06 Feb Three Neuro Books for a New Decade
The researchers in neuroscience are making new discoveries every year, and we are gaining more depth of understanding of how the brain works. This month we have three new books exploring different research on the brain with findings that can inspire us to change our mindset and behaviour.
The Changing Mind: A Neuroscientist’s Guide to Ageing Well by Daniel Levitin
We have long been encouraged to think of old age as synonymous with deterioration. Yet, recent studies show that our decision-making skills improve as we age and our happiness levels peak in our eighties. What really happens to our brains as we get older?
More of us are living into our eighties than ever before. In The Changing Mind, neuroscientist, psychologist and internationally-bestselling author Daniel Levitin invites us to dramatically shift our understanding of growing older, demonstrating its many cognitive benefits. He draws on cutting-edge research to challenge common and flawed beliefs, including assumptions around memory loss and the focus on lifespan instead of ‘healthspan’.
Levitin reveals the evolving power of the human brain from infancy to late adulthood. Distilling the findings from over 4000 papers, he explains the importance of personality traits, lifestyle, memory and community on ageing, offering actionable tips that we can all start now, at any age.
Brain Wash explores how modern culture threatens to rewire our brains and damage our health, offering a practical plan for healing. Contemporary life provides us with infinite opportunities, along with endless temptations. Living in this 24/7 hyper-reality poses serious risks to our physical and mental states, our connections to others and even to the world at large.
Based on the latest science, the father and son authors explore the mental hijacking that undermines each and every one of us and presents the tools necessary to think more clearly, make better decisions, strengthen bonds with others and develop healthier habits. Featuring a 10-day boot camp programme, including a meal plan and 40 delicious recipes, Brain Wash is the key to cultivating a more purposeful and fulfilling life.
The Gendered Brain: The new neuroscience that shatters the myth of the female brain by Gina Rippon
Barbie or Lego? Reading maps or reading emotions? Do you have a female brain or a male brain? Or is that the wrong question?
On a daily basis we face deeply ingrained beliefs that our sex determines our skills and preferences, from toys and colours to career choice and salaries. But what does this mean for our thoughts, decisions and behaviour?
Using the latest cutting-edge neuroscience, Gina Rippon unpacks the stereotypes that bombard us from our earliest moments and shows how these messages mould our ideas of ourselves and even shape our brains. Rigorous, timely and liberating, The Gendered Brain has huge repercussions for women and men, for parents and children, and for how we identify ourselves.