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How the Brain Works
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How the Brain Works
What Psychology Students Need to Know

First edition
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October 2023 | 296 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd

Delve into the intricacies of the human mind with this engaging and insightful guide to how the brain works.

Written in a playful style and beautifully illustrated, this book is designed to support you as you embark on the beginning of your psychology degree. It provides an accessible guide to how the brain’s structures and functions determine how the mind works, and how this fits into the bigger picture of our evolution and biology as a species.

From focus boxes that delve into specific topics to entertaining puzzles that bring the subject to life, this book will captivate your imagination while building your understanding of biological and cognitive psychology.

This is an essential read for undergraduate psychology students.  

Michael S.C. Thomas is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Birkbeck, University of London.

Simon Green is a Chartered Psychologist and retired Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London.

 
Chapter 1: Introduction (and some puzzles)
 
Chapter 2: Where the brain comes from: evolution
 
Chapter 3: What are the bits of the brain and what together do they do?
 
Chapter 4: How does a neuron work?
 
Chapter 5: The brain is a computer, obviously
 
Chapter 6: The brain is a biological organ, not a computer
 
Chapter 7: How it gets to work this way: development and learning
 
Chapter 8: Working better, working worse, working different
 
Chapter 9: Humans apart
 
Chapter 10: Saving the planet
 
Chapter 11: Conclusion (and answers to those puzzles)

Supplements

Authors' website
Check out the authors’ website for more material for How the Brain Works: supporting material, references, expansions, and the jokes our editor wouldn’t let us include.

As teachers we are in the business of literally changing the connections in the brains of our students. However, many of us only have a rudimentary knowledge of how the brain actually works. This book provides a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the most complex of organs and I would strongly recommend that those involved in education, not just psychology students, read it.

Helen Darlington
Faculty Progress Leader for Science, South Wirral High School

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ISBN: 9781529741940
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