Your Brain: The Missing Manual »

Matthew MacDonald is a developer, author, and educator in all things Visual Basic and .NET. He's worked with Visual Basic and ASP since their initial versions, and written over a dozen books on the subject, including The Book of VB .NET (No Starch Press) and Visual Basic 2005: A Developer's Notebook (O'Reilly). He has also written Excel 2007:The Missing Manual, Excel 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual, Access 2007:The Missing Manual, and Access 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual, all from O'Reilly. His web site is http://www.prosetech.com.

Distilling recent research in an engaging way, this reference presents usable information on creativitity, problem solving, reasoning, improving memory, reducing stress, brain development, and other life-changing topics.

The Missing Credits     vii
Introduction     1
Warming Up
A Lap Around the Brain     7
A First Look at Your Brain     8
The Brain: An Archeological Site     9
The Brain's Wiring     15
Mental Fitness     22
Brain Food: Healthy Eating     27
The Brain's Energy Use     28
Brain Fuel     29
A Brain-Friendly Diet     33
The Secret Gears of Appetite     38
Sleep: Taking Your Brain Offline     45
Your Biological Clock     46
Why We Sleep     48
The Sleep Cycle     55
REM Sleep     57
Dream Analysis     62
Exploring Your Brain
Perception     65
The Doors of Perception     66
Optical Illusions     68
Your Shifty Eyes     70
Distortions and Mismeasurements     75
Seeing Things     82
Ignoring Things     86
Other Perception-Distorting Assumptions     88
Dizzy Yourself Silly with Optical Illusions on the Web     89
Memory     93
The Remembrance of Things Past     94
Short-Term Memory     95
Long-Term Memory     97
Techniques for Better Remembering     107
Better Learning     120
Emotions     123
Understanding Emotion     124
Pleasure: The Reward System     128
Fear: Avoiding Death     133
Stress     138
In Search of Happiness     140
Reason     147
The Thinking Brain     148
Common Sense     150
Moral Calculus     154
Statistical Blunders     156
Critical Thinking     163
Problem Solving     169
Creative Thinking Tools     171
Your Personality     179
The Building Blocks of Personality     180
A Personality Test     183
Dissecting Your Personality     186
The Personality Fit     194
Understanding Other People's Brains
The Battle of the Sexes     199
Gender in the Brain     200
Are Gender Differences Real?     206
Love and Relationships     215
The Developing Brain     223
Before Birth     224
Childhood     226
The Teenage Years      232
Old Age     235
Nature vs. Nurture     239
Index     249