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Summary: Comprehensive Resources for Understanding Your Brain
Review: Amazon referred me to Dr. Amen's work as I was seeking resources for a colleague whose parent may be in early stages of Alzheimer's. Dr. Amen's work is amazing, bringing psychotherapy to a new level of science as practitioners may now see the organ they are treating and prescribe more accurately. For a sample of Dr. Amen's work in neuropsychiatry, visit his homepage, www.brainplace.com As 2005 begins, the website offers an 18 minute video overview (Windows Media Player required).
Multimedia is especially helpful since it engages more comprehensively and introduces information accessible to those who spend an hour trying to read a page or two. For more resources, go to www.mindworkspress.com which offers DVDs on ADD, Anxiety and Depression, Drug & Alcohol Abuse (Which Brain Do You Want?), New Skills for Frazzled Parents, and Alzheimer's. The DVD version of Change Your Brain, Change Your Life presents an overview of the principles and displays before-and-after scans from his clinics (as of this writing there are four). There are books written on ADD an Intimacy, books for children, teens, and siblings. "Change Your Brain..." is the first step in understanding and optimizing your brain, "the hardware of your soul."
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Summary: Change Your Brain--HAVE A BETTER LIFE!
Review: Another excellent book by Dr. Amen, which is so fascinating about how the brain works and how with the newest diagnostic tools, it can be "tweaked" so our lives can be the best they can be. Very interesting read.Dr. Amen was a welcomed guest on my Internet radio program, Coping with Caregiving. Jacqueline Marcell, Author, Elder Rage
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Summary: Change Your Brain--HAVE A BETTER LIFE!
Review: Another excellent book by Dr. Amen, which is so fascinating about how the brain works and how with the newest diagnostic tools, it can be "tweaked" so our lives can be the best they can be. Very interesting read. Dr. Amen was a welcomed guest on my Internet radio program, Coping with Caregiving. Jacqueline Marcell, Author, Elder Rage
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Summary: Chicken Soup for the Brain
Review: Based on his experience with functional brain imaging, Dr Amen has come up with a model of the relationship between behavior and brain structure. The model is a partition of the brain into five regions, and a mapping of most (if not all) psychological problems onto over- or underactivity in one of these regions. By surgery or medication that targets the afflicted parts, the problems can be cured. He presents some compelling anecdotal evidence that brain physiology causes behavioral problems. But then anecdotal evidence usually is compelling.
Dr Amen has written another "breakthrough" book on curing Attention Deficit Disorder, one about spiritual growth, and another about dealing with relationship problems. One might wonder whether the doctor is spreading his expertise somewhat thin, but these fields are in fact connected in that medication can correct all sorts of misbehavior. The book actually does present an example of marriage counseling by medication. But when it relates chemistry to how close or distant we feel from God, it feels like we're leaving the solid ground of science and being launched into the astral plane.
On closer reflection, many anecdotes given in evidence of the model can be extremely tenuous. Is it really true that grief over the death of a loved one boils down to a "deep limbic loss" of touch, voice, and smell? Isn't it likely that something less bodily might play a role in our feelings of loss? And if the limbic system is equally affected by voice and appetite, wouldn't we feel the same deep limbic grieving over the loss of some particular food? With each brain part responsible for so many behavioral problems, doesn't fixing one cause others?
I wonder if we actually learn something by blaming behavior on some particular part of the brain, or if we are just taking well-recognized problems and relabeling them. There would be a point to all this if it led to new understanding or therapy. In fact, after doing much work to demonstrate the power of functional brain imaging to diagnose behavioral problems, the doctor goes out of his way to dissuade people from using the technique. In fact, many of the therapies that he does recommend appear quite conventional (cognitive behavioral therapy, diet, exercise).
The book isn't really as married to the model as it purports. Although the framework is structured around this brain partition, the meat of the book consists mostly of stories that bear no relationship to it, and branch out into new theories that are not given any other theoretical basis. Are we still pulling out the old hackney that Mozart is good for you? I've heard it makes your plants grow.
The tendency to view psychopathology in terms of a simplistic unidirectional chemical causality shows when the author unambiguously states that depression is caused by a neurotransmitter deficit. But this is either false or completely irrelevant. When somebody becomes depressed over the death of a loved one, the external event quite obviously must have something to do with this.
I'm not saying that there is no connection between brain and behavior. But the book appears to completely disallow the possibility that rather than being slaves to uncontrollable chemical imbalances, brain chemistry could itself at least partially be a reflection of our behavior. Perhaps the psychological-physiological dichotomy is a false one and both are aspects of the same thing, like the wave-particle duality of matter.
The book does have some useful things to say about the various medications that are in use. The anecdotes if anything are interesting, as are the brain scan images (those of addicts in particular are downright scary).
If the book purports to have a scientific basis, it would have benefited from a much more extensive set of references to support some of its claims. Psychology is a tough nut to crack, and there is still a tremendous amount of research ongoing to understand how our brain works. In the meantime, the field is open for anybody with a pet theory to claim they have the answers.
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Summary: Your Brain on TOAST!
Review: Fascinating book, looking at physiological and functional problems in the brain due to trauma or drug use (both legal and illegal) - the SPECT images are *scary* !! Useful for self-examination as well as understanding odd behavioral patterns in others.
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Summary: Powerful stories, amazing images.
Review: I just finished reading Change Your Brain. It is so exciting to learn that I can actually change the physical functioning of my brain by what I think and eat, and how I behave. There are so many ideas, based in science, that I have to rethink many of my day-to-day behaviors. Since I read the book I have stopped caffeine, started to meditate, and started cleaning the house of ANTs (my automatic negative thoughts). I showed the marijuana brain to my best friend who always says marijuana is medicine and no big deal (yet he is worse now than when we were in high school). I showed the drug brains to my teenage kids -- they paid close attention. Overall, I found this book easy-to-read, moving, and very helpful. Thanks Dr. Amen!
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Summary: Fascinating and useful!
Review: If you've doubted that psychological difficulties can be quantified physiologically, read Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. The brain scan results are impressive and suggest that mental imbalances can be treated by a combination of cognitive-behavioral therapy, medication and nutritional changes. Particularly fascinating is the evidence that people prone to angry outbursts, irrational behavior and violence (in short, behavior that is typically associated with the delinquent or criminal personality) can be treated effectively, as can those prone to lesser disturbances. If you or anyone you know suffers from depression; anxiety; obsessive-compulsive disorder; manic depression; attention deficit disorder; severe premenstrual syndrome; alcohol or drug abuse; poor impulse control; suicidal or homicidal thoughts; or angry or violent outbursts, read this book. If you're already being treated for one of these conditions, read this book and share it with your therapist. It will give you a good idea of what is happening to you physiologically and outline potential treatment options. In that numerous treatment protocols are discussed for various mental imbalances, this book is both helpful and hopeful. Note that this book should be useful for mental health professionals as well as for their patients. The brain scans are compelling, and the author does a good job of detailing numerous medications, cognitive-behavioral therapies and nutritional approaches to treating psychological problems.
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Summary: interesting book
Review: This book is interesting because you see brain scans from people who had depression and other mental problems.
It is very interesting to look at the scans and it shows that things change in the brain when somebody has a mental illness or drug problem. So if anybody thinks that drugs or mental illness do not make the brain change then they will see that the brain does change by looking at these photos.
The author says that if you do certain things like take drugs or even too much coffee you can change the way your brain is and also if you are depressed you brain will actually be different.
I was depressed and I tried to commit suicide one time and I know that my brain was really changed because of the bad depression that I had. I take antidepressants now and I think that they changed my brain back closer to what it was like before. When I wanted to kill myself it was like I had someone else's brain. I can tell you that depression does mess up your brain.
So the book is pretty good with scans that can help you understand more about what is happening to a brain when people are mentally ill or on drugs or doing something that hurts their brain.
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Summary: Psychiatry of the next century!!
Review: This book was fascinating to read. Dr. Amen's work is cutting edge, but also very practical. Readers will be surprised to read that they can positively change their brain by what they think, what they eat, and how they relate to others. The brain images in the book were fascinating and easy to understand. He shows what depression, anxiety, ADD, temper problems and obsessiveness look like in the brain. Checklists are given so that readers can identify their own problems, and then Dr. Amen gives clear, easy to follow prescriptions for optimizing each part of the brain. Many people will benefit from reading this book.The Amazon.com reviewer says "Shame on Dr. Amen for showing brains with holes in them," but why not. People need to know that there are things they can do to damage their brains and their are things they can do to help their brains. This book shows you how!
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Summary: After I read this....
Review: This book will make you want to change your brain! Surrendering caffeine was my answer. I would consume coffee or even caffeine pills to get going in the morning. I have surrendered these after reading the good doctor's book. I still consume it in lower doses but have reduced my gross intake considerably. I feel it has made a considerable difference for me. Perhaps it will for you as well. The book presents the results of what was groundbreaking scanning techniques for studying brain function. Dr. Amen compares the brain function of ADHD, chemical abusers and "normal" brains. The images create a visable difference and that is where the Dr. develops his conclusions.
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