The Brain Book by Rita Carter
In this all-singing all-dancing book of the brain Rita Carter
lays out the working of the brain
in a way that absolutely anyone can understand. It's a book to put
on your coffee-table and flick through when you have sworn at the
TV once too often for being stupid; to buy your bright niece for
Christmas, and to consult whenever you think "why did I do THAT?"
The book goes from fundamental anatomy through to the most up to
date and brain imaging studies on subjects like the mechanics of
emotion, empathy, morality and decision-making. It also has a
comprehensive section on what can go wrong with the brain,
and what happens to our brains - and thus our minds - as we age.
Multiplicity: The New Science of Personality by Rita Carter
Multiplicity explains how personalities are made and kept separate in the human brain, how to discover it in yourself and how to recognise, identify and take control of your various personalities.
Beat Memory Loss: The Complete Guide to Making the Most of Your Memory by Rita Carter
Written as part of the 'Use Your Brain' series dealing with common psychological problems – depression, anxiety, addiction and memory disorders. These books set out to explain the biological basis of the conditions – what the brain itself is doing (or not doing) to produce them; they also go into some detail about available physical therapies.
In addition to this, where appropriate, they provide do-it-yourself Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
Consciousness by Rita Carter
With contributions from:
Igor Aleksander, Susan J. Blackmore, David Chalmers, Daniel C. Dennett, Andrew Duggins,
Chris Frith, Jeffrey Gray, Stuart Hameroff, Nicholas Humphrey, J. Kevin O'Regan,
Jaak Panksepp, David Rosenthal, Alwyn Scott, John Searle, John Skoyles
Rita Carter ponders the nature, origins, and purpose of consciousness in this fascinating
inquiry into the toughest problem facing modern science and philosophy. Building on the
foundation of her bestselling book Mapping the Mind, she considers whether
consciousness is merely an illusion, a by-product of our brain's workings, some as yet
inexplicable feature or property of the material universe or--as the latest physics may
suggest--the very fundament of reality. Little, she discovers, is as it first seems.
Carter draws from a solid body of knowledge--empirical findings and theoretical
hypotheses--about consciousness, much of it derived from recent discoveries about the
brain. Her lively, accessible narrative ranges widely over new ways of thinking about
the subject and what direction new research is taking. Leading scholars from a range of
perspectives provide topical essays that complement Carter's account. The book also
discusses how traditional approaches--philosophical, scientific, and experiential--might
be brought together to create a more complete understanding of consciousness.
Mapping the Mind by Rita Carter
In Mapping the Mind, the first illustrated guide to the brain, Rita
Carter points to the latest developments in brain imaging to provide new insights
into how the human brain works. She argues that brain scans can reveal our
thoughts, memories and even our moods as clearly as X-rays reveal our bones.
Mapping the Mind attempts to chart how human behaviour and culture
are shaped by the architecture of the brain. Rita Carter sees individual personalities
as reflecting the geography of their particular brain and searches for the
biological mechanisms which create our thoughts and emotions. This book is
carefully researched and beautifully illustrated in full colour and provides a
challenging picture of what makes a human mind, and comes to some contentious
conclusions about human behaviour and free will.
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