Your Brain and You: A Simple Guide to Neuropsychology

by Nicky Hayes

Overview

Most general knowledge about the brain and its workings is very dated, drawing on studies from the first part of the previous century or even earlier. However, the advent of brain scanning which allows the study of the ordinary working brain, rather than just dead ones or people having brain surgery, has resulted in some amazing new developments that contribute immensely to our general social understanding of people and how they work.


Written by Dr. Nicky Hayes, bestselling author of Understand Psychology, Your Brain and You is a beginner's guide to neuropsychology. It takes you through every aspect of how your brain works, from nervous systems and brain structures to neural transmission and neural correlates. You will discover how it all began, how it works, howe we see, do things, hear and experience the outside world. Explore memories, relationships, emotions, decision-making, sleep, consciousness and common disorders such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia.


As with all Teach Yourself books, it is clearly structured, packed full of practical examples, and designed to make it easy to learn the essentials you really need to know.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781473671317
Publisher:	Mobius
Publication date:	11/27/2018
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Dr. Nicky Hayes is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a Chartered Psychologist and an Honorary Life Member of the Association for the Teaching of Psychology. She has written widely and is a prominent media figure, thanks to her ability to apply psychology to everyday life and her experience working with business and the public sector as well as in universities and colleges.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

1 What is the brain? 1

How did the brain begin?

The basic brain

The thalamus and the limbic system

The cerebrum

2 How does the brain work? 19

Brain cells

Chemicals and electricity

Learning and neural plasticity

Brain lateralization

Studying the brain

3 How do you know what you're looking at? 37

Vision and blindsight

How we see

Seeing things

Seeing people

4 How do you know what you're hearing? 55

How do we hear?

Making sounds make sense

Hearing speech

Hearing music

5 Experiencing other senses 71

The sense of smell

The sense of taste

The sense of touch

Feeling pain

Illusions and synaesthesia

6 Action and skills 89

Moving and balancing

Taking action

Learning skills

Performing music

7 Remembering 107

Working memory and active thinking

Remembering events and places

Storing new information and maps

Imagery and memory

Forgetting and amnesia

8 Feeling emotions 123

Reward mechanisms

Fear, anger, disgust and happiness

Social emotions

9 Relationships 141

Recognizing faces, recognizing bodies

Relationships and attachment

Love and friendship

Social exclusion and loneliness

10 Communicating 157

Language areas in the brain

Listening to speech

Understanding speech

Speaking

Problems with language

11 The 'three Rs' 173

How do we read?

Reading disorders

Writing and agraphia

Numeracy and dyscalculia

12 Us and them 189

About the self

Theory of mind and empathy

Moral emotions

Group membership

Aggression

13 States of mind 205

Making decisions

Consciousness

Anaesthesia, sleep and dreaming

Drugs and consciousness

Social consciousness and humour

Glossary 225

Index 235

Image credits 243