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Your Brain: The Missing Manual
Matthew MacDonald
Publisher: O’Reilly Media,
Incorporated
Pub. Date: May, 2008
ISBN-13: 9780596517786
274pp
Book Room Review
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Distilling recent research in an
engaging way, this reference presents usable information on creativity, problem
solving, reasoning, improving memory, reducing stress, brain development, and
other life-changing topics.
Your Brain is a practical look
at how to get the most of out the wonderful thing we have and use everyday. It
starts out with the chapter called A Lap Around Your
Brain, which tells the reader how the brain works. Other informative chapters
are how food affects our brain and the importance of sleep. Also included is a
personality test that I personally gained a great deal of information from in
learning reasons why my brain is wired a certain way.
Your Brain is extremely
informative and useful. My only criticism would be it reads like a textbook at
certain points, but some people even don’t mind that. The biggest lesson is we
shouldn’t take our brains for granted but should take good care of such an
enormous gift.
Below is the table of contents
which shows the topics addressed:
The Missing Credits vii
Introduction 1
Warming Up
A Lap Around the Brain 7
A First Look at Your Brain 8
The Brain: An Archeological Site 9
The Brain's Wiring 15
Mental Fitness 22
Brain Food: Healthy Eating 27
The Brain's Energy Use 28
Brain Fuel 29
A Brain-Friendly Diet 33
The Secret Gears of Appetite 38
Sleep: Taking Your Brain Offline 45
Your Biological Clock 46
Why We Sleep 48
The Sleep Cycle 55
REM Sleep 57
Dream Analysis 62
Exploring Your Brain
Perception 65
The Doors of Perception 66
Optical Illusions 68
Your Shifty Eyes 70
Distortions and Mismeasurements 75
Seeing Things 82
Ignoring Things 86
Other Perception-Distorting Assumptions 88
Dizzy Yourself Silly with Optical Illusions on the Web 89
Memory 93
The Remembrance of Things Past 94
Short-Term Memory 95
Long-Term Memory 97
Techniques for Better Remembering 107
Better Learning 120
Emotions 123
Understanding Emotion 124
Pleasure: The Reward System 128
Fear: Avoiding Death 133
Stress 138
In Search of Happiness 140
Reason 147
The Thinking Brain 148
Common Sense 150
Moral Calculus 154
Statistical Blunders 156
Critical Thinking 163
Problem Solving 169
Creative Thinking Tools 171
Your Personality 179
The Building Blocks of Personality 180
A Personality Test 183
Dissecting Your Personality 186
The Personality Fit 194
Understanding Other People's Brains
The Battle of the Sexes 199
Gender in the Brain 200
Are Gender Differences Real? 206
Love and Relationships 215
The Developing Brain 223
Before Birth 224
Childhood 226
The Teenage Years 232
Old Age 235
Nature vs. Nurture 239
Index 249
Book Room Grade
B
Review Posted: July 9, 2008
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