Brain Growth & Development Publications

Supporting the importance of brain growth and development

The Brain That Changes Itself
Norman Doidge, M.D., 2007

An astonishing new science called “neuroplasticity” is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. In this revolutionary look at the brain, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge, M.D., introduces to us both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they’ve transformed. From stroke patients learning to speak again to the remarkable case of a woman born with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, The Brain That Changes Itself will permanently alter the way we look at our brains, human nature, and human potential.

The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life

Joseph LeDoux, 1998

Joseph LeDoux, a leading authority in the field of neural science, investigates the origins of human emotions. What happens in our brains to make us feel fear, love, hate, anger, joy? Do we control our emotions, or do they control us? How can traumatic experiences in early childhood influence adult behavior, even though we have no conscious memory of them? In this provocative book, he explores the brain mechanisms underlying our emotions — mechanisms that are only now being revealed.

Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are
Sebastian Seung, 2013

Sebastian Seung is at the forefront of a revolution in neuroscience. He believes that our identity lies not in our genes, but in the connections between our brain cells—our particular wiring. Seung and a dedicated group of researchers are leading the effort to map these connections, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse. It’s a monumental effort, but if they succeed, they will uncover the basis of personality, identity, intelligence, memory, and perhaps disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.

Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
Daniel Goleman, 1996

Everyone knows that high IQ is no guarantee of success, happiness, or virtue, but until Emotional Intelligence, we could only guess why. Daniel Goleman’s brilliant report from the frontiers of psychology and neuroscience offers startling new insight into our “two minds”—the rational and the emotional—and how they together shape our destiny.

Evolution’s End: Claiming the Potential of Our Intelligence
Joseph Chilton Pearce, 1993

It’s time for the way we think about our families, our schools, and or lives to evolve.
This passionate and provocative critique of the way we raise our children and undermine our society’s future delineates the ways in which we thwart our creative progress, and reveals a new landscape of possibilities for the next step in human evolution. Brilliantly synthesizing twenty years of research into human intelligence, Joseph Chilton Pearce shows how everyday aspects of modern life have a cumulative effect, contributing to violence, child suicide, and deteriorating family and social structures. Proposing crucial yet simple solutions, Pearce persuasively argues that we have the power to get out of our own way and unleash, instead, our “unlimited, awesome, and unknown” human potential as the culmination of three billion years of evolution.

The Heart-Mind Matrix: How the Heart Can Teach the Mind New Ways to Think

Joseph Chilton Pearce, 2012

Expanding the revolutionary theories of mind…Joseph Chilton Pearce explains how the heart provides the balancing intelligence to the brain’s calculating intellect, an innate system of emotional-mental coherence lost generations ago through a breakdown of the nurturing culture of our ancestors. By severing ourselves from our heart intelligence, we are left with our selfish, survival-oriented reptilian brains, which create and reinforce “strange loops” between potential and actual reality, leading to our modern world’s endless cycle of self-inflicted disasters and societal crises. Pearce explains that…we can teach our brains new ways to think, amend our destructive behavior loops, and enter into a future of peace, spiritual connection, and conscious evolution.

The Playful Brain: Venturing to the Limits of Neuroscience

Sergio Pellis and Vivien Pellis 2010

Sergio and Vivien Pellis have synthesized three decades of empirical research to create a remarkable work, unequalled in its field. It’s a groundbreaking study into the formative role of play in our lives, a book that will not only expand our current knowledge of play behavior but will inspire change and progress from the laboratory to the playground.