Search Results: Returned 9 Results, Displaying Titles 1 - 9
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2017., Penguin Press Call No: NEW 612.8 S241b Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Why do we do the things we do? Over a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky's genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy. And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. A behavior occurs--whether an example of humans at our best, worst, or somewhere in between. What went on in a person's brain a second before the behavior happened? Then Sapolsky pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell caused the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones acted hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli that triggered the nervous system? By now he has increased our field of vision so that we are thinking about neurobiology and the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology in trying to explain what happened. Sapolsky keeps going: How was that behavior influenced by structural changes in the nervous system over the preceding months, by that person's adolescence, childhood, fetal life, and then back to his or her genetic makeup? Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than one individual. How did culture shape that individual's group, what ecological factors millennia old formed that culture? And on and on, back to evolutionary factors millions of years old. The result is one of the most dazzling tours d'horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do ... for good and for ill. Sapolsky builds on this understanding to wrestle with some of our deepest and thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, morality and free will, and war and peace. Wise, humane, often very funny, Behave is a towering achievement, powerfully humanizing, and downright heroic in its own right.
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2022., Farrar, Straus and Giroux Call No: NEW Bio C139e Edition: First edition. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Unless you're a neuroscientist, Santiago Ramón y Cajal is likely the most important figure in the history of biology you've never heard of. Along with Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur, he ranks among the most brilliant and original biologists of the nineteenth century, and his discoveries have done for our understanding of the human brain what the work of Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton did for our conception of the physical universe.
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c2015., Adult, Cormorant Books Call No: Fic Col Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: All former major league baseball player Zep Baker needs to put his life back on track is to revive his marriage by convincing his wife to return to Tampa with their daughter. But his wife won't fall for his pleading or his old tricks. He needs a new game plan. Enter Hope, a neuroscience researcher who he persuades to help him in this endeavour. The resulting life-experiment takes both characters to places they did not foresee and for which they are not prepared.
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By Yong, Ed2022., 14:17:53, Random House Audio Edition: Unabridged. Click to access digital title. Sample Summary Note: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “thrilling” ( The New York Times ), “dazzling” ( The Wall Street Journal ) tour of the radically different ways that animals perceive the world that will fill you with wonder and forever alter your perspective, by Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist Ed Yong   “One of this year’s finest works of narrative nonfiction.”— Oprah Daily ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time, People, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, Reader’s Digest, Publishers Weekly, BookPage ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Oprah Daily, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Smithsonian Magazine , Prospect (UK), She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world. In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth’s magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile’s scaly face is as sensitive as a lover’s fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries that remain unsolved. Funny, rigorous, and suffused with the joy of discovery, An Immense World takes us on what Marcel Proust called “the only true voyage . . . not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes.” FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE • FINALIST FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL.
![An immense world [eAudiobook] : How animal senses reveal the hidden realms around us](/Library/images/~imageCT102768.JPG "An immense world [eAudiobook] : How animal senses reveal the hidden realms around us")
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2022., 10:14:20, Penguin Audio Edition: Unabridged. Click to access digital title. Summary Note: From University of Washington professor Chantel Prat comes The Neuroscience of You , a rollicking adventure into the human brain that reveals the surprising truth about neuroscience, shifting our focus from what’s average to an understanding of how every brain is different , exactly why our quirks are important, and what this means for each of us. With style and wit, Chantel Prat takes us on a tour of the meaningful ways that our brains are dissimilar from one another. Using real-world examples, along with take-them-yourself tests and quizzes, she shows you how to identify the strengths and weakness of your own brain, while learning what might be going on in the brains of those who are unlike you. With sections like “Focus,” “Navigate,” and “Connect,” The Neuroscience of You helps us see how brains that are engineered differently ultimately take diverse paths when it comes time to prioritize information, use what they’ve learned from experience, relate to other people, and so much more. While other scientists focus on how “the” brain works “on average,” Prat argues that our obsession with commonalities has slowed our progress toward understanding the very things that make each of us unique and interesting. Her field-leading research, employing cutting-edge technology, reveals the truth: Complicated as it may be, no two brains are alike. And individual differences in brain functioning are as pervasive as they are fundamental to defining what “normal” looks like. Adages such as, “I’m not wired that way” intuitively point to the fact that the brains we’re piloting, educating, and parenting are wonderfully distinct, explaining a whole host of phenomena, from how easily a person might learn a second language in adulthood to whether someone feels curious or threatened when faced with new information. This book invites the reader to understand themselves and others by zooming in so close that we all look gray and squishy. * This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF with images referred to in the text.
![The neuroscience of you [eAudiobook] : How every brain is different and how to understand yours](/Library/images/~imageCT102637.JPG "The neuroscience of you [eAudiobook] : How every brain is different and how to understand yours")
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2019., Adult, Greystone Books Call No: 153.4 B393s Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "In this mind-bending book, an esteemed neuroscientist explains why perfectionism is pointless - and argues that mistakes, missteps, and flaws are the keys to success. Remember that time you screwed up simple math or forgot the name of your favorite song? What if someone told you that such embarrassing "brain farts" are actually secret weapons, proof of your superiority to computers and AI? In Scatterbrain, we learn that boredom awakens the muse, distractions spark creativity, and misjudging time creates valuable memories, among other benefits of our faulty minds. Throughout, award-winning neuroscientist Henning Beck's hilarious asides and brain-boosting advice make for delightful reading of the most cutting-edge neuroscience our brains will (maybe never) remember."--Publisher's website.
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2017., General, W.W. Norton & Company Call No: 612.8 L675u Edition: First edition. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "Forty years ago, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original studies undoing our assumptions about the decision-making process. Their papers showed the ways in which the human mind erred, systematically, when forced to make judgments in uncertain situations. Their work created the field of behavioral economics, revolutionized Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made much of Michael Lewis's own work possible. Kahneman and Tversky are more responsible than anybody for the powerful trend to mistrust human intuition and defer to algorithms. A compelling collaboration between two men who have the dimensions of great literary figures. They became heroes in the university and on the battlefield - both had important careers in the Israeli military - and their research was deeply linked to their extraordinary life experiences. Amos Tversky was a brilliant, self-confident warrior and extrovert, the center of rapt attention in any room; Kahneman, a fugitive from the Nazis in his childhood, was an introvert whose questing self-doubt was the seedbed of his ideas. They became one of the greatest partnerships in the history of science, working together so closely that they couldn't remember whose brain originated which ideas, or who should claim credit. They flipped a coin to decide the lead authorship on the first paper they wrote, and simply alternated thereafter. This story about the workings of the human mind is explored through the personalities of two fascinating individuals so fundamentally different from each other that they seem unlikely friends or colleagues. In the process they may well have changed, for good, mankind's view of its own mind."--Provided by publisher.
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2019., Adult, Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Call No: 612.82 T483u Edition: First Ecco Paperback Edition. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Award-winning science writer Helen Thomson unlocks the biggest mysteries of the human brain through nine extraordinary cases. Our brains are far stranger than we think. We take it for granted that we can remember, feel emotion, navigate, empathize, and understand the world around us, but how would our lives change if these abilities were dramatically enhanced - or disappeared overnight? From the man who thinks he's a tiger to the doctor who feels the pain of others just by looking at them to a woman who hears music that's not there these people have had experiences that illustrate how the brain can shape our lives in unexpected and, in some cases, brilliant and alarming ways.
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2014., Adult, Random House Canada Call No: QWF 302 P655v Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: From birth to death, human beings are hard-wired to connect to other human beings. Face to face contact matters: tight bonds of friendship and love heal us, help children learn, extend our lives and make us happy. Looser in-person bonds matter, too, combining with our close relationships to form a personal 'village' around us, one that exerts unique effects. And not just any social networks will do: we need the real, face-to-face, in-the-flesh encounters that tie human families, groups of friends and communities together.
