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The Balanced Brain

The Science of Mental Health
Brief Description
A refreshing antidote to prescriptive ideas about wellness and a profound reframing of how body and brain work together to interpret our experience of the world around us. There are many routes to mental wellbeing and award-winning neuroscientist Camilla Nord is at the forefront of finding... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$3000
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Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

A refreshing antidote to prescriptive ideas about wellness and a profound reframing of how body and brain work together to interpret our experience of the world around us.

There are many routes to mental wellbeing and award-winning neuroscientist Camilla Nord is at the forefront of finding them. In this ground-breaking book, she offers a revelatory tour of the scientific and technological developments that are revolutionising the way we think about mental health, showing why and how events - and treatments - can affect people in such different ways.

In The Balanced Brain, Nord reframes mental health as an intricate, self-regulating process, one which is different for all of us. She examines a huge diversity of treatments, from therapy to medication, to show how they work, and why they sometimes don't. In doing so, she reveals how the small things we do to lift our mood during the course of a day - a piece of chocolate, a coffee, chatting to a friend - often work on the same pathways in our brain as the latest pharmacological treatments for mental health disorders. Whether they help us to manage pain, learn from experience or expend energy on the things that are important for our survival, these conscious actions are part of a complex self-regulating process that is unique to each individual and the constant backdrop to our everyday lives.

Nord shows that, with so many factors at play, there are more possibilities for recovery and resilience than we might think. This book is an invitation to discover those pathways, in order to help us identify what makes each of us feel better - and why.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780141998954

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 12 September 2024

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Penguin Books Ltd

Audience: General / adult, Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 17.0mm

Width: 128.0mm

Height: 197.0mm

Weight: 228g

Pages: 304

About the Author

Camilla Nord leads the Mental Health Neuroscience Lab at the University of Cambridge. Her work has been featured in the New Statesman, on Sky News and BBC Radio Four's The Naked Scientist. The Balanced Brain is her first book.

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