Neuroscience

Successful Aging:A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives

Date Reviewed

This book by neuroscientist/psychologist Daniel J. Levitin is encyclopaedic in detail, which may be useful in specific circumstances, but can be hard slow reading if you don't have that motivation.

However, I persevered at five to 10 pages at a sitting and don't regret being exposed to that detail. Not all of the heavy going had been reserved to the voluminous appendices

The Pattern Seekers:A New Theory of Human Invention

Date Reviewed

Review

I was drawn to 'The Pattern Seekers:A New Theory of Human Invention' through a CBC 'Quirks and Quarks' radio interview with the author, Simon Baron-Cohen, an expert on autism.

And while not as immersed in the subject of autism as I expected, it is integrated into a more general analysis of brain skills and types, some of which are correlated with autism.

But the author seems to be using the book to suggest his own theory on a way the brain can be parsed to explain certain skills.

Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced and Stumbled our Way to Civilization

Date Reviewed

 

Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced and Stumbled our Way to Civilization, by University of British Columbia professor of philosophy, Edward Slingerland is a history demonstrating the positive contribution of alcoholic beverage to the growth of civilization. I could imagine this subject and the treatment in this book having a broader appeal than most non-fiction.

The Philosophical Baby:What Children's Minds Tell us about Truth, Love and the Meanings of Life

Date Reviewed

This book is more developmental psychology than philosophy, but it certainly offers thinking points. At the age of 10, author Alison Gopnik was reading Plato and questioning his thought. So it may be no surprise that as an adult, while giving answers, she is asking questions from various perspectives. Through this book I have come to quite like the author and the way she combines thought, ideas, science and personal observations.

Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at any Age

Date Reviewed

Get exercising and work up to 7 or 8 hours weekly is the best way to maintain brain health and stave off Alzheimer's disease and other dementia is Sanjay Gupta's primary recommendation in his book “Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at any Age”.

Forget those over-the-counter memory pills or reliance on mental puzzles and games other than to improve your skill in those areas. Going forward, evolving computer games may provide a breadth of stimulation in exercising the brain, with some hope of replacing drugs, says the author