The Bug In Our Brain

You were programmed wrong. It's not your fault and the people who raised you didn't know better. As a result, the bugs in your brain are holding you back from what we want. The key is self-worth. By lifting self-worth you change how you think and correct the flawed programming you got as a child. By following the step-by-step process outlined in this book, you can attain your dream life and get what you want. Higher self-worth is an ever-changing pair of glasses that broadens or limits your view of the world, colors every life experience, and propels you to take action or grounds you in stagnation. Self-worth is the foundation of all your choices, all your actions, and all your efforts. It's the power that governs your abilities to overcome self-destructive behaviors. Higher self-worth is the key to your success. In his ground-breaking book, Robert Christiansen details the bugs in your thinking and outlines a simple program that lifts self-worth. The book includes: the importance of self-worth, the techniques to counteract a negative self-image, and the keys to healthy self-esteem and true contentment. There is so much more to life than anxiety and self-doubt. The Bug in Our Brain shows you what truly makes life worth living!

“Excellent. . . . [Buonomano] reveals the intricate limitations and blessings of the most complex device in the known universe.”—The Atlantic The human brain may be the best piece of technology ever created, but it’s far from perfect. Drawing on colorful examples and surprising research, neuroscientist Dean Buonomano exposes the blind spots and weaknesses that beset our brains and lead us to make misguided personal, professional, and financial decisions. Whether explaining why we are susceptible to advertisements or demonstrating how false memories are formed, Brain Bugs not only explains the brain’s inherent flaws but also gives us the tools to counteract them.

“Excellent. . . . [Buonomano] reveals the intricate limitations and blessings of the most complex device in the known universe.”—The Atlantic The human brain may be the best piece of technology ever created, but it’s far from perfect. Drawing on colorful examples and surprising research, neuroscientist Dean Buonomano exposes the blind spots and weaknesses that beset our brains and lead us to make misguided personal, professional, and financial decisions. Whether explaining why we are susceptible to advertisements or demonstrating how false memories are formed, Brain Bugs not only explains the brain’s inherent flaws but also gives us the tools to counteract them.

“Engrossing … [An] expedition through the hidden and sometimes horrifying microbial domain.” —Wall Street Journal “Fascinating—and full of the kind of factoids you can't wait to share.” —Scientific American Parasites can live only inside another animal and, as Kathleen McAuliffe reveals, these tiny organisms have many evolutionary motives for manipulating the behavior of their hosts. With astonishing precision, parasites can coax rats to approach cats, spiders to transform the patterns of their webs, and fish to draw the attention of birds that then swoop down to feast on them. We humans are hardly immune to their influence. Organisms we pick up from our own pets are strongly suspected of changing our personality traits and contributing to recklessness and impulsivity—even suicide. Germs that cause colds and the flu may alter our behavior even before symptoms become apparent. Parasites influence our species on the cultural level, too. Drawing on a huge body of research, McAuliffe argues that our dread of contamination is an evolved defense against parasites. The horror and revulsion we are programmed to feel when we come in contact with people who appear diseased or dirty helped pave the way for civilization, but may also be the basis for major divisions in societies that persist to this day. This Is Your Brain on Parasites is both a journey into cutting-edge science and a revelatory examination of what it means to be human. “If you’ve ever doubted the power of microbes to shape society and offer us a grander view of life, read on and find yourself duly impressed.” —Heather Havrilesky, Bookforum

'My first serious blackout marked the line between sanity and insanity. Though I would have moments of lucidity over the coming days and weeks, I would never again be the same person ...' Susannah Cahalan was a happy, clever, healthy twenty-four-year old. Then one day she woke up in hospital, with no memory of what had happened or how she had got there. Within weeks, she would be transformed into someone unrecognizable, descending into a state of acute psychosis, undergoing rages and convulsions, hallucinating that her father had murdered his wife; that she could control time with her mind. Everything she had taken for granted about her life, and who she was, was wiped out. Brain on Fire is Susannah's story of her terrifying descent into madness and the desperate hunt for a diagnosis, as, after dozens of tests and scans, baffled doctors concluded she should be confined in a psychiatric ward. It is also the story of how one brilliant man, Syria-born Dr Najar, finally proved - using a simple pen and paper - that Susannah's psychotic behaviour was caused by a rare autoimmune disease attacking her brain. His diagnosis of this little-known condition, thought to have been the real cause of devil-possessions through history, saved her life, and possibly the lives of many others. Cahalan takes readers inside this newly-discovered disease through the progress of her own harrowing journey, piecing it together using memories, journals, hospital videos and records. Written with passionate honesty and intelligence, Brain on Fire is a searingly personal yet universal book, which asks what happens when your identity is suddenly destroyed, and how you get it back. 'With eagle-eye precision and brutal honesty, Susannah Cahalan turns her journalistic gaze on herself as she bravely looks back on one of the most harrowing and unimaginable experiences one could ever face: the loss of mind, body and self. Brain on Fire is a mesmerizing story' -Mira Bartók, New York Times bestselling author of The Memory Palace Susannah Cahalan is a reporter on the New York Post, and the recipient of the 2010 Silurian Award of Excellence in Journalism for Feature Writing. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, and is frequently picked up by the Daily Mail, Gawker, Gothamist, AOL and Yahoo among other news aggregrator sites.

7-year-old Sophia Spencer was bullied for loving bugs until hundreds of women scientists rallied around her. Now Sophie tells her inspiring story in this picture book that celebrates women in science, bugs of all kinds and the importance of staying true to yourself. Sophia Spencer has loved bugs ever since a butterfly landed on her shoulder--and wouldn't leave!--at a butterfly conservancy when she was only two-and-a-half years old. In preschool and kindergarten, Sophia was thrilled to share what she knew about grasshoppers (her very favorite insects), as well as ants and fireflies . . . but by first grade, not everyone shared her enthusiasm. Some students bullied her, and Sophia stopped talking about bugs altogether. When Sophia's mother wrote to an entomological society looking for a bug scientist to be a pen pal for her daughter, she and Sophie were overwhelmed by the enthusiastic response--letters, photos and videos came flooding in. Using the hashtag BugsR4Girls, scientists tweeted hundreds of times to tell Sophia to keep up her interest in bugs--and it worked!

All of us are born with a fatal bug in our brain! After a lifetime of studying human behavior, the author has come to a startling conclusion. We're all born with a fatal bug in our brain. This bug is like a computer virus. It makes our lives tragic by erasing our mental and physical health. Amazingly, by using the simple techniques described in this book, we can turn the tables on this bug. This "how-to" book is written in the form of a narrative. But the case histories are real. Read it and you'll become a greater and stronger person than you ever dreamed you could be.

Every Child Can be a Reading Star A little girl likes bugs so much, everyone calls her Bug. Will the bugs like her as much as she likes them? This is an excellent social emotional text for teaching friendship and empathy skills to beginning readers. Bug and the Bugs is part of the Reading Stars series. Reading Star books are for kids at the very beginning of a lifetime love of reading. Each book features less than 50 words and uses repetition to build confidence. Bug and the Bugs is 28 pages long and features 39 different words for your child to master. The words are: a, am, Bernadette, bug, bugs, calls, dad, does, everyone, give, has, I, is, It, lady, like, likes, me, mom, my, name, names, nickname, not, one, pink, real, really, so, still, stink, stinker, stinky, them, this, to, too, who, wing