A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain - Hardcover

Ratey M.D., John J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679453091 ISBN 13: 9780679453093

Publisher: Pantheon, 2001

Synopsis

For the first time ever, discoveries in our under-
standing of the brain are changing anthropology, linguistics,
philosophy, and psychology--indeed, the brain itself may become a catalyst for transforming the very nature of these inquiries.
In A User's Guide to the Brain, Dr. John Ratey, best-selling co-author of Driven to Distraction, explains in lucid detail and with perfect clarity the basic structure and chemistry of the brain: how
its systems shape our perceptions, emotions, actions, and reactions; how possession of this knowledge can enable us to more fully understand and improve our lives; and how the brain
responds to the guidance of its user. He draws on examples from his own practice, from research, and from everyday life to
illuminate aspects of the brain's functioning, among them
prenatal and early childhood development; the perceptual
systems; the processes of consciousness, memory, emotion, and language; and the social brain.
As the best means for explaining the dynamic interactions of the brain, Ratey offers as a metaphor the four "theaters" of exploration: 1) the act of perception; 2) the filters of attention, consciousness, and cognition; 3) the array of options employed by the brain--memory, emotion, language, movement--to transform information into function; and 4) behavior and identity. Ratey
succeeds not only in giving us a compelling portrait of the brain's infinite flexibility and unpredictability but also in demonstrating how our very understanding of the brain affects who we are.

About this title

Review

Before consulting with customer service, it's always a good idea to read the manual. Psychiatrist John Ratey has condensed years of research on one of the most intimidating yet ubiquitous pieces of hardware in the world into the ever-handy User's Guide to the Brain. More intellectually stimulating than day-to-day practical, the Guide uses tales from Ratey's practice and other clinical venues, tidbits from neuroscientific research, and plain common sense to suggest how the brain develops and manifests personality and behavior. With section titles like "Free Will and the Anterior Cingulate Gyrus," many readers will feel intimidated, but Ratey is careful to direct his explanations to all--even those without a PhD in neuroanatomy. His interesting four-theater theory of mental function is the most directly practical section of the book, incorporating the author's years of experience with patients into a sensible framework that readers can use to better tune their own systems. Describing the changing of the guard from psychoanalysis to a more biological paradigm, Ratey writes:

Neuroscientists have, in a sense, simply taken over the elite, almost clerical office once held by analysts. The language used to describe the brain is, if anything, more opaque than any of the old psychoanalytic terminology, which was itself so obscure that only trained professionals could wade through the literature. Most people never even bother to learn such terminology, deeming that, like the language of the computer scientists of the early 1970s, it is better left to the nerds.

Determined to help us overcome our sense of helplessness in matters cranial, Ratey has shown that we can understand ourselves better and can learn quite a bit from the nerds. --Rob Lightner

From the Back Cover

"The brain is subject to the same kinds of influences and dysfunctions as other organs. Like a set of muscles, it responds to use and disuse by either growing and remaining vital or decaying, and thus, for the first time, we are learning to see mental weaknesses as physical systems in need of training and practice. The brain is a dynamic, highly sensitive yet robust system that may adapt, for better or worse, to almost any element of its environment. If we are going to set about training our brains to succeed in the world, we certainly need to learn about the various factors that can influence brain functions."

--From A User's Guide to the Brain

About this edition

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0679453091
• ISBN 13: 9780679453093
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416