Wholesale Mind Wide Open by Steven Johnson

[Scribner] In this nationally bestselling, compulsively readable account of what makes brain science a vital component of people's quest to know themselves, acclaimed science writer Steven Johnson subjects his own brain to a battery of tests to find out what's really going on inside. He asks: - How do we "read" other people? - - What is the neurochemistry behind love and sex? - - What does it mean that the brain is teeming with powerful chemicals closely related to recreational drugs? - - Why does music move us to tears? - - Where do breakthrough ideas come from? Johnson answers these and many more questions arising from the events of our everyday lives. You do not have to be a neuroscientist to wonder, for example, why do you smile? And why do you sometimes smile inappropriately, even if you don't want to? How do others read your inappropriate smile? How does such interplay occur neurochemically, and what, if anything, can you do about it? Fascinating and rew