The Emotional Life of Brain by Richard J. Davidson Summary and Review And PDF Download link.

Introduction

This book describes a personal and professional journey to understand why and low people differ in their emotional responses to what life throws as them , motivated by my desire to help people lead healthier , more fulfilling lives . The ” professional ” thread in this tapestry describes the development of the hybrid discipline called affective neuroscience , the study of the brain mechanisms that underlie our emotional and the search for ways to enhance people’s sense of well-being and promote positive qualities of mind . The “personal ” thread is my own story . Spurred by the conviction that , as Hamlet said to Horatio , there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the standard account of the mind provided by mainstream psychology and neuroscience , I have ventured outside the boundaries enclosing these disciplines , sometimes getting struck down , but in the end , I hope achieving at least some of what I set out to do: to show through rigorous research that emotional , far from being the neurological fluff that mainstream science once believed them to be , are central to the functions of the brain and to the life of the mind .

Chapter 1 : One Brain Does Not Fit All

The Six Dimensions

• Your Resilience style : Can you usually shake off setbacks , or do you suffer a meltdown ? when faced with an emotional or other challenge , can you muster the tenacity and determination to soldier on , or do you feel so helpless that you simply surrender ? if you have an argument with your significant other , does it cast a pall on the remainder of your day , or are you able to recover quickly and put it behind you ? When you’re knocked back on your heel
• Your Outlook style : Do you seldom let emotional clouds darken your sunny outlook on life ? Do you maintain a high level of energy and engagement even when thing don’t go your way ?
• Your Social Intuition style : Can you read people’s body language and tone voice like a book , inferring whether they want to talk or be alone , whether they are stressed to the breaking point or felling mellow?

There is no ideal emotional style , no optimal position on any of the continua that describe the six emotional styles, let alone all of them , Civilization couldn’t flourish without different emotional types , including the extremes -accountants whose prefrontal cortex and striatum drive them to zip through 1040 s techno-geniuses who are more comfortable working with machines than with people because the circuit responsible for social cognition is underactive , making social interactions unimportant to them .

Chapter 2 : The Discovery of Emotional Style

Yet even in the 1970s i had seen that hidden , internal phenomena can be coaxed out into the daylight . During my senior year in high school , in Brooklyn , I volunteered at a sleep laboratory at nearby Maimonides Medical Center , which happened to be hospital where I was born . Study participants would show up in the evening and after one of the scientists in charge explained that they were to sleep normally or as close to normally as one can in a strange room on a strange bed with strangers going in and out of the Medusa,s head of wires pasted electrodes all over the volunteer’s face and scalp .

Chapter 3: Assessing Your Emotional Style

In the introduction, I presented the bare bones of the six elements, or dimensions , that constitute emotional style. I imagine that as I asked whether you are the kind of person who can shrug off a minor spat with your spouse , who understands her own emotional state , who can keep his attention focused , and the like , you tried too place yourself along the spectrum of each dimension of Emotional Style

PDF Name	The Emotional Life of Brain
No .of pages	185
Language	English
Source	psychologyreads.com
Download link	Available
PDF Size	1.6 MB