Change Your Brain, Change Your Life: Revised and Expanded Edition: The breakthrough programme for conquering anxiety, depression, anger and obsessiveness

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When some people want to truly focus, they seek total silence, but many turn on their music. Turns out, there’s a scientific reason behind this. Ben Greenfield explains: The main idea of the book is that the brain is the most important organ in the body and that its health and function affect every aspect of our lives. The author, Dr. Daniel Amen, is a neuropsychiatrist who has performed more than 100,000 brain scans using a technique called SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) that shows the blood flow and activity of different brain regions. Based on his extensive experience and research, he identifies five major brain systems that are involved in various mental and emotional problems: the deep limbic system (related to mood), the basal ganglia (related to anxiety), the prefrontal cortex (related to attention and impulsivity), the temporal lobes (related to memory and temperament), and the cingulate gyrus (related to flexibility and problem-solving). He also explains how these brain systems can be affected by genetics, trauma, infections, toxins, drugs, alcohol, diet, stress, and other factors.

The book is also inspiring and empowering, as it shows that we are not doomed by our genes or our past experiences, but rather we have the ability and the responsibility to shape our own brains and our own destinies. The author challenges us to take charge of our brain health and to make positive changes in our habits, behaviors, thoughts, and emotions that can enhance our well-being and happiness. He also encourages us to seek professional help when needed and to use his brain prescriptions as a complement to other forms of treatment. Monitoring your brain health and taking active steps to maintain it will make you feel more in control of your life. And your brain will certainly reward you for it. Summary The SPECT approach challenges the perception that individuals with mental illness have a certain degree of control over their condition. As author Diana Spechler once discovered, many people believe those with mental health conditions can simply “snap out of it” or choose to feel better. But depression and other mental health conditions have a biological and medical basis. According to the author, SPECT imaging will eventually enable targeted treatments that could make all the difference. One of the MOST important things you can do to keep your memory strong is exercise because cognitive abilities are best in people who are physically active. There are also a number of supplements that have good supporting research for memory including fish oil, gingko biloba, sage and a Chinese moss extract called huperazine.Have you admired someone else’s success and wished you had their brains? This “brain envy” is the idea that we can aspire to the brain health others have, and work toward achieving it for ourselves. If you’ve ever struggled with anxiety, depression, or another mental health condition, you know how challenging it can be to find the right treatment. Sometimes medications can help alleviate symptoms, but they’re not a cure-all.

Dr. Amen's research team has published more than 70 scientific articles on a wide variety of topics related to brain health. He is the lead researcher on the largest brain imaging study on active and retired NFL players and was a consultant on the movie Concussion starring Will Smith. In 2016, Discover Magazine named his brain imaging work for psychiatric diagnoses as one of the top 100 stories in all of science. Your brain is the most complex, mind-blowing organ in the universe. It is only about 3 pounds, or about 2 percent of your body’s weight. Yet, a piece of brain tissue the size of a grain of sand contains 100,000 neurons and 1 billion synapses, all “talking” to one another. How often do we think of how healthy our brains are? How well they are functioning? How much of brain reserve we have? Use an EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) therapist to deal with trauma. Just so you know, I am a certified EMDR therapist. All joking aside, I am genuinely alarmed by a "doctor" who, in this day an age, would feel comfortable and confident claiming that a musical genre causes mental illness and trauma. I feel this particular part is the best evidence to support my claim that the author is both old fashioned, and strangely biased. I think we all pretty much agree Ozzy Osbourne is just a mumbling old man and Metallica are just money hungry guys, and none of the music any of these people wrote did any meaningful or lasting damage to the generation of people who grew up listening to them. Put a different way, how can I take this author’s notions of what is “normative" and "healthy" seriously, when they are so obviously at least partially disconnected from reality?Gregory Bratman, a graduate student at Stanford University, designed a study that looked at the blood flow to the subgenual prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain associated with brooding. As Gretchen Reynolds explained in a New York Times article on the subject: Dr. Amen has also hosted 11 national public television shows about the brain, which have aired more than 80,000 times across North America and raised more than 75 million dollars for stations. The book is based on the author’s experience and research using SPECT scans, a technique that shows the blood flow and activity of different brain regions. It shows that the brain is not fixed or static, but rather plastic and dynamic, meaning that it can change and improve with proper care and treatment. It also provides hope and motivation for people who struggle with mental and emotional issues that they can overcome them by changing their brains. Instead I found it a detailed well-balanced academic/practical book about the relationship between brain patterns and problem-behaviour. In reference to the title, I found the chapter on the Cingulate part of the brain to be absolutely enlightening. Individuals with over actice cingulate's tend to hold grudges and automatically respond in the negative.

So whenever you feel a knee-jerk reaction coming up against a trigger, consider pausing to reflect on your emotion – it’s likely due to an unresolved memory stored in the limbic system. This brain book is used in a school that I am currently affliated with in Greenwood Villiage, CO (America's Academy of Coaching, Counseling & Hypnotherapy). Daniel Amen is a psychiatrist and writes from that perspective, so the use of medications and brain scans is heavily emphasized. Dr. Amen primarily uses SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) scans to show patients what their brains look like before and after treatment. The organization of the book is such that educative passages are used, then a case study or two are presented with listed conclusions for each case. In short, exercise makes you smarter and happier at the same time. Sounds like a win-win to me. 2. Sleeping Several years ago, after looking at tens of thousands of scans, I started to think about a concept I call “brain reserve.” Brain reserve is the cushion of healthy brain tissue we have to deal with the unexpected stresses that come our way. The more reserve we have, the more resilient we are in times of trouble. The less reserve, the more vulnerable we are. The exciting news is that it is never too late to work on increasing your brain’s reserve.New and improving technologies in neuroscience are giving us deeper insight into the mysterious gray stuff between our ears. It turns out, our brains are surprisingly dynamic; we do things every single day that affect their structure and chemistry. From brain scans, experts have discovered that the limbic system is responsible for our emotional responses. When we experience fear or pleasure, the hippocampus and amygdala activate our emotional experience. As the author suggests, we can rely on Automatic Negative Thoughts therapy (ANT) to mentally evaluate negative thoughts.