Your Brain

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 grey 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.

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 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 Excel 2007:The Missing Manual, Excel 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual, Access 2007:The Missing Manual, and Access 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual, all from O'Reilly. His website is http://www.prosetech.com.

The Missing Credits	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
Warming Up
A Lap Around the Brain	p. 7
A First Look at Your Brain	p. 8
The Brain: An Archeological Site	p. 9
The Brain's Wiring	p. 15
Mental Fitness	p. 22
Brain Food: Healthy Eating	p. 27
The Brain's Energy Use	p. 28
Brain Fuel	p. 29
A Brain-Friendly Diet	p. 33
The Secret Gears of Appetite	p. 38
Sleep: Taking Your Brain Offline	p. 45
Your Biological Clock	p. 46
Why We Sleep	p. 48
The Sleep Cycle	p. 55
REM Sleep	p. 57
Dream Analysis	p. 62
Exploring Your Brain
Perception	p. 65
The Doors of Perception	p. 66
Optical Illusions	p. 68
Your Shifty Eyes	p. 70
Distortions and Mismeasurements	p. 75
Seeing Things	p. 82
Ignoring Things	p. 86
Other Perception-Distorting Assumptions	p. 88
Dizzy Yourself Silly with Optical Illusions on the Web	p. 89
Memory	p. 93
The Remembrance of Things Past	p. 94
Short-Term Memory	p. 95
Long-Term Memory	p. 97
Techniques for Better Remembering	p. 107
Better Learning	p. 120
Emotions	p. 123
Understanding Emotion	p. 124
Pleasure: The Reward System	p. 128
Fear: Avoiding Death	p. 133
Stress	p. 138
In Search of Happiness	p. 140
Reason	p. 147
The Thinking Brain	p. 148
Common Sense	p. 150
Moral Calculus	p. 154
Statistical Blunders	p. 156
Critical Thinking	p. 163
Problem Solving	p. 169
Creative Thinking Tools	p. 171
Your Personality	p. 179
The Building Blocks of Personality	p. 180
A Personality Test	p. 183
Dissecting Your Personality	p. 186
The Personality Fit	p. 194
Understanding Other People's Brains
The Battle of the Sexes	p. 199
Gender in the Brain	p. 200
Are Gender Differences Real?	p. 206
Love and Relationships	p. 215
The Developing Brain	p. 223
Before Birth	p. 224
Childhood	p. 226
The Teenage Years	p. 232
Old Age	p. 235
Nature vs. Nurture	p. 239
Index	p. 249
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials