In the last ten years, scientists have learned more about the brain than in all the years of research that came before. This is thanks, in part, to new technologies, which allow researchers to see the living brain at work. We can now look at MRI or PET images and see precisely which parts of the brain go to work when a person lifts a finger, sings a song, writes a poem. While this new information has answered some old questions, it has also raised lots of new ones. Author Faith Brynie polled hundreds of students to find out which questions interested them most. 101 of the best questions are included in this book, along with clearly written and lively answers which sometimes surprise, sometimes entertain, but always remind the reader that the brain is still a frontier that continues to be explored.
Faith Brynie started getting lots of letters from enthusiastic readers when her 2009 book Brain Sense (Amacom) was released. "It only took me 18 years and 24 books to become an overnight sensation!" she says.
Brynie, who's been working steadily as a science and health writer since 1991, has written numerous books for children, teens, and adults. Her 101 Questions... series (Twenty-First Century Books) is a staple on the shelves of high school and public libraries. Her Six-Minute Science Experiments and Six-Minute Nature Experiments (Sterling) have been sending children to their kitchens and their backyards for hands-on science activities for more than a decade. Her Painless Science Projects (Barron's) and her Parent's Crash Course: Elementary Science Fair Projects (Wiley) are classics on the science fair circuit. And she even has a new series of animal books for early readers coming out from Enslow in 2010. Several of her books have won "Best of the Year" honors from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and she's received accolades from the International Reading Association and the National Science Teachers Association. But Brain Sense is the first book to "make it big" in the bookstores.
Brynie, a former science teacher who holds a PhD from the University of Colorado, is diverse in her interests and the writing she puts out. She writes and edits for textbook companies, science and health newsletters and magazines, film companies and television, and private clients who employ her for everything from travel writing to novel critiques. "I write. That's what I do," Brynie says, so the flurry of positive responses that Brain Sense has generated has come as a happy surprise. "I tell some wonderful stories about some wonderful people in Brain Sense," she says. "It's their stories that make the book." Read more of them at Brynie's Psychology Today blog, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-sense. Visit Brynie's web site at http://home.centurytel.net/brynie.
