Your Brain: The Missing Manual [NOOK Book]

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Overview

Puzzles and brain twisters to keep your mind sharp and your memory intact are all the rage today. More and more people -- Baby Boomers and information workers in particular -- are becoming concerned about their gray matter's ability to function, and with good reason. As this sensible and entertaining guide points out, your brain is easily your most important possession. It deserves proper upkeep.

Your Brain: The Missing Manual is a practical look at how to get the most out of your brain -- not just how the brain works, but how you can use it more effectively. What makes this book different than the average self-help ...

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More About This Book

Overview

Puzzles and brain twisters to keep your mind sharp and your memory intact are all the rage today. More and more people -- Baby Boomers and information workers in particular -- are becoming concerned about their gray matter's ability to function, and with good reason. As this sensible and entertaining guide points out, your brain is easily your most important possession. It deserves proper upkeep.

Your Brain: The Missing Manual is a practical look at how to get the most out of your brain -- not just how the brain works, but how you can use it more effectively. What makes this book different than the average self-help guide is that it's grounded in current neuroscience. You get a quick tour of several aspects of the brain, complete with useful advice about:

  • Brain Food: The right fuel for the brain and how the brain commands hunger (including an explanation of the different chemicals that control appetite and cravings)
  • Sleep: The sleep cycle and circadian rhythm, and how to get a good night's sleep (or do the best you can without it)
  • Memory: Techniques for improving your recall
  • Reason: Learning to defeat common sense; logical fallacies (including tactics for winning arguments); and good reasons for bad prejudices
  • Creativity and Problem-Solving: Brainstorming tips and thinking not outside the box, but about the box -- in other words, find the assumptions that limit your ideas so you can break through them
  • Understanding Other People's Brains: The battle of the sexes and babies developing brains

Learn about the built-in circuitry that makes office politics seem like a life-or-death struggle, causes you to toss important facts out of your memory if they're not emotionally charged, and encourages you to eat huge amounts of high-calorie snacks. With Your Brain: The Missing Manual you'll discover that, sometimes, you can learn to compensate for your brain or work around its limitations -- or at least to accept its eccentricities.


Exploring your brain is the greatest adventure and biggest mystery you'll ever face. This guide has exactly the advice you need.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780596551827
  • Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
  • Publication date: 2/9/2009
  • Sold by: Barnes & Noble
  • Format: eBook
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 280
  • Sales rank: 239,382
  • Series: Missing Manual Series
  • File size: 5 MB

Meet the Author

Matthew MacDonald is a developer, author, and educator in all things Visual Basic and .NET. He's worked with Visual Basic and ASP since their initial versions, and has written over a dozen books on the subject, including The Book of VB .NET (No Starch Press) and Visual Basic 2005: A Developer's Notebook (O'Reilly). He has also written a number of Missing Manual titles on Excel 2007 and Access 2007 (O’Reilly). His website is http://www.prosetech.com/.

Table of Contents


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

Customer Reviews

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Sort by: Showing all of 4 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted April 27, 2012

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