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Title details for Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain by Elaine Fox - Available

Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain

How to Retrain Your Brain to Overcome Pessimism and Achieve a More Positive Outlook

by Elaine Fox
Karen Saltus
Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
2 of 2 copies available
Are you optimistic or pessimistic? Glass half-full or half-empty? Do you look on the bright side or turn towards the dark? These are easy questions for most of us to answer, because our personality types are hard-wired into our brains. As pioneering psychologist and neuroscientist Elaine Fox has discovered, our outlook on life reflects our primal inclination to seek pleasure or avoid danger—inclinations that, in many people, are healthily balanced. But when our "fear brain" or "pleasure brain" is too strong, the results can be disastrous, as those of us suffering from debilitating shyness, addiction, depression, or anxiety know all too well.
Luckily, anyone suffering from these afflictions has reason to hope. Stunning breakthroughs in neuroscience show that our brains are more malleable than we ever imagined. In Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain, Fox describes a range of techniques—from traditional cognitive behavioral therapy to innovative cognitive-retraining exercises—that can actually alter our brains' circuitry, strengthening specific thought processes by exercising the neural systems that control them. The implications are enormous: lifelong pessimists can train themselves to think positively and find happiness, while pleasure-seekers inclined toward risky or destructive behavior can take control of their lives.
Drawing on her own cutting-edge research, Fox shows how we can retrain our brains to brighten our lives and learn to flourish. With keen insights into how genes, life experiences and cognitive processes interleave together to make us who we are, Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain revolutionizes our basic concept of individuality. We learn that we can influence our own personalities, and that our lives are only as "sunny" or as "rainy" as we allow them to be.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 5, 2012

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781469089751
      • File size: 213758 KB
      • Duration: 07:25:19

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 12, 2012
      Drawing on a host of studies in neurobiology and genetics, as well as evolutionary and behavioral psychology, Fox explores the struggle between the parts of the brain associated with fear and pessimism (the amygdala) and those associated with pleasure and optimism. Head of the Centre for Brain Science at the University of Essex, England, Fox introduces readers to many new concepts from experimental psychology and recent research on neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. To demonstrate how malleable the mind actually is, she describes an experiment where mice placed in a stimulating environment “grew about three times more cells in their hippocampus” than mice in an ordinary environment. Another experiment revealed that stimulating the prefrontal cortex (the brain’s control center) can restrain the amygdala’s transmission of fear and anxiety. However, only in a concluding chapter does Fox deal, all too cursorily, with the subject of her subtitle, noting how techniques like mindfulness training can produce positive changes in brain activity and also help strengthen the body’s immune system. Fox uses a few anecdotes to good effect, and her book, while occasionally dry, is a welcome, if intellectually demanding, introduction to a key area of brain research. 16 b&w illus. Agent: Patrick Walsh, Conville & Walsh.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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