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John J. Ratey Books

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“Find a mission in your life. A commitment to a calling, a career, even a hobby focuses the mind and the soul. Psychotic patients report that they don't hear 'the voices' while they are busy working. Surely we ordinary people can calm our own internal voices with some intent activities. [...] Passion heals.”

PassionHealingCommitmentActivitiesA Users Guide To The BrainJohn J Ratey
Book:A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain
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“The whole-language trend assumes that reading is a natural, genetically programmed part of language development, and that children will pick it up as easily as speaking. However, as noted, since writing has only existed for 5,ooo years and literacy has only been widespread for a few centuries, it is highly unlikely that the human brain has evolved structures specifically for reading and writing in this time. It is our ability to learn through experience that allows us to achieve reading, but only with explicit instruction.”

ReadingLanguageBrainLearningLiteracyAchievingA Users Guide To The BrainJohn J RateyLanguage Development
Book:A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain
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“Strong evidence for a genetic language ability comes from the observation that children who are not exposed to any speech, but are able to interact with each other, will invent their own language, which is complex in syntax and meaning. This has been seen in deaf children who were not exposed to sign language. Amazingly, as long as they had someone to interact with, they managed to communicate complex thoughts by inventing their own system of signing.”

LanguageCommunicateSign LanguageA Users Guide To The BrainJohn J Ratey
Book:A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain
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“[...] A diet of constant, stimulating activity is the best prescription for our troubles. It keeps the brain in a state of constant change, flow, confirmation, and anticipation, thereby reducing the noise, fragility, self-doubt, and stagnation with which we all have to contend.”

BrainConfirmationFragilitySelf DoubtA Users Guide To The BrainJohn J RateyConstant Change
Book:A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain
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“Loftus learned for herself how realistic false memories can seem when she had an upsetting experience several years ago. She was shocked when, at a family gathering, an uncle informed her that thirty years earlier, when her mother drowned in a pool, she had been the one who discovered the body. Loftus, who was fourteen when the drowning occurred, always believed that she had never seen her mother's dead body. Indeed, she remembered little about the death itself. She recounts what happened the next in her book 'The Myth of Repressed Memory'. Almost immediately after her uncle's revelation, 'the memories began to drift back, like the crisp, piney smoke from evening camp fires. My mother, dressed in her nightgown, was floating face down. . . . I started screaming. I remembered the police cars, their lights flashing'. A few days later, she writes, 'my brother called to tell me that my uncle had made a mistake. Now he remembered (and other relatives confirmed) that Aunt Pearl had found my mother's body.' This shocked Loftus even more than her uncle's false revelation. If someone so specially trained as she is to recognize fallible memories could suddenly believe her own false memory, just think how readily the average person can be fooled.”

False MemoriesA Users Guide To The BrainJohn J RateyLoftus
Book:A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain
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“One interesting new theory, developed by Edward and Carol Diener at the University of Illinois in Urbana, involves the notion of a 'set point'. According to this theory, people have an inborn set point for mood, similar to the set point for weight. The set point is your basic level of happiness or sadness, which is subject to ups and downs of life but will inevitably return to some kind of base line, even in people who experience dramatic changes in their life circumstances. [...] In some people, however, set points decline with age.”

A Users Guide To The BrainJohn J RateyUniversity Of IllinoisCarol DienerEdward DienerEmotional Set Point
Book:A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain
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“[...] The hope is that research can find ways to improve a faulty social brain. There is already evidence that practice can help people overcome at least some of the motor deficits I've just described. Remember Temple Grandin, the autistic woman who learned how to approach people properly, without bowling them over, by walking through a supermarket's automatic doors over and over until she got the steps down? She overcame a social problem that was really a motor problem. [...]”

AutismA Users Guide To The BrainJohn J RateySocial ProblemMotor DeficitsSocial BrainTemple Grandin
Book:A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain
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“The clear message you should derive from the benefits of mental and physical exercise is that the worst thing you can do to your brain is to be content living a passive life. The habit of passivity is pervasive in our culture, from longing for miracle cures to watching television for hours to being politically apathetic. Physical and mental action is fundamental to maintaining mental health.”

CultureMental HealthPassivityA Users Guide To The BrainJohn J Ratey
Book:A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain
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“The essence of physical education in Naperville 203 is teaching fitness instead of sports. The underlying philosophy is that if physical education class can be used to instruct kids how to monitor and maintain their own health and fitness, then the lessons they learn will serve them for life. And probably a longer and happier life at that. What's being taught, really is a lifestyle. The students are developing healthy habits, skills, and a sense of fun, along with a knowledge of how their bodies work. Naperville's gym teachers are opening up new vistas for their students by exposing them to such a wide range of activities that they can't help but find something they enjoy. They're getting kids hooked on moving instead of sitting in front of the television.”

StudentsTelevisionHealthHealthyActivityLifestyleFitnessPhysical EducationPe
Author:John J. Ratey
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