The Human Brain Book »

Rita Carter is a science and medical writer, and contributes to the Independent, New Scientist, the Daily Mail, and the Telegraph. She has twice been awarded the Medical Journalists' Association prize for outstanding contribution to medical journalism. She has written several books, including Mapping the Mind, Exploring Consciousness (both Weidenfeld and Nicolson), and Multiplicity: the New Science of Personality (Little, brown), which have sold internationally - including the US, Japan, Korea, Poland, Italy, Spain, and Brazil. Mapping the Mind was shortlisted for the Rhone-Poulenc Prize (now the Royal Society Prize for Science books). Rita also talks about the brain, consciousness, and behavior to a wide range of groups at seminars, conferences, and workshops around the world.

The Human Brain Book is a complete guide to the one organ in the body that makes each of us what we are - unique individuals. It combines the latest findings from the field of neuroscience with expert text and state-of-the-art illustrations and imaging techniques to provide an incomparable insight into every facet of the brain. Layer by layer, it reveals the fascinating details of this remarkable structure, covering all the key anatomy and delving into the inner workings of the mind, unlocking its many mysteries, and helping you to understand what's going on in those millions of little gray and white cells.

Tricky concepts are illustrated and explained with clarity and precision, as The Human Brain Book looks at how the brain sends messages to the rest of the body, how we think and feel, how we perform unconscious actions (for example breathing), explores the nature of genius, asks why we behave the way we do, explains how we see and hear things, and how and why we dream. Physical and psychological disorders affecting the brain and nervous system are clearly illustrated and summarized in easy-to-understand terms.

The unique DVD brings the subject to life with interactive elements. These include a clickable model of the brain's structure that allows the user to zoom in and discover deeper layers of detail, while complex processes, such as the journey of a nerve impulse, are broken down and simplified through intuitive animations.