Download or read book Postcards from the Brain Museum written by Brian Burrell and published by Broadway. This book was released on 2004 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the near-obsessive nineteenth-century research of top scientific minds to locate possible anatomical signs of genius, criminal behavior, and insanity, discussing the posthumous brain examinations of such figures as Albert Einstein, Walt Whitman, and Vladimir Lenin. 30,000 first printing.

Download or read book Mind and Brain written by William R. Uttal and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The search for mind-brain relationships, with a particular emphasis on distinguishing hyperbole from solid empirical results in brain imaging studies. Cognitive neuroscience explores the relationship between our minds and our brains, most recently by drawing on brain imaging techniques to align neural mechanisms with psychological processes. In Mind and Brain, William Uttal offers a critical review of cognitive neuroscience, examining both its history and modern developments in the field. He pays particular attention to the role of brain imaging--especially functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)--in studying the mind-brain relationship. He argues that, despite the explosive growth of this new mode of research, there has been more hyperbole than critical analysis of what experimental outcomes really mean. With Mind and Brain, Uttal attempts a synoptic synthesis of this substantial body of scientific literature. Uttal considers psychological and behavioral concerns that can help guide the neuroscientific discussion; work done before the advent of imaging systems; and what brain imaging has brought to recent research. Cognitive neuroscience, Uttal argues, is truly both cognitive and neuroscientific. Both approaches are necessary and neither is sufficient to make sense of the greatest scientific issue of all: how the brain makes the mind.

Download or read book Inside Your Brain written by Eric H. Chudler and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ideal for anyone interested in learning about the nervous system, this helpful road map of the brain explains various brain structures and pinpoints their locations and particular functions. Each chapter offers background information about a specific neuroscience topic, plus engaging experiments, games, and demonstrations that will guide readers to an understanding of these new ideas. The activities suggested meet National Science Education Standards.

Download or read book The Human Brain written by Kathleen Simpson and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the amazing brain, what it can do, how it is studied, brain injuries, disorders, and syndromes that affect the brain and more.

Download or read book You are what You Hear written by Harry Witchel and published by Algora Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pondering the musicality of everything from bird songs to the language he calls "motherese," Dr. Witchel illustrates the power of music and addresses the questions: Why do we have music? What does music do to our emotions? Can animals hear and understand music? What does music do to your brain? Why do people listen to sad music? Why do some people like classical but others only like heavy metal? Is there some essential feature to all music?You Are What You Hearis an erudite and entertaining study that is unique in many ways. No other book has thoroughly elaborated the connection between music and social territory in humans, although in other music-making species scientists have shown this connection to be clear-cut. Given the wealth of scientific evidence and historical narratives presented inYou Are What You Hear, an intellectual investigation of this avenue is long overdue. Written by a psychobiologist, the work straddles hard science and psychology, approaching music from a unique interdisciplinary perspective. Successfully bridging these strands of evidence,You Are What You Hearelucidates the significance of territory not only in music but in daily life. This lively and engaging book will have a broad appeal — not only to the general public, but to students interested in the relationship between music and culture. Anyone from seventeen to ninety-seven will have the potential to gain something from this book.

Download or read book Connectome written by Sebastian Seung and published by HMH. This book was released on 2012-02-07 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Accessible, witty . . . an important new researcher, philosopher and popularizer of brain science . . . on par with cosmology’s Brian Greene and the late Carl Sagan” (The Plain Dealer). One of the Wall Street Journal’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year and a Publishers Weekly “Top Ten in Science” Title Every person is unique, but science has struggled to pinpoint where, precisely, that uniqueness resides. Our genome may determine our eye color and even aspects of our character. But our friendships, failures, and passions also shape who we are. The question is: How? Sebastian Seung is at the forefront of a revolution in neuroscience. He believes that our identity lies not in our genes, but in the connections between our brain cells—our particular wiring. Seung and a dedicated group of researchers are leading the effort to map these connections, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse. It’s a monumental effort, but if they succeed, they will uncover the basis of personality, identity, intelligence, memory, and perhaps disorders such as autism and schizophrenia. Connectome is a mind-bending adventure story offering a daring scientific and technological vision for understanding what makes us who we are, as individuals and as a species. “This is complicated stuff, and it is a testament to Dr. Seung’s remarkable clarity of exposition that the reader is swept along with his enthusiasm, as he moves from the basics of neuroscience out to the farthest regions of the hypothetical, sketching out a spectacularly illustrated giant map of the universe of man.” —TheNew York Times “An elegant primer on what’s known about how the brain is organized and how it grows, wires its neurons, perceives its environment, modifies or repairs itself, and stores information. Seung is a clear, lively writer who chooses vivid examples.” —TheWashington Post

Download or read book Cranioklepty written by Colin Dickey and published by Unbridled Books. This book was released on 2010-10-09 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a history of cranioklepty, the desire to possess the skulls of the brilliant and famous for study, for sale, or for display, and includes the after-death stories of such notables as Haydn, Beethoven, and Thomas Browne.

Download or read book The Skull Collectors written by Ann Fabian and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-10-15 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Philadelphia naturalist Samuel George Morton died in 1851, no one cut off his head, boiled away its flesh, and added his grinning skull to a collection of crania. It would have been strange, but perhaps fitting, had Morton’s skull wound up in a collector’s cabinet, for Morton himself had collected hundreds of skulls over the course of a long career. Friends, diplomats, doctors, soldiers, and fellow naturalists sent him skulls they gathered from battlefields and burial grounds across America and around the world. With The Skull Collectors, eminent historian Ann Fabian resurrects that popular and scientific movement, telling the strange—and at times gruesome—story of Morton, his contemporaries, and their search for a scientific foundation for racial difference. From cranial measurements and museum shelves to heads on stakes, bloody battlefields, and the “rascally pleasure” of grave robbing, Fabian paints a lively picture of scientific inquiry in service of an agenda of racial superiority, and of a society coming to grips with both the deadly implications of manifest destiny and the mass slaughter of the Civil War. Even as she vividly recreates the past, Fabian also deftly traces the continuing implications of this history, from lingering traces of scientific racism to debates over the return of the remains of Native Americans that are held by museums to this day. Full of anecdotes, oddities, and insights, The Skull Collectors takes readers on a darkly fascinating trip down a little-visited but surprisingly important byway of American history.

Download or read book Rest in Pieces written by Bess Lovejoy and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-03-12 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “marvelously macabre” (Kirkus Reviews) history of the bizarre afterlives of corpses of the celebrated and notorious dead. For some of the most influential figures in history, death marked the start of a new adventure. The famous deceased have been stolen, burned, sold, pickled, frozen, stuffed, impersonated, and even filed away in a lawyer’s office. Their fingers, teeth, toes, arms, legs, skulls, hearts, lungs, and nether regions have embarked on voyages that crisscross the globe and stretch the imagination. Counterfeiters tried to steal Lincoln’s corpse. Einstein’s brain went on a cross-country road trip. And after Lord Horatio Nelson perished at Trafalgar, his sailors submerged him in brandy—which they drank. From Alexander the Great to Elvis Presley, and from Beethoven to Dorothy Parker, Rest in Pieces connects the lives of the famous dead to the hilarious and horrifying adventures of their corpses, and traces the evolution of cultural attitudes toward death.

Download or read book From Eve to Evolution written by Kimberly A. Hamlin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-05-08 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Eve to Evolution provides the first full-length study of American women’s responses to evolutionary theory and illuminates the role science played in the nineteenth-century women’s rights movement. Kimberly A. Hamlin reveals how a number of nineteenth-century women, raised on the idea that Eve’s sin forever fixed women’s subordinate status, embraced Darwinian evolution—especially sexual selection theory as explained in The Descent of Man—as an alternative to the creation story in Genesis. Hamlin chronicles the lives and writings of the women who combined their enthusiasm for evolutionary science with their commitment to women’s rights, including Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Eliza Burt Gamble, Helen Hamilton Gardener, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. These Darwinian feminists believed evolutionary science proved that women were not inferior to men, that it was natural for mothers to work outside the home, and that women should control reproduction. The practical applications of this evolutionary feminism came to fruition, Hamlin shows, in the early thinking and writing of the American birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger. Much scholarship has been dedicated to analyzing what Darwin and other male evolutionists had to say about women, but very little has been written regarding what women themselves had to say about evolution. From Eve to Evolution adds much-needed female voices to the vast literature on Darwin in America.

Download or read book How Our Brain Became Human written by Yanko A. Yankov MD PhD. and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2022-10-18 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human brain growth and evolution have been subjects of many genetic, environmental or social studies separately. Additionally, there are very few available sources on the complex role of our microbiome and the recently discovered hormones VIP and PACAP. The book author also describes some of his cases seen during his long clinical experience to illustrate different points of his extensive literature review. The book is divided into seven chapters, condensing the author’s scientific opinion on the growth and evolution of the human brain, the organ that differentiates us from all other species. He does not dismiss any other opinions or beliefs. The author challenges scientists and clinicians to continue researching the brain without prejudice. At the end he gives his opinion on how our BIG brains can help us live better together.

Download or read book A History of the Brain written by Andrew P. Wickens and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2014-12-08 with total page 635 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A History of the Brain tells the full story of neuroscience, from antiquity to the present day. It describes how we have come to understand the biological nature of the brain, beginning in prehistoric times, and progressing to the twentieth century with the development of Modern Neuroscience. This is the first time a history of the brain has been written in a narrative way, emphasizing how our understanding of the brain and nervous system has developed over time, with the development of the disciplines of anatomy, pharmacology, physiology, psychology and neurosurgery. The book covers: beliefs about the brain in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome the Medieval period, Renaissance and Enlightenment the nineteenth century the most important advances in the twentieth century and future directions in neuroscience. The discoveries leading to the development of modern neuroscience gave rise to one of the most exciting and fascinating stories in the whole of science. Written for readers with no prior knowledge of the brain or history, the book will delight students, and will also be of great interest to researchers and lecturers with an interest in understanding how we have arrived at our present knowledge of the brain.

Download or read book Kennewick Man written by Heather Burke and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-17 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kennewick Man, known as the Ancient One to Native Americans, has been the lightning rod for conflict between archaeologists and indigenous peoples in the United States. A decade-long legal case pitted scientists against Native American communities and highlighted the shortcomings of the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), designed to protect Native remains. In this volume, we hear from the many sides of this issue—archaeologists, tribal leaders, and others—as well as views from the international community. The wider implications of the case and its resolution is explored. Comparisons are made to similar cases in other countries and how they have been handled. Appendixes provide the legal decisions, appeals, and chronology to allow full exploration of this landmark legal struggle. An ideal starting point for discussion of this case in anthropology, archaeology, Native American studies, and cultural property law courses. Sponsored by the World Archaeological Congress.

Download or read book Coercion as Cure written by Thomas Szasz and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2011-12-31 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding the history of psychiatry requires an accurate view of its function and purpose. In this provocative new study, Szasz challenges conventional beliefs about psychiatry. He asserts that, in fact, psychiatrists are not concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of bona fide illnesses. Psychiatric tradition, social expectation, and the law make it clear that coercion is the profession's determining characteristic. Psychiatrists may "diagnose" or "treat" people without their consent or even against their clearly expressed wishes, and these involuntary psychiatric interventions are as different as are sexual relations between consenting adults and the sexual violence we call "rape." But the point is not merely the difference between coerced and consensual psychiatry, but to contrast them. The term "psychiatry" ought to be applied to one or the other, but not both. As long as psychiatrists and society refuse to recognize this, there can be no real psychiatric historiography. The coercive character of psychiatry was more apparent in the past than it is now. Then, insanity was synonymous with unfitness for liberty. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a new type of psychiatric relationship developed, when people experiencing so-called "nervous symptoms," sought help. This led to a distinction between two kinds of mental diseases: neuroses and psychoses. Persons who complained about their own behavior were classified as neurotic, whereas persons about whose behavior others complained were classified as psychotic. The legal, medical, psychiatric, and social denial of this simple distinction and its far-reaching implications undergirds the house of cards that is modern psychiatry. Coercion as Cure is the most important book by Szasz since his landmark The Myth of Mental Illness.

Download or read book Proust Was a Neuroscientist written by Jonah Lehrer and published by HMH. This book was released on 2008-09-01 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times–bestselling author provides an “entertaining” look at how artists enlighten us about the workings of the brain (New York magazine). In this book, the author of How We Decide and Imagine: How Creativity Works “writes skillfully and coherently about both art and science”—and about the connections between the two (Entertainment Weekly). In this technology-driven age, it’s tempting to believe that science can solve every mystery. After all, it’s cured countless diseases and sent humans into space. But as Jonah Lehrer explains, science is not the only path to knowledge. In fact, when it comes to understanding the brain, art got there first. Taking a group of artists—a painter, a poet, a chef, a composer, and a handful of novelists—Lehrer shows how each one discovered an essential truth about the mind that science is only now rediscovering. We learn, for example, how Proust first revealed the fallibility of memory; how George Eliot discovered the brain’s malleability; how the French chef Escoffier discovered umami (the fifth taste); how Cézanne worked out the subtleties of vision; and how Gertrude Stein exposed the deep structure of language—a full half-century before the work of Noam Chomsky and other linguists. More broadly, Lehrer shows that there’s a cost to reducing everything to atoms and acronyms and genes. Measurement is not the same as understanding, and art knows this better than science does. An ingenious blend of biography, criticism, and first-rate science writing, Proust Was a Neuroscientist urges science and art to listen more closely to each other, for willing minds can combine the best of both to brilliant effect. “His book marks the arrival of an important new thinker . . . Wise and fresh.” —Los Angeles Times

Download or read book Coercion as Cure written by Frank Villafana and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding the history of psychiatry requires an accurate view of its function and purpose. In this provocative new study, Szasz challenges conventional beliefs about psychiatry. He asserts that, in fact, psychiatrists are not concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of bona fide illnesses. Psychiatric tradition, social expectation, and the law make it clear that coercion is the profession's determining characteristic. Psychiatrists may "diagnose" or "treat" people without their consent or even against their clearly expressed wishes, and these involuntary psychiatric interventions are as different as are sexual relations between consenting adults and the sexual violence we call "rape." But the point is not merely the difference between coerced and consensual psychiatry, but to contrast them. The term "psychiatry" ought to be applied to one or the other, but not both. As long as psychiatrists and society refuse to recognize this, there can be no real psychiatric historiography. The coercive character of psychiatry was more apparent in the past than it is now. Then, insanity was synonymous with unfitness for liberty. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a new type of psychiatric relationship developed, when people experiencing so-called "nervous symptoms," sought help. This led to a distinction between two kinds of mental diseases: neuroses and psychoses. Persons who complained about their own behavior were classified as neurotic, whereas persons about whose behavior others complained were classified as psychotic. The legal, medical, psychiatric, and social denial of this simple distinction and its far-reaching implications undergirds the house of cards that is modern psychiatry. Coercion as Cure is the most important book by Szasz since his landmark The Myth of Mental Illness.

Download or read book The Devil s Gentleman written by Harold Schechter and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2008-09-30 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From renowned true-crime historian Harold Schechter comes the riveting exploration of a notorious New York City murder in the 1890s, the fascinating forensic science of an earlier time, and the grisly court case that became a tabloid spectacle. The wayward son of a revered Civil War general, Roland Molineux enjoyed good looks, status, and fortune–hardly the qualities of a prime suspect in a series of shocking, merciless cyanide killings. Molineux’s subsequent indictment for murder led to two explosive trials and a sex-infused scandal that shocked the nation. Bringing to life Manhattan’s Gilded Age, Schechter captures all the colors of the tumultuous legal proceedings, gathering his own evidence and tackling subjects no one dared address at the time–all in hopes of answering a tantalizing question: What powerfully dark motives could drive the wealthy scion of an eminent New York family to murder? Praise for The Devil's Gentleman: “A heady tale of sin, sex, jealousy and revenge in sepia-toned Manhattan.” –The New York Times “A dark chronicle of ghoulish revenge [and] journalistic sensationalism . . . [a] well-wrought anatomy of a murder and portrait of an age.” –The Wall Street Journal “Schechter peppers his account of one of America’s earliest media circuses with peacock characters and deliciously tawdry details. . . . For scandal sweet tooths, this one’s a beaut.” –Entertainment Weekly “In the hands of an artist and historian as gifted as Schechter, the material becomes a superbly evocative reconstruction of the fascinating period in American life that gave birth to our media-crazed society.” –Bomb magazine “Well told and powerfully written . . . Through newspaper accounts of the day and memoirs of the principals . . . Schechter brings [a crime] to vivid life.” –San Antonio Express-News