| Acknowledgments | |
| Preface | |
| Introduction | |
| You gotta know the territory: A short tour of your brain | |
| Your neurotransmitters | |
| Charting the day: Your body clocks | |
| The best of times? | |
| Coming to consciousness: Awake and aware. 5:00 A.M. to 8:00 A.M | |
| 5:00 A.M. Waking to the world | |
| Your inner alarm clocks | |
| Your brain chemicals | |
| Larks and owls | |
| Coming to our senses | |
| An orchestra of sensory harmony | |
| Touch and movement: Feeling our way | |
| Varieties of touch | |
| 6:00 A.M. Coming to consciousness | |
| The seat of consciousness | |
| Emotion, memory, and consciousness | |
| ItÆs always about networking | |
| Little gray cells and big white matter: Myelin in your brain | |
| Prime time for heart attack and stroke | |
| 7:00 A.M. Those morning emotions | |
| Reason needs a neurochemical boost | |
| Can meditation help master those emotions? | |
| Is there a God spot in your brain? | |
| Practice makes compassion | |
| 8:00 A.M. Finding your way | |
| Why his brain may not ask directions | |
| How we know where to find our lost keys | |
| Engaging the world: Getting out and about. 9:00 A.M. to Noon | |
| 9:00 A.M. Encountering others | |
| That face, that familiar face | |
| Friend or foe? Read my face | |
| Mirror, mirror: Copycat neurons in the brain | |
| The broken mirror: Autism insights from mirror neurons and face perception | |
| 10:00 A.M. Peak performance-or stress? | |
| Stress in the brain | |
| The alarm that doesnÆt stop: Why chronic stress is so bad | |
| Stress destroys neurons | |
| Stress ups the risk of AlzheimerÆs disease | |
| The very thought of it is enough | |
| Multitasking-again? | |
| The limits of multitasking | |
| How your brain helps your job kill you | |
| You can lull your brain away from stress | |
| Flow versus stress | |
| 11:00 A.M. Decisions, decisions, and more decisions | |
| The brainÆs CEO | |
| "Chemo brain" can ambush your CEO | |
| Choosing economically | |
| Making an emotional moral choice | |
| Choosing wearies your brain | |
| The brain has a section for regret | |
| Noon The hungry brain | |
| How hunger works in your brain | |
| WeÆre losing our scents | |
| Still hungry? When hunger goes awry | |
| Why calories taste delicious | |
| Addicted to _______ | |
| Self-control sucks your energy | |
| Yes, there is such a thing as brain food | |
| The guts of the day: Getting down to business. 1:00 P.M. to 4:00 P.M | |
| 1:00 P.M. The tired brain | |
| Partial recall: Why memory fades with age | |
| Can you help your brain stay young(er)? | |
| Predicting AlzheimerÆs disease | |
| How forgetting is good for the brain | |
| Asleep at the wheel-almost? It could be narcolepsy | |
| 1:54 P.M. Just time for a six-minute power nap | |
| 2:00 P.M. Bored bored bored | |
| CanÆt get no satisfaction? Maybe itÆs ADHD | |
| ADHD and risk taking could be good--sometimes | |
| Wired and hooked: Addicted to technology | |
| 3:00 P.M. Your pain is mainly in the brain | |
| How pain hurts your brain | |
| Mind under matter, mind over brain | |
| Is hypnosis real? | |
| A window into traumatic forgetting | |
| 4:00 P.M. Exercise your brain | |
| Exercise grows neurons and improves memory | |
| Why we get food cravings | |
| The most dangerous time for teens | |
| The teen brain is still changing | |
| But donÆt forget hormones | |
| Time out: Letting go and coming home. 5 P.M. to 8 P.M | |
| 5:00 P.M. The dimming of the day | |
| Is it really depression? Or just a bad patch? | |
| Searching for the pathway to depression | |
| Maybe youÆre just SAD | |
| Magnetic energy may work when meds fail | |
| A peak time for suicide | |
| Good grief: Addicted to grieving | |
| 6:00 P.M. Coming home | |
| An oxytocin high | |
| Nobody home? Loneliness hurts | |
| Oh, those comforting cravings. Or is it addiction? | |
| Bottoms up: Where many alcoholics end | |
| Is addiction the result rather than the cause of brain damage? | |
| Still crazy after all these years? Aging isnÆt stopping drug use | |
| 7:00 P.M. Gotta sing, gotta dance | |
| The musical path to the brain | |
| Music survives brain damage | |
| Your brain expands to store music | |
| So you think you can dance? | |
| Born to rock | |
| The creative brain | |
| Right brain, left brain? | |
| DonÆt oversimplify that right brain stuff | |
| The musical ear is learned, not born | |
| 8:00 P.M. Humor is healthy | |
| The best medicine | |
| Tracking your internal laugh track | |
| TV addiction is no mere metaphor | |
| Winding down: Fear, sex, sleep, and dreams. 9:00 P.M. to Midnight | |
| 9:00 P.M. Things that go bump in the night | |
| How fear works in your brain | |
| WhoÆs afraid? Not these brain cells | |
| When the brain decides itÆs time to scram | |
| The many parts of a violent brain | |
| 10:00 P.M. Lust, sex, and love | |
| YouÆve got that loving feeling . | |
| Your brain on sex | |
| Women, men, and orgasms: How alike are they? | |
| Does the penis have a brain of its own? | |
| WhatÆs love got to do with it? Plenty, it turns out-for women | |
| Are you born gay? Sexual orientation is biology, not choice | |
| 11:00 P.M. Falling asleep | |
| The five stages of sleep | |
| Insomnia: Curse of the night | |
| Perhaps less is more? | |
| Interrupted sleep? DonÆt call it insomnia. ItÆs normal | |
| Call me sleepless | |
| Still awake? Can you catch up on lost sleep? | |
| Is insomnia worse for night owls? | |
| Sleeping in the midnight hour | |
| Strolling in your sleep | |
| Drifting into dreamland | |
| Was Freud right about dreams? | |
| Do banished thoughts resurface in dreams? | |
| Want to dream more? Try sleep deprivation | |
| Night crew at work: 1:00 A.M. to 4:00 A.M | |
| 1:00 A.M. Night crew at work | |
| Cleaning up your neural garbage | |
| Why your brain doesnÆt take a break already | |
| The 10 percent myth | |
| 2:00 A.M. Going against the clock in your brain | |
| Disasters on the night shift | |
| Lack of sleep affects doctors as much as alcohol | |
| Less sleep? More fat | |
| Biorhythm and blues: Faulty clocks | |
| Resetting your body clock | |
| 3:00 A.M. Awake and anxious | |
| Where the nightmare begins | |
| A false alarm | |
| That pill to fix your ills has a price | |
| 3:30 A.M. Night nurse on duty | |
| 4:00 A.M. Last sleep | |
| 4:30 A.M. Awake so early? | |
| Your brain tomorrow | |
| Sources | |
| Glossary | |
| About the Author | |
| Index | |
| Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved. |