The Playful Brain PDF Download

Author: Sergio Pellis
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1780744625
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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

Author: Richard M. Restak
Publisher: Riverhead Books (Hardcover)
ISBN: 9781594487774
Category : Brain
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
You're building up your memory. You're thinking shaper. You're creating a healthier brain This is your brain on puzzles. It's no secret that puzzles-crossword puzzles, logic puzzles, word puzzles-challenge and entertain us. But exciting new research suggests that they've become more than just a fun pastime. Solving different kinds of puzzles can actually help your brain improve itself and-perhaps just as important-ward off mental deterioration. In The Playful Brain, science happily combines with recreation as leading neuroscientist and bestselling author Richard Restak, M.D., and noted puzzle master Scott Kim team up to create a fascinating exploration of how puzzles can change, reshape, and strengthen our brains. Packed with illuminating insights and dozens of puzzles, The Painful Braininvestigates the science behind three key areas of brain development- memory, perception, and cognition. And it gives readers the chance to work the puzzles while learning how they're improving their brain. The result is both a lively book of popular science and an engaging set of exercises for developing a wide array of thinking and memory skills. PRAISE FOR RICHARD RESTAK AND SCOTT KIM ' Restak is one of the world's most important scientific thinkers.' - Scientific American 'Dr. Restak is an accomplished science writer with a gift for making complex scientific subjects accessible.' - The New York Times 'Scott Kim is the Escher of the alphabet.' - Isaac Asimov

Author: Richard Restak
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101050454
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
A leading neuroscientist and New York Times-bestselling author of Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot distills the research on the brain and serves up practical, surprising, and illuminating recommendations for warding off neurological decline, cognitive function, and encouraging smarter thinking day to day. In Think Smart, the renowned neuropsychiatrist and bestselling author Dr. Richard Restak details how each of us can improve and tone our body's most powerful organ: the brain. As a renowned expert on the brain, Restak knows that in the last five years there have been exciting new scientific discoveries about the brain and its performance. So he's asked his colleagues-many of them the world's leading brain scientists and researchers-one important question: What can I do to help my brain work more efficiently? Their surprising-and remarkably feasible-answers are at the heart of Think Smart. Restak combines advice culled from cutting-edge research with brain-tuning exercises to show how individuals of any age can make their brain work more effectively. In the same accessible prose that made Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot a New York Times bestseller, Restak presents a wide array of practical recommendations about a variety of topics, including the crucial role sleep plays in boosting creativity, the importance of honing sensory memory, and the neuron- firing benefits of certain foods. In Think Smart, the "wise, witty, and ethical Restak" (says the Smithsonian Institution) offers readers helpful suggestions for fighting neurological decline that will put every reader on the path to building a healthier, more limber brain.

Author: Bernard De Koven
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1304351823
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
A Playful Path, the new book by games guru and fun theorist Bernard De Koven, serves as a collection of ideas and tools to help us bring our playfulness back into the open. When we find ourselves forgetting the life of the game or the game of life, the joy of form or the content, the play of brain or mind, body or spirit, this book can help us return to that which our soul is heir.

Author: Richard Restak
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1594485453
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This is your brain on puzzles. Everyone knows that puzzles can improve your brain function. Now a leading neurosurgeon and a noted puzzle designer team up to reveal the fascinating science behind it. Packed with illuminating insights and dozens of puzzles, this is both a lively book of popular science and an engaging set of exercises in developing a wide array of thinking and memory skills.

Author: Jed Dearybury
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119674395
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Shows teachers how and why they should bring play into the classroom to make learning meaningful, relevant, and fun. Research studies show that all students—young and old, rich and poor, urban and rural—benefit immensely from classrooms filled with art, creativity, and laughter. Fun, playfulness, creative thinking, and individual expression reinforce positive experiences, which in turn lead to more engaged students, better classroom environments, and successful learning outcomes. Designed for K-12 educators, The Playful Classroom describes how teachers can develop a playful mindset for giving students meaningful, relevant and fun learning experiences. This unique real-world guide provides you with everything you need to incorporate engaging, hands-on lessons and creative activities, regardless of the level and subject you teach. Building on contemporary and seminal works on learning theory and play pedagogy, the authors explain how to inspire your students by bringing play. into your classroom. This clear, user-friendly guide supplies practical strategies and effective solutions for adding the missing ingredients to your classroom culture. Access to the authors’ companion website provides videos, learning experiences, and downloadable teaching and learning resources. Packed with relatable humor, proven methods, and valuable insights, this book enables you to: Provide meaningful experiences that will benefit students both in school and later in life Combine the principles of PLAY with traditional curricula to encourage creative learning Promote trust, collaboration, and growth in students Develop a playful mindset for bringing the arts into every lesson Foster critical thinking in any school community The Playful Classroom: The Power of Play for All Ages is a must-have resource for K-12 educators, higher education professionals, and readers looking for education-based professional development and training resources.

Author: Richard Restak
Publisher: Souvenir Press
ISBN: 028564176X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Regular mental exercises, including crosswords, Sudoku, and even brain training computer games, can help to improve memory, fine motor skills, perception and cognition. Solving different types of mental exercises helps the brain to reshape and strengthen itself, as well as heightening imagination and creativity skills. Anyone who wants to improve their memory, logic or perception skills can turn to the individual exercises (by Scott Kim who creates puzzles for magazines including Scientific America) featured in How Puzzles Improve Your Brain, that will stimulate the area of the brain that controls those skills. Richard Restak outlines how the brain processes individual functions, while Scott Kim has created puzzles that stimulate and challenge the area of the brain responsible for that function, giving your brain an engaging work-out. Drawing on decades of scientific research, this book can change your brain as you read it. If you want to enhance your brain performance regular mental exercises, including crosswords and Sudoku (even brain training computer games), can help to improve memory, fine motor skills, logic and visual observation. Solving different types of mental exercises helps the brain to improve itself, as well as heightening imagination and creativity skills. Packed with illuminating insights and dozens of witty and, often, perplexing puzzles, How Puzzles Improve Your Brain can create a healthier brain while explaining how the puzzles are changing it. In How Puzzles Improve Your Brain Scott Kim, a puzzle master, has designed puzzles that can target, and improve, specific areas of the brain while Richard Restak, a leading neuroscientist, describes the science behind how they reshape and strengthen the brain. Packed with illuminating insights and dozens of witty and often perplexing exercises, this mind-boggling book is designed to enhance specific brain functions and can aid anyone who wants to improve their memory, logic, or perception skills.

Author: Vanda North
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1907293124
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
8 minutes a day is all it takes to open up a world of superior mental performance. Just as Tai Chi has been used for centuries to balance body and mind, Mind Chi will help you increase your mental energy and be more effective in everything you do. And all you need is 8 minutes a day... Mind Chi is a powerful synthesis of thought and action based on the most recent research into how the brain works. By following the simple, daily exercises in this book, you will raise your mental performance to a level you never thought possible. Discover: Sharper powers of concentration and information management Improved control over your attention span, memory, thoughts and feelings Fast and easy ways to reduce your stress and increase your confidence New positive habits, thoughts and mental resilience Fantastic energy levels, during and after your work day Plus: 50 Strategies for Success in Business & Life "An eight minute daily dose of Mind Chi will improve vitality, reduce stress and allow us to see the many blessings of life more clearly." --Stephen C. Lundin PhD, author of the five million copy bestselling FISH!

Author: Steven Johnson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743258797
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
BRILLIANTLY EXPLORING TODAY'S CUTTING-EDGE BRAIN RESEARCH, MIND WIDE OPEN IS AN UNPRECEDENTED JOURNEY INTO THE ESSENCE OF HUMAN PERSONALITY, ALLOWING READERS TO UNDERSTAND THEMSELVES AND THE PEOPLE IN THEIR LIVES AS NEVER BEFORE. Using a mix of experiential reportage, personal storytelling, and fresh scientific discovery, Steven Johnson describes how the brain works -- its chemicals, structures, and subroutines -- and how these systems connect to the day-to-day realities of individual lives. For a hundred years, he says, many of us have assumed that the most powerful route to self-knowledge took the form of lying on a couch, talking about our childhoods. The possibility entertained in this book is that you can follow another path, in which learning about the brain's mechanics can widen one's self-awareness as powerfully as any therapy or meditation or drug. In Mind Wide Open, Johnson embarks on this path as his own test subject, participating in a battery of attention tests, learning to control video games by altering his brain waves, scanning his own brain with a $2 million fMRI machine, all in search of a modern answer to the oldest of questions: who am I? Along the way, Johnson explores how we "read" other people, how the brain processes frightening events (and how we might rid ourselves of the scars those memories leave), what the neurochemistry is behind love and sex, what it means that our brains are teeming with powerful chemicals closely related to recreational drugs, why music moves us to tears, and where our breakthrough ideas come from. Johnson's clear, engaging explanation of the physical functions of the brain reveals not only the broad strokes of our aptitudes and fears, our skills and weaknesses and desires, but also the momentary brain phenomena that a whole human life comprises. Why, when hearing a tale of woe, do we sometimes smile inappropriately, even if we don't want to? Why are some of us so bad at remembering phone numbers but brilliant at recognizing faces? Why does depression make us feel stupid? To read Mind Wide Open is to rethink family histories, individual fates, and the very nature of the self, and to see that brain science is now personally transformative -- a valuable tool for better relationships and better living.

Author: Ralf Der
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642202535
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
Autonomous robots may become our closest companions in the near future. While the technology for physically building such machines is already available today, a problem lies in the generation of the behavior for such complex machines. Nature proposes a solution: young children and higher animals learn to master their complex brain-body systems by playing. Can this be an option for robots? How can a machine be playful? The book provides answers by developing a general principle---homeokinesis, the dynamical symbiosis between brain, body, and environment---that is shown to drive robots to self- determined, individual development in a playful and obviously embodiment- related way: a dog-like robot starts playing with a barrier, eventually jumping or climbing over it; a snakebot develops coiling and jumping modes; humanoids develop climbing behaviors when fallen into a pit, or engage in wrestling-like scenarios when encountering an opponent. The book also develops guided self-organization, a new method that helps to make the playful machines fit for fulfilling tasks in the real world. The book provides two levels of presentation. Students and scientific researchers interested in the field of robotics, self-organization and dynamical systems theory may be satisfied by the in-depth mathematical analysis of the principle, the bootstrapping scenarios, and the emerging behaviors. But the book additionally comes with a robotics simulator inviting also the non- scientific reader to simply enjoy the fabulous world of playful machines by performing the numerous experiments.