Showing titles in Neuroscience & Neuropsychology

Do antidepressants work, or are they no better than placebos? Like his colleagues, Irving Kirsch spent years referring patients to psychiatrists to have their depression treated with drugs. Eventually, however, he decided to investigate for himself just how effective the drugs actually were. With 15 years of research, Kirsch demonstrates that what everyone “knew” about antidepressants is wrong; what the medical community considered a cornerstone of psychiatric treatment is little more than a faulty consensus.

In Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion, Agnes Arnold-Forster blends neuroscience and psychology with the history of medicine and emotions to explore the evolution of nostalgia from its first identification in seventeenth-century Switzerland (when it was held to be an illness that could, quite literally, kill you) to the present day (when it is co-opted by advertising agencies and politicians alike to sell us goods and policies).

In Uncle Tungsten, Oliver Sacks evokes, with warmth and wit, his upbringing in wartime England. He tells of the large science-steeped family who fostered his early fascination with chemistry. There follow his years at boarding school where, though unhappy, he developed the intellectual curiosity that would shape his later life. And we hear of his return to London, an emotionally bereft 10-year-old who found solace in his passion for learning. Uncle Tungsten radiates all the delight and wonder of a boy’s adventures and is an unforgettable portrait of an extraordinary young mind.

Deep within you resides a great spirit - a place of profound wisdom, creativity, power, and love. But layers of hurt from early life, and from the defenses you’ve created to avoid further hurt, have accumulated and diminished that spirit over time - lifetimes, really - obscuring what is magnificent about you - your authentic self. This transformational and healing guide will help you awaken to the wisdom within yourself, break through the layers of emotional protection you’ve placed around your heart, and heal the scars of trauma that hold you back.

The Inner Work will take you on a hero’s journey through the uncharted depths of your subconscious mind to understand your shadows and unlock the greatness of your full potential. Through the uprooting of limiting beliefs and transcendence of themes of consciousness which perpetuate suffering, true freedom and lasting happiness will finally be revealed. By process of radical self-analysis and a practical three-step method, The Inner Work invites you to let go of your struggle with life. If you are a human, and you want to be happy, this book is for you.

Explaining that an impaired capacity for connection to self and to others underlies most psychological and many physiological problems, clinicians Laurence Heller, PhD, and Aline LaPierre, PsyD, introduce the NeuroAffective Relational Model™ (NARM), a unified approach to developmental, attachment, and shock trauma that emphasizes working in the present moment. NARM is a somatically based psychotherapy that helps bring into awareness the parts of self that are disorganized and dysfunctional.

From ADHD and dyslexia to autism, the number of diagnosis categories listed by the American Psychiatric Association has tripled in the last fifty years. With so many affected, it is time to revisit our perceptions of people with disabilities. Psychologist and educator Thomas Armstrong illuminates a new understanding of neuropsychological disorders. He argues that if they are a part of the natural diversity of the human brain, they cannot simply be defined as illnesses. Armstrong explores the evolutionary advantages, special skills, and other positive dimensions of these conditions.

Trauma recovery is tricky; however, there are several key principles that can help make the process safe and effective. This book gives self-help listeners, therapy clients, and therapists alike the skills to understand and implement eight keys to successful trauma healing: mindful identification of what is helpful, recognizing survival, having the option to not remember, creating a supportive inner dialogue, forgiving not being able to stop the trauma, understanding and sharing shame, finding your own recovery pace; mobilizing your body, and helping others.

In this volume, Dr. Stephen W. Porges—the originator of Polyvagal Theory—presents a collection of recent writings that showcase the wide-ranging applications of the polyvagal perspective. The writings update the theory and delve into sociality, safety and threat, trauma, functional medicine, vagal nerve stimulation, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, addiction, compassion, management, and dance movement therapy. This newest volume of Dr. Porges's work demonstrates how adopting a polyvagal perspective enriches our understanding of biobehavioral processes in diverse domains.

The effective therapist must have knowledge of evolution and neuroanatomy, as well as the systems of our brains and how they work together to give rise to who we are, how we thrive, and why we suffer. This book will give clinicians all they need to understand the social brain, the developing brain, the executive brain, consciousness, attachment, trauma, memory, and the latest information about clinical assessment. Key figures and terms of neuroscience, along with numerous case examples, bring the material to life.

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Dummies takes you through the eight-week MBCT course, using the principles of mindfulness to complement established CBT techniques. You'll discover how using MBCT can help lower your risk of relapsing into depression and reduce the risk of other mental health disorders including anxiety, stress, and low self-esteem.

Exciting new developments in brain science are continuing the debates on these issues, and the field has now expanded to include biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers. This controversial book clarifies the potentially confusing arguments, and the major theories, while also outlining the amazing pace of discoveries in neuroscience. Covering areas such as the construction of self in the brain, mechanisms of attention, the neural correlates of consciousness, and the physiology of altered states of consciousness, Susan Blackmore highlights our latest findings.

A large segment of the therapy population consist of those who are in denial or retreat from their traumatic experiences. Here, drawing on attachment-based research, the author provides clinical techniques, specific intervention strategies, and practical advice for successfully addressing the often intractable issues of trauma. Trauma and the Avoidant Client will enhance the skills of all mental health practitioners and trauma workers, and will serve as a valuable, useful resource to facilitate change and progress in psychotherapy.

Dr. Barbara Oakley and Olav Schewe have both struggled in the past with their learning. But they have found techniques to help them master any material. Building on insights from neuroscience and cognitive psychology, they give you a crash course to improve your ability to learn, no matter what the subject is.

For as long as we've studied the mind, we've believed that information flowing from our senses determines what our mind perceives. But as our understanding of neuroscience and psychology has advanced in the last few decades, a provocative and hugely powerful new view has flipped this assumption on its head. The brain is not a passive receiver, but an ever-active predictor. At the forefront of this cognitive revolution is widely acclaimed philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark, who has synthesized his ground-breaking work on the predictive brain.

A new model of therapeutic action, one that heals trauma and dissociation, is overtaking the mental-health field. It is not just trauma, but the dissociation of the self, that causes emotional pain and difficulties in functioning. This book discusses how people are universally subject to trauma, what trauma is, and how to understand and work with normative as well as extreme dissociation. In this new model, the client and the practitioner are both traumatized and flawed human beings who affect each other in the mutual process that the promotes the healing of the client-psychotherapy.

Investigating how your senses work, how you move, and how you think and feel, Neuroscience for Dummies, 2nd Edition is your straightforward guide to the most complicated structure known in the universe: the brain. Covering the most recent scientific discoveries and complemented with engaging anecdotes that help bring the information to life, this updated edition offers a compelling and plain-English look at how the brain and nervous system function.

This book compiles, for the first time, Stephen W. Porges's decades of research. A leading expert in developmental psychophysiology and developmental behavioral neuroscience, Porges is the mind behind the groundbreaking Polyvagal Theory, which has startling implications for the treatment of anxiety, depression, trauma, and autism. Adopted by clinicians around the world, the Polyvagal Theory has provided exciting new insights into the way our autonomic nervous system unconsciously mediates social engagement, trust, and intimacy.

As the personal development expert Brian Tracy says, you have two choices in life: you can either work on your own goals, or you can work for someone else and help them achieve their goals. Did you know that only a small percentage of the population has clearly written goals that they work on every day? These are the people who end up achieving the most in life. You've probably reached the point where you realize that setting goals might be beneficial and I'm here to tell you that you're entirely right.

In the early 1960s scientists at the University of California, Berkeley set out to establish the key factors affecting health and longevity. Their results, known as the ‘Alameda 7’, you already know: don’t smoke, drink in moderation, sleep seven to eight hours a night, exercise, eat regular meals, maintain a moderate weight, eat breakfast. Years later, however, the same team discovered an eighth factor, one that proved more important than all the others: social connection.