Synopses & Reviews
A comprehensive and accessible exploration of anxiety, from a leading neuroscientist and the author of Synaptic Self Collectively, anxiety disorders are our most prevalent psychiatric problem, affecting about forty million adults in the United States. In Anxious, Joseph LeDoux, whose NYU lab has been at the forefront of research efforts to understand and treat fear and anxiety, explains the range of these disorders, their origins, and discoveries that can restore sufferers to normalcy.
LeDouxand#8217;s groundbreaking premise is that weand#8217;ve been thinking about fear and anxiety in the wrong way. These are not innate states waiting to be unleashed from the brain, but experiences that we assemble cognitively. Treatment of these problems must address both their conscious manifestations and underlying non-conscious processes. While knowledge about how the brain works will help us discover new drugs, LeDoux argues that the greatest breakthroughs may come from using brain research to help reshape psychotherapy.
A major work on our most pressing mental health issue, Anxious explains the science behind fear and anxiety disorders.
Review
"A detailed but very accessible journey into the world of circuits and synapses." —
Science
"LeDoux's work...is surely the most accessible contemporary work for those interested in the brain's effect on personality." —Booklist
Review
SYNAPTIC SELF:and#160; and#160;
"A clear, up-to-date, and impressively fair-minded account of what neuroscience has established about human nature."and#160;
-Howard Gardner, author of Frames of Mind and Intelligence Reframedand#160;
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"In this pathbreaking synthesis, Joseph LeDoux draws on dazzling insights from the cutting edge of neuroscience to generate a new conception of an enduring mystery: the nature of the self. Enlightening and engrossing, LeDoux's bold formulation will change the way you think about who you are"and#160;
- Daniel L. Schacter, Chairman of Psychology at Harvard Universityand#160;
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"Synaptic Self is a wonderful tour of the brain circuitry behind some of the critical aspects of the mind. LeDoux is an expert tour guide and it is well worth listening. His perspective takes you deep into the cellular basis of what it is to be a thinking being".and#160;
- Antonio R. Damasio, Neuroscientist, author of The Feeling of What Happensand#160;
Synopsis
Anxious] helps to explain and prevent the kinds of debilitating anxieties all of us face in this increasingly stressful world. Daniel J. Levitin, author ofThe Organized MindandThis Is Your Brain On Music
A comprehensive and accessible exploration of anxiety, from a leading neuroscientist and the author of Synaptic Self
Collectively, anxiety disorders are our most prevalent psychiatric problem, affecting about forty million adults in the United States. In Anxious, Joseph LeDoux, whose NYU lab has been at the forefront of research efforts to understand and treat fear and anxiety, explains the range of these disorders, their origins, and discoveries that can restore sufferers to normalcy.
LeDoux s groundbreaking premise is that we ve been thinking about fear and anxiety in the wrong way. These are not innate states waiting to be unleashed from the brain, but experiences that we assemble cognitively. Treatment of these problems must address both their conscious manifestations and underlying non-conscious processes. While knowledge about how the brain works will help us discover new drugs, LeDoux argues that the greatest breakthroughs may come from using brain research to help reshape psychotherapy.
A major work on our most pressing mental health issue, Anxious explains the science behind fear and anxiety disorders."
Synopsis
In 1996 Joseph LeDoux's The Emotional Brain presented a revelatory examination of the biological bases of our emotions and memories. Now, the world-renowned expert on the brain has produced with a groundbreaking work that tells a more profound story: how the little spaces between the neurons—the brain's synapses—are the channels through which we think, act, imagine, feel, and remember. Synapses encode the essence of personality, enabling each of us to function as a distinctive, integrated individual from moment to moment. Exploring the functioning of memory, the synaptic basis of mental illness and drug addiction, and the mechanism of self-awareness, Synaptic Self is a provocative and mind-expanding work that is destined to become a classic.
About the Author
JOSEPH LEDOUX is the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science at New York University, where he is a member of the Center for Neural Science and Department of Psychology. He directs the Emotional Brain Institute at New York University and at the Nathan Kline Institute, and is the author of Synaptic Self and The Emotional Brain. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Table of Contents
Synaptic Self Acknowledgments
1. The Big One
2. Seeking The Self
3. The Most Unaccountable Of Machinery
4. Building The Brain
5. Adventures In Time
6. Small Change
7. The Mental Trilogy
8. The Emotional Brain Revisited
9. The Lost World
10. Synaptic Sickness
11. Who Are You?
Notes
Works Cited
Index