Healing With Love: A Breakthrough Mind/Body Medical Program for Healing Yourself and Others (Art of Holoenergetic Healing) Review

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(More customer reviews)I like this book very much. Dr. Laskow embraces an incredibly wide spectrum of healing methods the reader can practice at home. Here is a man who delivered 1000 babies before he was 35 years old, then decided to devote his remaining years to empower patients to heal themselves and to help others do the same.
L. Lawkow demonstrates his role as a teacher of consciousness-based healing. He presents new contemporary healing techniques, includes more than 20 excercises, and an appendix with the scientific basis for healing with subtle energies by Dr. Glen Rein,
As the author of Healing Yourself with Light, I found it joyful to see how interwoven our healing books are even though we had nor met while writing them. Healing with light and with love is surely the best possible combination for success!

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Healing With Love is a practical and illuminating medicalself-help book which teaches how to access the healing energy of loveand turn illness into wellness. In 1983 Dr. Leonard Laskow gave up asuccessful private medical practice in San Francisco to explore thephenomenon of transformational energies and their application to thehealing process. Grounded both in science and clinical experience,"Holoenergetic Healing," the highly effective system Laskow developedand has popularized in seminars around the world, is a four-phaseprocess for using the healing energy of love to recognize, resonatewith, release, and reform the destructive energy patterns that serveas the source of illness. Dr. Laskow documents how the careful use ofone's mind, intuition, and higher consciousness has led to successafter healing success. Full of charts, exercises, and illustratedhow-to techniques, Healing With Love shows readers how to use theirthoughts, their hands, their hearts, and their higher consciousnessto heal themselves and others. Originally published in 1992 byHarper/San Francisco, this insightful book sold over 30,000 copies ineight languages. Now in its second printing by popular demand.

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A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers Review

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(More customer reviews)I attended the 2005 Skeptics Society conference on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness at Caltech, where Ramachandran had been scheduled to speak but was unable to do so because of a family emergency. Although I was not previously familiar with his work, the description led me to believe he was a speaker I would be interested in hearing, and this book, which I purchased at the conference, provides a strong case for that. I've long had an interest in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and minored in cognitive science in my Ph.D. studies (never completed) at the University of Arizona. I've been out of academia for 11 years now, and apart from reading occasional works like Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained and Freedom Evolves, I've not been keeping close tabs on the field. The conference and this book were quite a pleasure--it is clear that there have been some significant developments over the last decade.
It is hard to believe that there are still people who think the brain is little more than a radio receiver, a set of mechanical controls for a disembodied spirit to manipulate the body. Ramachandran's book--like the case studies of Oliver Sacks and A.N. Luria--shows how wrongheaded that view is.
This is a thin (112 pages of text, 45 pages of notes), very accessible and entertaining book. If you enjoy the works of Sacks and Luria, you are likely to enjoy this as well. This is not a collection of case studies, though there are some descriptions of particular patients--it is written from a higher elevation, bringing together recent results, explaining unusual phenomena, and speculating about how those phenomena may tie in to a further understanding of the details of the brain's function.
The book came from Ramachandran's BBC Reith lectures, so it is for a popular audience, with the notes providing some more underlying detail. There are five chapters, each dealing with a single topic. The first chapter is about amputees who experience pain in their "phantom limbs" and how the parts of the brain which had been devoted to the now-absent limbs can become mapped to still-present parts of the body which are handled by physically proximate parts of the brain. For example, a patient whose left arm had been amputated could feel contact to the nonexistent fingers of his left hand from touches to parts of his face or upper arm. Ramachandran then uses this remapping phenomenon to speculate about the causes of Capgras' syndrome (where a patient believes people he knows have been replaced withimpostors), synesthesia, and pain asymbolia, where a patient responds to pain stimulus with laughter.
The second chapter is about vision, and specifically about the phenomena of blindsight (where a person has no experience of seeing, but at an unconscious level does see), hemisphere neglect, and mirror agnosia. In this chapter Ramachandran discusses "mirror neurons," neurons found in monkeys which activate when a monkey performs some task, but also when the monkey sees another monkey perform the same task.
The third chapter, "The Artful Brain," is the most speculative, and provides Ramachandran's suggested ten "universal laws of art," which he offers as features we find aesthetically pleasing in art, and discusses some reasons why those features might be pleasing to the brain.
The fourth chapter deals in more detail with synesthesia, the perception of stimuli with multiple senses, such as experiencing colors corresponding with sounds or numbers. He links this to cross-activation of sites in the brain (similar to his discussion in the first chapter), points out some similar phenomena that most people share (such as a tendency to associate certain kinds of abstract shapes with certain sounds or names), and speculates that such associations may have paved the way for the evolution of language from non-verbal communication.
The fifth and final chapter is titled "Neuroscience--The New Philosophy." Ramachandran discusses how some of the phenomena of neuroscience might bear on questions from philosophy of mind about qualia, free will, and self-awareness. The chapter doesn't get very deep into any of these philosophical issues, but it's clear that more has been learned in the last few decades of neuroscience than in the last few millenia of philosophy.
I highly recommend this book as an introduction to these topics.

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Autism: The Facts (Oxford Medical Publications) Review

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(More customer reviews)An excellent and straightforward primer on the hows and whys of autism, written by two of the leading autism researchers. If you're new to the subject, then this overview is a good way to get up to speed.
I do have one complaint: [$] for a 113 page paperback is extortionate, plain and simple -- especially when it's largely being charged to the parents of disabled children. As a writer myself, I know that this is not the author's fault... it's the publisher. OUP, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Next edition, do the decent thing and drop it down to $...
Still, don't let this complaint put you off. If you have a family member or acquaintance who has recently been diagnosed with autism, don't hesitate: just buy it.

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Coping with a diagnosis of autism can be a troubling and confusing experience for parents. Ignorance of this bewildering disorder can provoke difficult decision-making for parents and physicians alike. What causes autism?What happens to children with autism when they grow up?Does autism run in families?What kind of educational setting is best? In this accessible, comprehensive book, the authors have discovered the questions on the minds of parents and professionals, and have attempted to answer them. Autism is a puzzling disorder. It begins in early childhood, and disrupts many aspects of development, leaving the child unable to form social relationships or communicate in the usual way.This fascinating book explains in a clear, straightforward manner what is known about the condition. Helpful appendices identify organizations and resource providers concerned with autism. Written first and foremost as a guide for parents, but required reading for interested professionals, it covers the recognition and diagnosis of autism, its biological and physiological causes, and the various treatments and educational techniques available.

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Statistical Analysis of fMRI Data Review

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(More customer reviews)The books succeeds in elucidates the complex world of fMRI statistics. The book guides a reader throughout the process of fMRI data analysis with clear, practical examples. It is also possible to read select chapters on particular topics of interest. Additionally, there are many specific tips and tricks to improve the quality of fMRI studies and subsequent analysis. The value (i.e., price for information) is extraordinary. Thus, making it an appropriate textbook choice for a graduate level course in fMRI data analysis. As additional value, there is Matlab code on his personal website, [...], to facilitate a deeper understanding of the concepts. Overall, this book is an invaluable asset to the field.

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"Understanding the complexities associated with the generation of brainfunction images is essential, but this information is often difficult to obtain.This lovely new book by Ashby is a major step in meeting that need. I recommend itwith enthusiasm to new initiates to imaging as well as seasoned veterans."Marcus Raichle , Professor of Radiology, Neurology, Neurobiology,and Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St Louis

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Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind Review

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(More customer reviews)There are many books about autism and Asperger's syndrome, but they are all superficial. This is the only one that goes to the source of the problem itself: The brain at the hardware level.
What our consciousness 'sees' is not reality itself, but the output of battalions of highly specialized neurone co-processors that interpret reality in a distorted way engineered by Natural Selection to maximize our chances of surviving and reproducing.
We are blind to the existence of these unconscious perception mechanisms, and we confuse their perception of reality with reality itself. This is the reason why autism has been a mystery for so long, because it is not possible to understand autism without even knowing that these perception instincts exist.
Everything about this book is superlative. Autism is *very* *difficult* to understand even for us autistics, let alone Neurologically Typicals. This guy has the ability to explain autism with concepts that make things rather easy to visualize. Concepts so befitting that leave me wondering how he manages to invent them.
Let me give one example: As a kid, I didn't see people like objects, but I didn't quite see them as people either. They were there, but they were not very important. That is as far as I can go explaining how it was for me. The only thing I can add is that I am not giving you anything more than a faint idea of how it really was.
What does Simon Baron-Cohen do? He introduces the concept of "skinbags." Bags of skin that move and talk like people but that are not quite people.
"Skinbags" is precisely what people were for me. They moved and talked, but they had no feelings. It was not that I believed that they had no feelings; it was that it never crossed my mind to consider the possibility.
The book makes you realize right from the start that nothing really exists as we imagine it. Not even color exists. Color is only an invention of Natural Selection... "that allows us to identify and interact with objects and the world far more richly that we otherwise could." Bats could very well use colors to "see" ultrasound reflections the same way we use colors to "see" electromagnetic waves.
The warmth of a smile and the anger of a stare do not exist either. You feel them only because your unconscious perception mechanisms interpret a smile as "warm" and a stare as "angry" and feed the appropriate feelings into your consciousness.
It must be really wonderful to be able to look at a girl and *feel* the warmth of her smile. When I look at a girl smiling I feel nothing. No warmth, no nothing. Those perception mechanisms are burned out in us autistics, or for some reason they do not reach our consciousness, maybe because of a faulty wire someplace.
I read almost every book there was in the Library system, and I began to really understand autism *only* after I read "Mindblindness."

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foreword by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby In Mindblindness, SimonBaron-Cohen presents a model of the evolution and development of "mindreading." Heargues that we mindread all the time, effortlessly, automatically, and mostlyunconsciously. It is the natural way in which we interpret, predict, and participatein social behavior and communication. We ascribe mental states to people: statessuch as thoughts, desires, knowledge, and intentions.Building on many years ofresearch, Baron-Cohen concludes that children with autism, suffer from"mindblindness" as a result of a selective impairment in mindreading. For thesechildren, the world is essentially devoid of mental things.Baron-Cohen develops atheory that draws on data from comparative psychology, from developmental, and fromneuropsychology. He argues that specific neurocognitive mechanisms have evolved thatallow us to mindread, to make sense of actions, to interpret gazes as meaningful,and to decode "the language of the eyes."A Bradford Book. Learning, Development, andConceptual Change series

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Observed Brain Dynamics Review

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(More customer reviews)Since the discovery of the kimograph, the statement, "Method ist Alles", is much appreciated in neuroscience. Progress depends on innovation, and progress in a particular discipline depends strongly on methods developed in related fields. The study of brain dynamics requires data collection and, perhaps even more so, data analysis. The author is a leading expert on many areas related to signal analysis and as a co-organizer of the now famous "Analysis of Neural Data" annual course, has trained and influenced many young minds. However, most of this knowledge was only available in notebooks and references linked to the vast jungle of statistics, non-linear dynamics and math. Now, we have a 'recipe' book. Mitra's book contains and discusses virtually all major contemporary methods used in analyzing continuous and point process data, with a strong emphasis on the strengths of frequency domain analysis. Although the chapters are quite demanding and require much more than the usual '101' intros to the topics, each of them are patiently and scholarly introduced with ample examples to guide the reader. This volume should be available for frequent consultation in every lab serious about neuroscience data processing.

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The biomedical sciences have recently undergone revolutionary change, due to the ability to digitize and store large data sets. In neuroscience, the data sources include measurements of neural activity measured using electrode arrays, EEG and MEG, brain imaging data from PET, fMRI, and optical imaging methods. Analysis, visualization, and management of these time series data sets is a growing field of research that has become increasingly important both for experimentalists and theorists interested in brain function. Written by investigators who have played an important role in developing the subject and in its pedagogical exposition, the current volume addresses the need for a textbook in this interdisciplinary area.The book is written for a broad spectrum of readers ranging from physical scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians wishing to educate themselves about neuroscience, to biologists who would like to learn time series analysis methods in particular and refresh their mathematical and statistical knowledge in general, through self-pedagogy. It may also be used as a supplement for a quantitative course in neurobiology or as a textbook for instruction on neural signal processing.The first part of the book contains a set of essays meant to provide conceptual background which are not technical and shall be generally accessible. Salient features include the adoption of an active perspective of the nervous system, an emphasis on function, and a brief survey of different theoretical accounts in neuroscience. The second part is the longest in the book, and contains a refresher course in mathematics and statistics leading up to time series analysis techniques. The third part contains applications of data analysis techniques to the range of data sources indicated above (also available as part of the Chronux data analysis platform from http://chronux.org), and the fourth part contains special topics.

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The Essential Child: Origins of Essentialism in Everyday Thought (Oxford Series in Cognitive Development) Review

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(More customer reviews)The book was new & in perfect condition. I would definetly purchase from this seller again!

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Essentialism is the idea that certain categories, such as "dog," "man," or "intelligence," have an underlying reality or true nature that gives objects their identity. Where does this idea come from? In this book, Susan Gelman argues that essentialism is an early cognitive bias. Young children's concepts reflect a deep commitment to essentialism, and this commitment leads children to look beyond the obvious in many converging ways: when learning words, generalizing knowledge to new category members, reasoning about the insides of things, contemplating the role of nature versus nurture, and constructing causal explanations.Gelman argues against the standard view of children as concrete or focused on the obvious, instead claiming that children have an early, powerful tendency to search for hidden, non-obvious features of things. She also attacks claims that children build up their knowledge of the world based on simple, associative learning strategies, arguing that children's concepts are embedded in rich folk theories. Parents don't explicitly teach children to essentialize; instead, during the preschool years, children spontaneously construct concepts and beliefs that reflect an essentialist bias. Essentialist accounts have been offered, in one form or another, for thousands of years, extending back at least to Aristotle and Plato. Yet this book is the first to address the issues surrounding essentialism from a psychological perspective. Gelman synthesizes over 15 years of empirical research on essentialism into a unified framework and explores the broader lessons that the research imparts concerning, among other things, human concepts, children's thinking, and the ways in which language influences thought. This volume will appeal to developmental, cognitive, and social psychologists, as well as to scholars in cognitive science and philosophy.

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