Healthy Brain, Happy Life: A Personal Program to Activate Your Brain & Do Everything BetterAuthor: Wendy Suzuki, Billie Fitzpatrick
Genre: Nonfiction/Self Help
Release Date: March 8, 2016
Publisher: Dey Street Books
Description:
Neuroscientist Dr. Wendy Suzuki brings her expertise in brain plasticity and passion for exercise together in a new groundbreaking book, HEALTHY BRAIN, HAPPY LIFE: A Personal Program to Activate Your Brain and Do Everything Better.
Dr. Suzuki conducts brain research in the Center for Neural Science lab at NYU where she is also a professor. Her most recent studies concentrate on how exercise directly effects the brain and how to unlock the keys to neuroplasticity. The book combines the results of these studies along with Dr. Suzuki’s own personal transformation which she began at the age of 40 after she was faced with the alarming reality that despite her professional success, she was out of shape, alone, and tired.
With pictures, helpful side notes of inspirational advice, and brain-based solutions that can be applied to daily life, HEALTHY BRAIN, HAPPY LIFE is an informative journey towards health and happiness. Part memoir, part neuroscience crash course, this book will inspire you and teach you how exercise can make you smarter and do everything better.
In HEALTHY BRAIN, HAPPY LIFE Dr. Suzuki teaches us:
*How to sharpen our thinking and increase our memory capacity.
*To leverage the good aspects of our environment (including our bodies) and protect ourselves against the bad (stress, negative thoughts, trauma, addiction).
*Meditate to change the pattern of electrical activity in your brain.
*How to use your brain to make yourself happy.
*About the effects of exercise on the brain for healthy adults: though there have been many studies of the effects of exercise on brain health in the elderly population or on school-age children, there is much less information with an adult focus.
Brain Hacks from the Book:
Motor Cortex Brain Hack: Go online and teach yourself a new dance move from the “So You Think You Can Dance” website and then practice it for 4 minutes to your favorite music.
Taste Cortex Brain Hack: Try a new kind of cuisine that you have never tried before
Cognitive Brain Hack: Watch a TED talk on a topic you know nothing about. Listen to a story from the Moth Radio Hour, a storytelling program with a wide range of topics. Listen to a popular podcast that you have never listened to before. Read a story from the section of the newspaper that you never read --for me it would be finance or sports.
Visual Cortex Brain Hack: The next time you go to a museum, pick a piece of artwork that you are not familiar with and just sit quietly and get lost visually in it for at least 4 minutes. A hack for this hack is to simply find a new piece of art online and explore it visually on your computer. Both will stimulate your visual cortex.
Auditory Cortex Brain Hack: Go to iTunes, the YouTube music channel, Pandora, or Spotify (the list goes on and on) and listen to a really popular song from a genre of music you never listen to. Try to understand why it might be #1 for that genre.
Olfactory Brain Hack: The main difference between regular sommeliers (that can differentiate many different scents and describe them so precisely) and you or me is one thing: practice. Take just a few minutes to sit and just smell your most odorous meal of the day. It might be breakfast with a rich and aromatic cup of coffee and the deep comforting smell of toast fresh from the toaster, or it might be your dinner of chicken tiki marsala from your favorite Indian restaurant. Before digging in, take a few minutes to try to really smell the different aromas in your meal and try to describe them.
Praise:
“A wonderful contribution to helping society enjoy the magnificence of their brains!”
—Marian Diamond, PhD, Professor Emerita of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, and Innovator in the Field of Brain Health
“A fascinating study into how lifestyle affects the brain…a concrete how-to book…”
—Shelf Awareness
*Suggested Spring 2015 Reading List* —ALIST Magazine
*2015 Summer Reading List* —Woman Around Town
WENDY SUZUKI’S Leadership Projects
Empowering New Scientists – Collaboration with the Handel Group
Dr. Suzuki teamed with Gaby Jordan, President of the Education Division of the Handel Group to found an organization called “Empowering New Scientists” that is currently running leadership training seminars for students and faculty at universities around the country.
Thought Leadership – Collaboration with the Op-Ed Project
A thought leader is an individual recognized as an authority who has influence on a large scale. One of Dr. Suzuki’s long-term goals is to bring explicit teaching in Thought Leadership to the NYU community.
Wendy hosts “Totally Cerebral” on Transistor, a STEM podcast that reports on curiosities and current events within the fields of biology, astrophysics, neuroscience and beyond.
A thought leader is an individual recognized as an authority who has influence on a large scale. One of Dr. Suzuki’s long-term goals is to bring explicit teaching in Thought Leadership to the NYU community.
Wendy hosts “Totally Cerebral” on Transistor, a STEM podcast that reports on curiosities and current events within the fields of biology, astrophysics, neuroscience and beyond.
Dr. Wendy A. Suzuki is a Professor of Neural Science and Psychology in the Center for Neural Science at New York University where her work has been recognized with numerous grants and awards including the prestigious Troland Research Award from the National Academy of Sciences. She is also a popular teacher and speaker, participating regularly at New York’s renowned public science event, the World Science Festival. She is a four-time TedX speaker, a speaker at The Moth and is regularly interviewed for TV and print for her work on the effects of exercise on brain function. She lectures nationally and internationally on her research and serves as a reviewer for many of the top neuroscience journals. Wendy was also featured in Annie Liebowitz’s photographic essay book co-authored with Susan Sontag, Women (Random House, 2000). Her first book, HEALTHY BRAIN, HAPPY LIFE by Dey Street Books will come out in paperback on March 8, 2016.
Author Links:
Visit Wendy’s lab Website: http://suzukilab.com/
Visit Wendy’s book Website: http://wendysuzuki.com/
Follow Wendy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wasuzuki
Like Wendy on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WendyASuzuki
Visit Wendy’s book Website: http://wendysuzuki.com/
Follow Wendy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wasuzuki
Like Wendy on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WendyASuzuki
Giveaway: (1) Paperback copy of Healthy Brain, Happy Life - Open to US only!
