The Art of Changing the Brain

Author: James E. Zull
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000981436
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 174

Book Description
Neuroscience tells us that the products of the mind--thought, emotions, artistic creation--are the result of the interactions of the biological brain with our senses and the physical world: in short, that thinking and learning are the products of a biological process.This realization, that learning actually alters the brain by changing the number and strength of synapses, offers a powerful foundation for rethinking teaching practice and one's philosophy of teaching.James Zull invites teachers in higher education or any other setting to accompany him in his exploration of what scientists can tell us about the brain and to discover how this knowledge can influence the practice of teaching. He describes the brain in clear non-technical language and an engaging conversational tone, highlighting its functions and parts and how they interact, and always relating them to the real world of the classroom and his own evolution as a teacher. "The Art of Changing the Brain" is grounded in the practicalities and challenges of creating effective opportunities for deep and lasting learning, and of dealing with students as unique learners.

How Not To Be Wrong

Author: James O'Brien
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 075355772X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
'Simply Brilliant' THE SECRET BARRISTER 'Passionate and brilliantly argued' DAVID OLUSOGA 'An admirably personal guide' MARINA HYDE 'Smart, analytical, self-aware and important' ALASTAIR CAMPBELL THE INTIMATE, REVEALING NEW BOOK FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE BESTSELLING, PRIZE-WINNING HOW TO BE RIGHT There's no point having a mind if you're not willing to change it James O'Brien has built well over a million loyal listeners to his radio show by dissecting the opinions of callers live on air, every day. But winning the argument doesn't necessarily mean you're right. In this deeply personal book, James turns the mirror on himself to reveal what he has changed his mind about and why, and explores how examining and changing our own views is our new civic duty in a world of outrage, disagreement and echo chambers. He writes candidly about the stiff upper lip attitudes and toxic masculinity that coloured his childhood, and the therapy and personal growth that have led him question his assumptions and explore new perspectives. Laying open his personal views on everything from racial prejudice to emotional vulnerability, from fat-shaming to tattoos, he then delves into the real reasons -- often irrational or unconscious -- he holds them. Unflinchingly honest, revealing and funny, How Not to Be Wrong is a tonic for a world more divided than ever and a personal manifesto for a better way of thinking and living. Because after all, if we can't change our own minds we'll never really be able to change anyone else's.

The Human Brain Book

Author: Rita Carter
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 075666215X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
The Human Brain Book is a complete guide to the one organ in the body that makes each of us what we are - unique individuals. It combines the latest findings from the field of neuroscience with expert text and state-of-the-art illustrations and imaging techniques to provide an incomparable insight into every facet of the brain. Layer by layer, it reveals the fascinating details of this remarkable structure, covering all the key anatomy and delving into the inner workings of the mind, unlocking its many mysteries, and helping you to understand what's going on in those millions of little gray and white cells. Tricky concepts are illustrated and explained with clarity and precision, as The Human Brain Book looks at how the brain sends messages to the rest of the body, how we think and feel, how we perform unconscious actions (for example, breathing), explores the nature of genius, asks why we behave the way we do, explains how we see and hear things, and how and why we dream. Physical and psychological disorders affecting the brain and nervous system are clearly illustrated and summarized in easy-to-understand terms.

From Brain to Mind

Author: James E. Zull
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000977471
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Book Description
Finalist for Foreword Magazine's 2011 Book of the YearWith his knack for making science intelligible for the layman, and his ability to illuminate scientific concepts through analogy and reference to personal experience, James Zull offers the reader an engrossing and coherent introduction to what neuroscience can tell us about cognitive development through experience, and its implications for education.Stating that educational change is underway and that the time is ripe to recognize that “the primary objective of education is to understand human learning” and that “all other objectives depend on achieving this understanding”, James Zull challenges the reader to focus on this purpose, first for her or himself, and then for those for whose learning they are responsible. The book is addressed to all learners and educators – to the reader as self-educator embarked on the journey of lifelong learning, to the reader as parent, and to readers who are educators in schools or university settings, as well as mentors and trainers in the workplace.In this work, James Zull presents cognitive development as a journey taken by the brain, from an organ of organized cells, blood vessels, and chemicals at birth, through its shaping by experience and environment into potentially to the most powerful and exquisite force in the universe, the human mind.Zull begins his journey with sensory-motor learning, and how that leads to discovery, and discovery to emotion. He then describes how deeper learning develops, how symbolic systems such as language and numbers emerge as tools for thought, how memory builds a knowledge base, and how memory is then used to create ideas and solve problems. Along the way he prompts us to think of new ways to shape educational experiences from early in life through adulthood, informed by the insight that metacognition lies at the root of all learning.At a time when we can expect to change jobs and careers frequently during our lifetime, when technology is changing society at break-neck speed, and we have instant access to almost infinite information and opinion, he argues that self-knowledge, awareness of how and why we think as we do, and the ability to adapt and learn, are critical to our survival as individuals; and that the transformation of education, in the light of all this and what neuroscience can tell us, is a key element in future development of healthy and productive societies.

Changing Minds

Author: Howard Gardner
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
ISBN: 1633690652
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Book Description
Think about the last time you tried to change someone’s mind about something important: a voter’s political beliefs; a customer’s favorite brand; a spouse’s decorating taste. Chances are you weren’t successful in shifting that person’s beliefs in any way. In his book, Changing Minds, Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner explains what happens during the course of changing a mind – and offers ways to influence that process. Remember that we don’t change our minds overnight, it happens in gradual stages that can be powerfully influenced along the way. This book provides insights that can broaden our horizons and shape our lives.

The Influential Mind

Author: Tali Sharot
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 162779266X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 299

Book Description
A cutting-edge, research-based inquiry into how we influence those around us and how understanding the brain can help us change minds for the better. In The Influential Mind, neuroscientist Tali Sharot takes us on a thrilling exploration of the nature of influence. We all have a duty to affect others—from the classroom to the boardroom to social media. But how skilled are we at this role, and can we become better? It turns out that many of our instincts—from relying on facts and figures to shape opinions, to insisting others are wrong or attempting to exert control—are ineffective, because they are incompatible with how people’s minds operate. Sharot shows us how to avoid these pitfalls, and how an attempt to change beliefs and actions is successful when it is well-matched with the core elements that govern the human brain. Sharot reveals the critical role of emotion in influence, the weakness of data and the power of curiosity. Relying on the latest research in neuroscience, behavioral economics and psychology, the book provides fascinating insight into the complex power of influence, good and bad. Praise for The Influential Mind Winner of the 2018 British Psychological Society Book Award Selected as a Best Book of 2017 by Forbes, The Times (UK), The Huffington Post, Bloomberg, Greater Good Magazine, Inc., Stanford Business School,and more “Sharot . . . covers the topic more fully and more authoritatively in a book whose title gives appropriately equal billing to thought, behavior and neurons. . . . Her book is a witty survey of techniques to influence and guide human behavior.” —The New York Times Book Review “This timely, intriguing book explains why it’s so difficult to shift the attitudes and actions of others—and what we can do about it.” —Adam Grant, New York Times–bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take

Intervening in the Brain

Author: Reinhard Merkel
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3540464778
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 547

Book Description
The wealth of insights into the brain’s functioning gained by neuroscience in recent years led to the development of new possibilities for intervening in the brain such as neurotransplantation, neural prostheses and brain stimulation techniques. Moreover, new and safer classes of psychopharmaceutical drugs lend themselves to neuroenhancement applications, i.e. they could be used to enhance cognitive capacities or emotional well-being without therapeutic need. This book offers extensive state-of-the-art accounts for these novel kinds of intervention, indicates future developments, and discusses the relevant philosophical, ethical and legal issues.

The God-Shaped Brain

Author: Timothy R. Jennings
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830892354
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Book Description
What you believe about God actually changes your brain. Psychiatrist Tim Jennings unveils how our brains and bodies thrive when we have a healthy understanding of who God is. This expanded edition now includes a study guide to help you discover how neuroscience and Scripture come together to bring healing and transformation to our lives.

Livewired

Author: David Eagleman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307907503
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
"Eagleman renders the secrets of the brain’s adaptability into a truly compelling page-turner.” —Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner “Livewired reads wonderfully like what a book would be if it were written by Oliver Sacks and William Gibson, sitting on Carl Sagan’s front lawn.” —The Wall Street Journal What does drug withdrawal have in common with a broken heart? Why is the enemy of memory not time but other memories? How can a blind person learn to see with her tongue, or a deaf person learn to hear with his skin? Why did many people in the 1980s mistakenly perceive book pages to be slightly red in color? Why is the world’s best archer armless? Might we someday control a robot with our thoughts, just as we do our fingers and toes? Why do we dream at night, and what does that have to do with the rotation of the Earth? The answers to these questions are right behind our eyes. The greatest technology we have ever discovered on our planet is the three-pound organ carried in the vault of the skull. This book is not simply about what the brain is; it is about what it does. The magic of the brain is not found in the parts it’s made of but in the way those parts unceasingly reweave themselves in an electric, living fabric. In Livewired, you will surf the leading edge of neuroscience atop the anecdotes and metaphors that have made David Eagleman one of the best scientific translators of our generation. Covering decades of research to the present day, Livewired also presents new discoveries from Eagleman’s own laboratory, from synesthesia to dreaming to wearable neurotech devices that revolutionize how we think about the senses.

Reductionism in Art and Brain Science

Author: Eric R. Kandel
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231542089
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

Book Description
Are art and science separated by an unbridgeable divide? Can they find common ground? In this new book, neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel, whose remarkable scientific career and deep interest in art give him a unique perspective, demonstrates how science can inform the way we experience a work of art and seek to understand its meaning. Kandel illustrates how reductionism—the distillation of larger scientific or aesthetic concepts into smaller, more tractable components—has been used by scientists and artists alike to pursue their respective truths. He draws on his Nobel Prize-winning work revealing the neurobiological underpinnings of learning and memory in sea slugs to shed light on the complex workings of the mental processes of higher animals. In Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, Kandel shows how this radically reductionist approach, applied to the most complex puzzle of our time—the brain—has been employed by modern artists who distill their subjective world into color, form, and light. Kandel demonstrates through bottom-up sensory and top-down cognitive functions how science can explore the complexities of human perception and help us to perceive, appreciate, and understand great works of art. At the heart of the book is an elegant elucidation of the contribution of reductionism to the evolution of modern art and its role in a monumental shift in artistic perspective. Reductionism steered the transition from figurative art to the first explorations of abstract art reflected in the works of Turner, Monet, Kandinsky, Schoenberg, and Mondrian. Kandel explains how, in the postwar era, Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Louis, Turrell, and Flavin used a reductionist approach to arrive at their abstract expressionism and how Katz, Warhol, Close, and Sandback built upon the advances of the New York School to reimagine figurative and minimal art. Featuring captivating drawings of the brain alongside full-color reproductions of modern art masterpieces, this book draws out the common concerns of science and art and how they illuminate each other.