Gregory Berns

"What is it like to be a dog? A bat? Or a dolphin? To find out, neuroscientist Gregory Berns and his team began with a radical step: they taught dogs to go into an MRI scanner-completely awake. They discovered what makes dogs individuals with varying capacities for self-control, different value systems, and a complex understanding of human speech. And dogs were just the beginning. In What It's Like to Be a Dog, Berns explores the fascinating inner...

In a riveting narrative look at the brain and the power of novelty to satisfy it, Dr. Gregory Berns explores fields as diverse as neuroscience, economics, and evolutionary psychology to find answers to the fundamental question of how we can find a more satisfying way to think and live. We join Berns as he follows ultra-marathoners across the Sierra Nevadas, enters a suburban S&M club to explore the deeper connection between pleasure and pain, partakes...

"It's a commonplace to say that we each tell stories about ourselves, trying to shape how others perceive us, and how we perceive ourselves. And the commonplace is true, as far as it goes-which isn't very far at all. As neuroscientist Gregory Berns shows in The Self Delusion, you, I, we don't just tell stories about ourselves. We are the stories-there's no stable personality to tell stories about. What's more, the stories are, for the most part, false....

From the Publisher: No organization can survive without iconoclasts -- innovators who single-handedly upturn conventional wisdom and manage to achieve what so many others deem impossible. Though indispensable, true iconoclasts are few and far between. In Iconoclast, neuroscientist Gregory Berns explains why. He explores the constraints the human brain places on innovative thinking, including fear of failure, the urge to conform, and the tendency...