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 | |
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