This book blew my mind!--Angela Duckworth, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Grit

A BLOOMBERG BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - Finalist for the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award and the Porchlight Business Book Award

What is art? Many of us think of the arts as entertainment--a luxury of some kind. In Your Brain on Art, authors Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross show how activities from painting and dancing to expressive writing, architecture, and more are essential to our lives.

We're on the verge of a cultural shift in which the arts can deliver potent, accessible, and proven solutions for the well-being of everyone. Magsamen and Ross offer compelling research that shows how engaging in an art project for as little as forty-five minutes reduces the stress hormone cortisol, no matter your skill level, and just one art experience per month can extend your life by ten years. They expand our understanding of how playing music builds cognitive skills and enhances learning; the vibrations of a tuning fork create sound waves to counteract stress; virtual reality can provide cutting-edge therapeutic benefit; and interactive exhibits dissolve the boundaries between art and viewers, engaging all of our senses and strengthening memory. Doctors have even been prescribing museum visits to address loneliness, dementia, and many other physical and mental health concerns.

Your Brain on Art is a portal into this new understanding about how the arts and aesthetics can help us transform traditional medicine, build healthier communities, and mend an aching planet.

Featuring conversations with artists such as David Byrne, Renée Fleming, and evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson, Your Brain on Art is an authoritative guide to neuroaesthetics. The book weaves a tapestry of breakthrough research, insights from multidisciplinary pioneers, and compelling stories from people who are using the arts to enhance their lives.

This book blew my mind!--Angela Duckworth, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Grit

A BLOOMBERG BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - Finalist for the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award and the Porchlight Business Book Award

What is art? Many of us think of the arts as entertainment--a luxury of some kind. In Your Brain on Art, authors Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross show how activities from painting and dancing to expressive writing, architecture, and more are essential to our lives.

We're on the verge of a cultural shift in which the arts can deliver potent, accessible, and proven solutions for the well-being of everyone. Magsamen and Ross offer compelling research that shows how engaging in an art project for as little as forty-five minutes reduces the stress hormone cortisol, no matter your skill level, and just one art experience per month can extend your life by ten years. They expand our understanding of how playing music builds cognitive skills and enhances learning; the vibrations of a tuning fork create sound waves to counteract stress; virtual reality can provide cutting-edge therapeutic benefit; and interactive exhibits dissolve the boundaries between art and viewers, engaging all of our senses and strengthening memory. Doctors have even been prescribing museum visits to address loneliness, dementia, and many other physical and mental health concerns.

Your Brain on Art is a portal into this new understanding about how the arts and aesthetics can help us transform traditional medicine, build healthier communities, and mend an aching planet.

Featuring conversations with artists such as David Byrne, Renée Fleming, and evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson, Your Brain on Art is an authoritative guide to neuroaesthetics. The book weaves a tapestry of breakthrough research, insights from multidisciplinary pioneers, and compelling stories from people who are using the arts to enhance their lives.

Why do you love? Why do you lie? What makes you happy? Every single thought you have comes from one place: your brain. But what makes it tick? How much of it have we decoded, and how much of it remains an impenetrable mystery?

Join best-selling author and online cartoonist Jorge Cham and neuroscientist Dwayne Godwin on a deep dive into the fascinating world of the human brain, in which they will explore questions such as: What is consciousness? Where is you in the brain? And do we have free will? All while illuminating everything we know (and DON'T know) about one of the most complex objects in the known universe. Think of it as conversation-ammunition for your next cocktail party, or a quick fascinating read while you're in the bathroom (don't worry, the chapters aren't that long). Centered around questions we all ask ourselves at some point but don't usually have answers to, Out of Your Mind is an illustrated book about the brain that isn't too brainy. Playful, accessible, and deeply insightful, it's the one brain book that's truly accessible and suitable for all brains.

NPR SciFri Book Club Pick

Next Big Idea Club's Top 21 Psychology Books of 2022

Behavioral Scientist Notable Books of 2022

A renowned grief expert and neuroscientist shares groundbreaking discoveries about what happens in our brain when we grieve, providing a new paradigm for understanding love, loss, and learning.

In The Grieving Brain, neuroscientist and psychologist Mary-Frances O'Connor, PhD, gives us a fascinating new window into one of the hallmark experiences of being human. O'Connor has devoted decades to researching the effects of grief on the brain, and in this book, she makes cutting-edge neuroscience accessible through her contagious enthusiasm, and guides us through how we encode love and grief. With love, our neurons help us form attachments to others; but, with loss, our brain must come to terms with where our loved ones went, or how to imagine a future without them.

The Grieving Brain addresses:

Why it's so hard to understand that a loved one has died and is gone foreverWhy grief causes so many emotions--sadness, anger, blame, guilt, and yearningWhy grieving takes so longThe distinction between grief and prolonged griefWhy we ruminate so much after we lose a loved oneHow we go about restoring a meaningful life while grieving

Based on O'Connor's own trailblazing neuroimaging work, research in the field, and her real-life stories, The Grieving Brain combines storytelling, accessible science, and practical knowledge that will help us better understand what happens when we grieve and how to navigate loss with more ease and grace.

Prominent neuroscientist and Guggenheim Fellow Charan Ranganath guides us through the science of our memories with incredible insight and clear science. He combines fascinating tales of the peculiarities of memory with practical, actionable steps. Not only will every reader remember better afterward, they'll also never forget this life-changing book. --Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of Maladies and Gene

A new understanding of memory is emerging from the latest scientific research. In Why We Remember, pioneering neuroscientist and psychologist Charan Ranganath radically reframes the way we think about the everyday act of remembering. Combining accessible language with cutting-edge research, he reveals the surprising ways our brains record the past and how we use that information to understand who we are in the present, and to imagine and plan for the future.

Memory, Dr. Ranganath shows, is a highly transformative force that shapes how we experience the world in often invisible and sometimes destructive ways. Knowing this can help us with daily remembering tasks, like finding our keys, and with the challenge of memory loss as we age. What's more, when we work with the brain's ability to learn and reinterpret past events, we can heal trauma, shed our biases, learn faster, and grow in self-awareness.

Including fascinating studies and examples from pop culture, and drawing on Ranganath's life as a scientist, father, and child of immigrants, Why We Remember is a captivating read that unveils the hidden role memory plays throughout our lives. When we understand its power-- and its quirks--we can cut through the clutter and remember the things we want to remember. We can make freer choices and plan a happier future.

Named a best book of the year by The Guardian and The Telegraph

Why do some people become radicalized?
How do ideologies shape the human brain?
And how can we unchain our minds from toxic dogmas?

In The Ideological Brain, Leor Zmigrod reveals the deep connection between political beliefs and the biology of the brain. Drawing on her own pioneering research, she uncovers the complex interplay between biology and environment that predisposes some individuals to rigid ways of thinking, and explains how ideologies take hold of our brains, fundamentally changing the way we think, act and interact with others. She shows how ideologues of all types struggle to change their thought patterns when faced with new information, culminating in the radical message that our politics are not superficial but are woven into the fabric of our minds.

This authoritative, accessible and playful blend of psychology, politics and philosophy explores the cutting-edge of the emerging field of political neuroscience. Zmigrod examines its historical roots before she looks to the future, considering the broader social and political implications of her groundbreaking research. Guiding readers through her experiments, she eventually describes what a free, authentic, and tolerant brain looks like, and explains how anyone can keep their mind open and flexible in the face of extremist ideologies.

From internationally renowned expert in resuscitation and New York Times bestselling author Sam Parnia, MD, PhD, comes a groundbreaking look at what happens to us when we die, based on the largest-ever research study run on recalled experiences of death.

Today, for the first time in history, the scientific exploration of death and what happens when we die is real, active and ongoing. Contrary to popular perceptions, this subject is no longer the remit of philosophy, religion, or personal opinion. Truly remarkable scientific discoveries that will fundamentally affect everyone's lives now and in the future are taking place, yet very few people are aware of them. Most people--including scientists and doctors--maintain strong beliefs about death and its experience. Those beliefs are rooted in traditional, and often cultural, notions of death. But what if all that we have come to believe about death is fundamentally wrong? What if the paradigm we have been operating within no longer exists? What if death is not the end we thought?

Lucid Dying is the first book to share that science. Presenting data derived from multiple groundbreaking studies, Dr. Parnia shows that the entity we refer to as consciousness--our Self--does not seem to become annihilated when we die. In fact, during death, our consciousness vastly expands and leads to a vivid experience that follows a very specific narrative arc.

These studies support that there really is a universal experience of death that is meaningful, transcendent, positive, and transformative--not hallucinatory, delusional, or illusory as previously imagined. In his latest book, Dr. Parnia weaves empirical research with gripping stories to show us the truth of how death is not the end we all thought and how anyone can harness the newfound wisdom to lead deeper, more intentional lives.

Prominent neuroscientist and Guggenheim Fellow Charan Ranganath guides us through the science of our memories with incredible insight and clear science. He combines fascinating tales of the peculiarities of memory with practical, actionable steps. Not only will every reader remember better afterward, they'll also never forget this life-changing book. --Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of Maladies and Gene

A new understanding of memory is emerging from the latest scientific research. In Why We Remember, pioneering neuroscientist and psychologist Charan Ranganath radically reframes the way we think about the everyday act of remembering. Combining accessible language with cutting-edge research, he reveals the surprising ways our brains record the past and how we use that information to understand who we are in the present, and to imagine and plan for the future.

Memory, Dr. Ranganath shows, is a highly transformative force that shapes how we experience the world in often invisible and sometimes destructive ways. Knowing this can help us with daily remembering tasks, like finding our keys, and with the challenge of memory loss as we age. What's more, when we work with the brain's ability to learn and reinterpret past events, we can heal trauma, shed our biases, learn faster, and grow in self-awareness.

Including fascinating studies and examples from pop culture, and drawing on Ranganath's life as a scientist, father, and child of immigrants, Why We Remember is a captivating read that unveils the hidden role memory plays throughout our lives. When we understand its power-- and its quirks--we can cut through the clutter and remember the things we want to remember. We can make freer choices and plan a happier future.

Science writer Sadie Dingfelder has always known that she's a little quirky. But while she's made some strange mistakes over the years, it's not until she accosts a stranger in a grocery store (whom she thinks is her husband) that she realizes something is amiss.

With a mixture of curiosity and dread, Dingfelder starts contacting neuroscientists and lands herself in scores of studies. In the course of her nerdy midlife crisis, she discovers that she is emphatically not neurotypical. She has prosopagnosia (faceblindness), stereoblindness, aphantasia (an inability to create mental imagery), and a condition called severely deficient autobiographical memory.

As Dingfelder begins to see herself more clearly, she discovers a vast well of hidden neurodiversity in the world at large. There are so many different flavors of human consciousness, and most of us just assume that ours is the norm. Can you visualize? Do you have an inner monologue? Are you always 100 percent sure whether you know someone or not? If you can perform any of these mental feats, you may be surprised to learn that many people--including Dingfelder--can't.

A lively blend of personal narrative and popular science, Do I Know You? is the story of one unusual mind's attempt to understand itself--and a fascinating exploration of the remarkable breadth of human experience.

An illuminating look at the adaptive nature of our memories--and how their flexibility and fallibility help us survive and thrive

We tend to think of our memories as impressions of the past that remain fully intact, preserved somewhere inside our brains. In fact, we construct and reconstruct our memories every time we attempt to recall them. Memory Lane introduces readers to the cutting-edge science of human memory, revealing how our recollections of the past are constantly adapting and changing, and why a faulty memory isn't always a bad thing.

Shedding light on what memory is and what it evolved to do, Ciara Greene and Gillian Murphy discuss the many benefits of our flexible yet fallible memory system, including helping us to maintain a coherent identity, sustain social bonds, and vividly imagine possible futures. But these flexible and easily distorted memories can also result in significant harm, leading us to provide erroneous eyewitness testimony or fall victim to fake news. Greene and Murphy explain why our flawed memories are not a failure of evolution but rather a byproduct of the perfectly imperfect way our minds have evolved to solve problems. They also grapple with important ethical questions surrounding the study and manipulation of memory.

Blending engaging storytelling with the latest science, the authors demonstrate how our continuous reconstruction of the past makes us who we are, helps us to interpret our experiences, and explains why no two trips down memory lane are ever quite the same.

With so many competing priorities pulling us in different directions every day--family, friends, work, our health--it can feel difficult to make decisions that are aligned with what we care about most. Especially in the moment, we often default to the immediate demand, the path of least resistance, the worn old habit we wanted to change. In What We Value, pioneering scholar Emily Falk reveals how we can transform our relationship with the daily decisions that define our lives--opening pathways to make more purposeful, fulfilling choices; more successfully change our behavior; and influence others to see differently--by thinking like neuroscientists.

Drawing on her own award-winning research, Falk introduces readers to a new paradigm for understanding why we, and those around us, do what we do. This is the value calculation: the often-subconscious mechanism by which the brain computes our everyday choices. By learning how it works, Falk shows, we can learn to work more strategically with it--whether we want to embrace new activities and behaviors, connect more meaningfully with others, or become more effective leaders in our organizations and communities. With captivating stories of star comedians, journalists, sports legends, and more, Falk demonstrates how we can change what we think just by changing what we think about; get less defensive by connecting with our core values; and seed innovation by seeking out different perspectives.

Whether deciding on something as small as what to eat for lunch or as big as what career to pursue, we can have more agency and flexibility than we might think. What We Value is a groundbreaking guide to finding new possibilities in our choices--and the lives we ultimately make with them.

The human brain hasn't changed much since the Stone Age, let alone in the mere thirty years of the Screen Age. That's why, according to neurologist Richard Cytowic--who, Oliver Sacks observed, changed the way we think of the human brain--our brains are so poorly equipped to resist the incursions of Big Tech: They are programmed for the wildly different needs of a prehistoric world. In Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age, Cytowic explains exactly how this programming works--from the brain's point of view. What he reveals in this book shows why we are easily addicted to screen devices; why young, developing brains are particularly vulnerable; why we need silence; and what we can do to push back.

In the engaging storytelling style of his popular TED Talk, Cytowic draws an easily comprehensible picture of the Stone Age brain's workings--the function of neurotransmitters like dopamine in basic instincts for survival such as desire and reward; the role of comparison in emotion, and emotion in competition; and, most significantly, the orienting reflex, one of the unconscious circuits that automatically focus, shift, and sustain attention. Given this picture, the nature of our susceptibility to digital devices becomes clear, along with the possibility of how to break their spell.

Full of practical actions that we can start taking right away, Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age offers compelling evidence that we can change the way we use technology, resist its addictive power over us, and take back the control we have lost.

A neuroscientist transforms the way we think about our brain, our health, and our personal happiness in this clear, informative, and inspiring guide--a blend of personal memoir, science narrative, and immediately useful takeaways that bring the human brain into focus as never before, revealing the powerful connection between exercise, learning, memory, and cognitive abilities.

Nearing forty, Dr. Wendy Suzuki was at the pinnacle of her career. An award-winning university professor and world-renowned neuroscientist, she had tenure, her own successful research lab, prestigious awards, and international renown.

That's when to celebrate her birthday, she booked an adventure trip that forced her to wake up to a startling reality: despite her professional success, she was overweight, lonely, and tired and knew that her life had to change. Wendy started simply--by going to an exercise class. Eventually, she noticed an improvement in her memory, her energy levels, and her ability to work quickly and move from task to task easily. Not only did Wendy begin to get fit, but she also became sharper, had more energy, and her memory improved. Being a neuroscientist, she wanted to know why.

What she learned transformed her body and her life. Now, it can transform yours.

Wendy discovered that there is a biological connection between exercise, mindfulness, and action. With exercise, your body feels more alive and your brain actually performs better. Yes--you can make yourself smarter. In this fascinating book, Suzuki makes neuroscience easy to understand, interweaving her personal story with groundbreaking research, and offering practical, short exercises--4 minute Brain Hacks--to engage your mind and improve your memory, your ability to learn new skills, and function more efficiently.

Taking us on an amazing journey inside the brain as never before, Suzuki helps us unlock the keys to neuroplasticity that can change our brains, or bodies, and, ultimately, our lives.

An illuminating dive into the latest science on our brain's remarkable learning abilities and the potential of the machines we program to imitate them

The human brain is an extraordinary learning machine. Its ability to reprogram itself is unparalleled, and it remains the best source of inspiration for recent developments in artificial intelligence. But how do we learn? What innate biological foundations underlie our ability to acquire new information, and what principles modulate their efficiency?

In How We Learn, Stanislas Dehaene finds the boundary of computer science, neurobiology, and cognitive psychology to explain how learning really works and how to make the best use of the brain's learning algorithms in our schools and universities, as well as in everyday life and at any age.

How we can use what we've learned about the brain to improve our mental health

There are many routes to mental well-being. In this groundbreaking book, neuroscientist Camilla Nord offers a fascinating tour of the scientific developments that are revolutionising the way we think about mental health, showing why and how events--and treatments--can affect people in such different ways.

In The Balanced Brain, Nord explains how our brain constructs our sense of mental health--actively striving to maintain balance in response to our changing circumstances. While a mentally healthy brain deals well with life's turbulence, poor mental health results when the brain struggles with disruption. But just what is the brain trying to balance? Nord describes the foundations of mental health in the brain--from the neurobiology of pleasure, pain and desire to the role of mood-mediating chemicals like dopamine, serotonin and opioids. She then pivots to interventions, revealing how antidepressants, placebos and even recreational drugs work; how psychotherapy changes brain chemistry; and how the brain and body interact to make us feel physically (as well as mentally) healthy. Along the way, Nord explains how the seemingly small things we use to lift our moods--a piece of chocolate, a walk, a chat with a friend--work on the same pathways in our brains as the latest treatments for mental health disorders.

Understanding the cause of poor mental health is one of the crucial questions of our time. But the answer is unique to each of us, and it requires finding what helps our brains rebalance and thrive. With so many factors at play, there are more possibilities for recovery and resilience than we might think.

The remarkable family of proteins that can make us very ill--but can also be linked to long-term memory, immunity, and the origin of life

Over the last decade, scientists have discovered the importance and widespread presence in the body of a remarkable family of proteins known as prion proteins. Research links various types of prion proteins to neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's--and this has fueled the search for new drugs that could halt the progression of these terrible disorders. Other discoveries have revealed the essential roles prion proteins play in memory and immunity, and--in an extraordinary finding--the part they may have played in the beginnings of life on our planet. In this engaging and accessible book, Michel Brahic tells the story of these amazing and versatile proteins.

Brahic, a leading researcher on diseases of the central nervous system, first describes the discovery of prions and their role in infection, beginning with early work on the animal disease scrapie and a mysterious human illness in New Guinea, apparently transmitted by cannibalism. Prions were eventually identified and named by Stanley Prusiner in the 1980s. (Brahic tells us Prusiner's alternate name for prion was piaf.) Prion proteins were then revealed as the cause of other illnesses, from mad cow disease and its human counterpart, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, to such noninfectious brain disorders as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. While the prion proteins responsible for diseases are definitively bad, Brahic also explains that these abnormal prions are rare exceptions. Most of the time, prion proteins actually serve good and vital functions--and they may even have been present at the origin of life itself.

The vagus nerve is fundamental to our health and vitality, coordinating critical functions from the precise heartbeat we need to exercise or rest to the balance of appetite and digestion. Made up of 200,000 fibers, the vagus nerve sends thousands of electrical signals every second between your brain and your most important organs. Yet despite its essential role in life, important vagus nerve functions have eluded centuries of scientific investigation. Now neurosurgeon and researcher Kevin Tracey has discovered the previously unknown power of the vagus nerve to reverse inflammation, balance the immune system, treat chronic illness, and keep our organs humming together in harmony.

In The Great Nerve, Dr. Tracey shows us how stimulating the vagus nerve with a tiny electrical implant has the potential to reverse life-altering diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, lupus, MS, diabetes, obesity, stroke, depression, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. If this sounds too good to believe, Dr. Tracey shares stories of patients who have gone from being nearly bedridden to running and dancing, along with the science that makes possible these recoveries. He also explains the evidence for lifestyle strategies like ice baths, meditation, exercise, and breathwork that can maintain and improve vagus nerve function.

By opening the door to the new field of neuroimmunology, The Great Nerve not only revolutionizes how we understand and treat disease, it gives us unprecedented hope for our health. This is the story of your body's ability to heal itself.

In the age of AI, why our future depends on better understanding what makes us human

We are at a crossroads in history. If we hope to share our planet successfully with one another and the AI systems we are creating, we must reflect on who we are, how we got here, and where we are heading. The Importance of Being Educable puts forward a provocative new exploration of the extraordinary facility of humans to absorb and apply knowledge. The remarkable educability of the human brain can be understood as an information processing ability. It sets our species apart, enables the civilization we have, and gives us the power and potential to set our planet on a steady course. Yet it comes hand in hand with an insidious weakness. While we can readily absorb entire systems of thought about worlds of experience beyond our own, we struggle to judge correctly what information we should trust.

In this visionary book, Leslie Valiant argues that understanding the nature of our own educability is crucial to safeguarding our future. After breaking down how we process information to learn and apply knowledge, and drawing comparisons with other animals and AI systems, he explains why education should be humankind's central preoccupation.

Will the unique capability that has been so foundational to our achievements and civilization continue to drive our progress, or will we fall victim to our vulnerabilities? If we want to play to our species' great strength and protect our collective future, we must better understand and prioritize the vital importance of being educable. This book provides a road map.

A fun and fact-filled A-Z treasury for anyone with a head on their shoulders

Neuropedia journeys into the mysteries and marvels of the three pounds of tissue between your ears--the brain. Eric Chudler takes you on a breathtaking tour of the nervous system with dozens of entries that explore the structure and function of the brain and cover topics such as the spinal cord and nerve cells, the methods of neuroscientific research, and the visionary scientists who have dedicated their lives to understanding what makes each of us who we are.

The brain has fascinated and puzzled researchers, physicians, and philosophers for thousands of years and captivated us with each new discovery. This compendium of neuroscientific wonders is brimming with facts and insights, helping us to make sense of our current understanding of the nervous system while identifying the frontiers in our knowledge that remain unexplored. Chudler guides readers through a variety of rare and common neurological disorders such as alien hand disorder, Capgras syndrome, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and stroke, and discusses the latest brain-imaging methods used to diagnose them. He discusses neurochemicals, neurotoxins, and lifesaving drugs, and offers bold perspectives on human consciousness that enable us to better appreciate our place in nature.

With marvelous illustrations by Kelly Chudler, Neuropedia is an informative and entertaining trip into the inner world of the brain.

• Features a cloth cover with an elaborate foil-stamped design

Costandi discusses key experimental findings, and describes how our thinking about the brain has evolved over time. He explains how the brain changes during development, and the synaptic pruning that takes place before brain maturity. He shows that adult brains can grow new cells (citing, among many other studies, research showing that sexually mature male canaries learn a new song every year). He describes the kind of brain training that can bring about improvement in brain function. It's not gadgets and games that promise to rewire your brain but such sustained cognitive tasks as learning a musical instrument or a new language. (Costandi also notes that London cabbies increase their gray matter after rigorous training in their city's complicated streets.) He tells how brains compensate after stroke or injury; describes addiction and pain as maladaptive forms of neuroplasticity; and considers brain changes that accompany childhood, adolescence, parenthood, and aging. Each of our brains is custom-built. Neuroplasticity is at the heart of what makes us human.