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Product Details
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Everything we think and everything we choose to do alters our brain and fundamentally changes who we are, a process that continues until the end of our lives. Few people think of the brain as being susceptible to change in its actual structure, but in fact we can preselect the kind of brain we will have by continually exposing ourselves to rich and varied life experiences. Unlike other organs that eventually wear out with repeated and sustained use, the brain actually improves the more we challenge it.
Think of Restak as a personal trainer for your brain - he will help you assess your mental strengths and weaknesses, and set you to thinking about the world and the people around you in a new light, providing you with improved and varied skills and capabilities. From interacting with colleagues to recognizing your own psychological makeup, from understanding the way you see something to why you're looking at it in the first place, from explaining the cause of panic attacks to warding off performance anxiety, this book will tell you the whys and hows of the brain's workings.
Packed with practical advice and fascinating examples drawn from history, literature, and science, Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot provides 28 informative and realistic steps that we can all take to improve our brainpower.
Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot is also available in print from Harmony Books.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
101 of 111 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting concepts, tedious delivery,
By A Customer
This review is from: Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot: Unleashing Your Brain's Potential (Hardcover)
Mozart's Brain and The Fighter Pilot is an interesting book about how the brain works, which parts of the brain control different activities, and what exercises you might conduct to exercise your brain. Unfortunately, the writing straddles between the author's academic background and what might be interesting to the average reader. The end result is a book that seems like random, rambling recollections and anecdoates of a smart man, but lazily written. I was never sure if his assertions were backed by facts or if they were just speculation on his part. Examples of this mixed style: As a last note, I felt the title was misleading. I was looking for more detailed anecdotes about how various types of people's brains worked. The example of Mozart, however, barely covered two pages. Enjoyable, entertaining, but also frustrating.
62 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Use it or lose it.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot: Unleashing Your Brain's Potential (Hardcover)
Dr. Restak provides 28 ideas in 28 chapters for maintaining an alert mind. Many of the ideas are simply motherhood and apple pie recommendations - reduce stress, concentrate, exercise, etc. And while there are some interesting insights on how the brain works, based on PET scans and recent research, Dr. Restak's recommendations are anecdotal and based on personal experience.Dr. Restak combines brain facts with his own musings to give the illusion of a scientific basis for his recommendations. However, there are no references to studies that confirm any of Dr. Restak's mind enhancing techniques. On the other hand, playing chess, listening to Mozart and reading more books isn't going to hurt anyone either. A better title might be "Use It or Lose It." While you won't use this book for reference, it still rates three stars for entertainment.
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I'm Already Smarter!,
By
This review is from: Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot: Unleashing Your Brain's Potential (Paperback)
If I had read the reviews here, I never would have bought this book. Boy am I glad I bought this book first!
I won't deny that the writing style is a bit inconsistent (but the author does, after all, admit in the pages of this very book that he sometimes forces himself to write a certain number of pages per hour, which presumably takes precedence over consistency). I also would not deny that some of the chapters are more useful than others. For example, I found the space devoted to a literary description of how to do Tai Chi rather puzzling (if you want to learn Tai Chi, take physical lessons from someone who knows). However, the fundamental high-level lessons of this book are backed up by research and are worth the price of the book alone. The basic lessons are things like: a) strengthening one part of your brain can strengthen others b) exercising the brain can help it work better c) there are many different types of cognition (cognition is not IQ), and all of these areas can be trained d) you can grow new neurons, the brain is more plastic than we originally believed, and your brain can actually get better with age. These lessons are invaluable, and anyone who takes these lessons to heart should be actively seeking out new and creative ways to give his or her brain a continual full-brain workout. Much of the book is devoted to ideas about how to do just this; how to exercise the brain. But rather than pick apart each individual idea, you should view this as just a tiny sample of the sorts of things you can do to condition the brain, and an affirmation that creatively generating such brain-conditioning exercises is a useful lifelong goal. Does it work? Since beginning my full-brain workout program, my scores on ThinkFast have gone up a number of levels and I sure *feel* smarter. You'll have to judge your own results for yourself.
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