learn and change throughout life and even master the art of happiness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780137054480
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	01/08/2010
Series:	FT Press Science
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

For 15 years, Miriam Boleyn-Fitzgerald has published on a wide range of scientific topics geared to curious readers of all backgrounds. She believes in taking the boring out of “technical” so that we might all have ready access to knowledge that can help us lead happier, healthier, more fulfilling lives.

 

With a degree in physics from Swarthmore College, Ms. Boleyn-Fitzgerald is a former recipient of the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship and the Ida M. Green Award for graduate studies in Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has worked as a staff writer for President Clinton’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments and as an analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Union of Concerned Scientists. Ms. Boleyn-Fitzgerald lives and writes in Appleton, Wisconsin, with her husband Patrick and their son Aidan.

Table of Contents

Introduction     ix

Part I: Snapshots

Chapter 1: Life, Death, and the Middle Ground     3

Chapter 2: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Powerful Emotions and Our Power to Work with Them     21

Chapter 3: Happiness on the Brain     37

Chapter 4: Cooling the Flame: Pictures of Addiction, Chronic Pain, and Recovery     53

Part II: Landscape

Chapter 5: Where Does Morality Live, and When Is It Home?     69

Chapter 6: The Making and Breaking of Memories     89

Chapter 7: Where Am "I"? Experiences of Self, Other, and Neither     109

Resources     141

Notes     145

Acknowledgments     163

About the Author     165

Index     167