The Brain

Richard M. Restak, M.D.

Complete with more than 150 full-color and black- and-white illustrations, this highly readable book captures the exciting spirit of PBS television's eight- part series, “THE BRAIN." Here is the story of man's marvelous quest to understand the workings of a miracle: the human brain, nearly three pounds of tissue that can store more information than all the libraries in the world-can trigger our most violent rages and our loftiest ideals... and is still so mysterious that it remains mankind's ultimate frontier. Like the acclaimed television series that inspired it, THE BRAIN explores the provocative findings of right brain/left brain research, as well as recent experiments that show:

· How the brain of a professional musician will process music in an entirely different way from that of an unsophisticated listener

· How our daily lives depend on the carefully orchestrated symphony of rhythms and drives that induce sleep, sexual feelings, aggression, and-when things go awry - depression and even suicide

· The wonders of learning and memory, and how, although brain cells continually die, somehow the memories can last a lifetime

· The impact of the workplace on the brain, and how some people become "addicted" to stress

· The ways that vision and movement work together so that a blind man can use the sense of touch to "see" objects across a room

· The intriguing phenomenon of "multiple personalities," which may, in some form, be part of our own everyday experience

Recent developments in technology have made it possible to examine the brain as never before. In this book you will see state-of-the-art images which show how the brain behaves when an object comes into view-how metabolically "active" areas-seen in brilliant orange--shift from the visual cortex in the back of the brain to the frontal lobes, where, in one instant, we finally "know" what we have seen.

Is there a distinction between the brain and the mind? How much of what we are and how we see the world is determined by one organ resting within our skulls? From madness to drug addiction, from violence to dreams, THE BRAIN uses text and illustrations to explore the myriad of amazing facts, case histories, and startling recent discoveries about what is "simply the most marvelous organ in the known universe." To read THE BRAIN is to voyage to the outer limits of human knowledge - to expand the one horizon without which there can be no others: our understanding of ourselves.