Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life - Softcover

Johnson, Steven

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743241665 ISBN 13: 9780743241663

Publisher: Scribner Book Company, 2005

Synopsis

In this nationally bestselling, compulsively readable account of what makes brain science a vital component of people's quest to know themselves, acclaimed science writer Steven Johnson subjects his own brain to a battery of tests to find out what's really going on inside. He asks:

• How do we "read" other people?
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• What is the neurochemistry behind love and sex?
• 
  
• What does it mean that the brain is teeming with powerful chemicals closely related to recreational drugs?
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• Why does music move us to tears?
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• Where do breakthrough ideas come from?

Johnson answers these and many more questions arising from the events of our everyday lives. You do not have to be a neuroscientist to wonder, for example, why do you smile? And why do you sometimes smile inappropriately, even if you don't want to? How do others read your inappropriate smile? How does such interplay occur neurochemically, and what, if anything, can you do about it?
Fascinating and rewarding, Mind Wide Open speaks to brain buffs, self-obsessed neurotics, barstool psychologists, mystified parents, grumpy spouses, exasperated managers, and anyone who enjoys speculating and gossiping about the motivations and behaviors of other human beings. Steven Johnson shows us the transformative power of understanding brain science and offers new modes of introspection and tools for better parenting, better relationships, and better living.

About this title

Review:

"Mind Wide Open is a lucid and engaging travelogue from the frontiers of human brain science."
-- Steven Pinker, author of The Blank Slate and How the Mind Works

"Celebrates the brain's complexity and wonder even as it demonstrates that you can get to know your mind better than you ever thought."
-- Kirkus Reviews

About the Author:

Steven Johnson is the bestselling author of Interface Culture, Emergence, and Everything Bad Is Good for You as well as a columnist for Discover and a contributing editor at Wired. He lives in New York City with his wife and two sons, and can be reached via the Web at www.stevenberlinjohnson.com.

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0743241665
• ISBN 13: 9780743241663
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288