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Product Description
An all-star lineup of scientists takes you to the front lines of brain research.
Are we born to be shy? Why do we remember some events so clearly and others not at all? Are creativity and depression somehow linked? Do our dreams really have deeper meanings?
Now in paperback, here is a wonderfully accessible introduction to the most important recent findings about how our health, behavior, feelings, and identities are influenced by what goes on inside our brains. In this timely book, eight pioneering researchers offer lively and stimulating discussions on the most exciting discoveries as well as a new way of understanding our emotions, moods, memories, and dreams. Inside, you'll find:
* J. ALLAN HOBSON, author of the groundbreaking The Dreaming Brain, leading a tour of dream states and explaining why we dream and what dream studies reveal about our minds
* ERIC KANDEL, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Medicine, taking us along the chain of biological events that create long-term memories, revealing how we stand at the brink of helping those who suffer from grave mental and memory disorders
* STEVEN HYMAN, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, tracing the links between nature and nurture, particularly in addiction and mental illness, to explain the relationship between inherited tendencies and the impact of life experience
* KAY REDFIELD JAMISON, bestselling author of An Unquiet Mind, explaining manic depression, its prevalence among gifted artists, writers, and musicians, and the societal questions raised by trying to eradicate the "depression gene"
. . . and much, much more. Whether discussing the brain-body connection, the sources of emotion, or the ethereal world of dreams, States of Mind enables you to share in the very latest explorations into the nature and function of the human mind.
Amazon.com Review
In 1997, eight prominent scientist writers, experts on thought and the brain, met to give public lectures on the state of the art of the mind. Their talks emphasized the practical aspects, especially how emotions and stress affect the brain. States of Mind gathers their presentations in one place. The question they all ask is, "What can science tell us about ourselves?"
Steven Hyman, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, says, "There is no more compelling reason to attempt to understand the causes of mental illness than that these various afflictions exact an enormous human cost." He describes "the breathtaking complexity of the genes/environment dance," in which we now understand only a very few steps. Jerome Kagan, author of Three Seductive Ideas, talks about one such step: shyness. Kay Redfield Jamison, author of An Unquiet Mind, talks about another step: manic-depression. This is not a book about the mind-brain problem or the nature of consciousness in a general or philosophical way; it's about what it means to have a specific human brain. What factors shape our personality, our temperament, our dreams, our sense of self? What does it mean to be "me" in particular? --Mary Ellen Curtin
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