Using Our Heads: A Foreword by William Safire

Introduction: Welcome to Your Brain

How to Read this Book

Contributors

Your Brain: A Primer

Part I Understanding Your Brain

1. How to Think About the Brain
2. How We Know: Learning the Secrets of the Brain
3. Basic Brain Care: Protecting Your Mental Capital
4. The Brain-Body Loop

Part II Your Brain Through Life

5. Prenatal Development
6. Brain Development in Childhood
7. The Adolescent Brain
8. The Brain in Adult Life and Normal Aging

Part III The Healthy Brain

9. The Body Manager

B1 The Major Sense: Sight, Hearing, Taste, Smell, and Touch

B2 Body Regulation

B3 Basic Drives: Eating, Sleeping, and Sex

B4 Movement, Balance, and Coordination

B5 Pain Perception

B6 Consciousness

10. Emotions and Social Function

B7 Emotions

B8 Inhibition and Control

B9 Temperament

B10 Attention and Motivation

11. Learning,  Thinking, and Remembering

B11 Decision Making and Planning

B12 Intelligence

B13 Learning and Memory

B14 Speech, Language, and Reading

B15 Visualization and Navigation

B16 Creativity, Talents, and Skills

Part IV Conditions of the Brain and Nervous System

12. Conditions That Appear in Childhood

C1 Dyslexia

C2 Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

C3 Mental Retardation

C4 Cerebral Palsy

C5 Autism

C6 Metabolic Diseases

C7 Neurofibromatosis

C8 Hydrocephalus

C9 Spina Bifida

C10 Tumors of Childhood

13. Disorders of the Senses and Body Function

C11 Sleep Disorders

C12 Narcolepsy

C13 Epilepsy and Seizures

C14 Dizziness and Vertigo

C15 Seeing Problems

C16 Hearing Problems

C17 Smelling and Tasting Problems

C18 Autonomic Disorders

C19 Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

14. Emotional and Control Disorders

C20 Depression

C21 Anxiety and Panic

C22 Social Phobia (Social Anxiety Disorder)

C23 Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

C24 Bipolar Disorder

C25 Schizophrenia

C26 Borderline Personality Disorder

C27 Eating Disorders

C28 Past-Traumatic Stress Disorder

C29 Substance Abuse and Addiction

C30 Alcoholism

C31 Violence and Aggression

C32 Suicidal Feelings

15. Infectious and Autoimmune Disorders

C33 Multiple Sclerosis

C34 Shingles/Herpes Zoster

C35 Neurological Complications of AIDS

C36 Lyme Disease

C37 Meningitis

C38 Viral Encephalitis

C39 Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease

C40 Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

16. Disorders of Movement and Muscles

C41 Parkinson’s Disease

C42 Parkinsonism Plus

C43 Tremors

C44 Dystonia, Spasms, and Cramps

C45 Tourette’s Syndrome and Tics

C46 Ataxia

C47 Huntington’s Disease

C48 Peripheral Neuropathy

C49 Guillain-Barré Syndrome

C50 Bell’s Palsy

C51 Myopathies

C52 Myasthenia Gravis

C53 Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

17. Pain

C54 Headache

C55 Migraines

C56 Back Pain and Disk Disease

C57 Chronic Pain

C58 Trigeminal Neuralgia

18. Nervous System Injuries

C59 Ischemic Stroke

C60 Hemorrhagic Stroke

C61 Brain Trauma, Concussions, and Coma

C62 Spinal Cord Injury

C63 Paraneoplastic Syndromes

C64 Brain Tumors

C65 Nutritional Disorders

C66 Chemicals and the Nervous System

19. Disorders of Thinking and Remembering

C67 Alzheimer’s Disease

C68 Amnesias

C69 Dementia

C70 Trouble with Speech and Language

C71 Apraxias

C72 Agnosias

Glossary

Appendix A: Drugs Used to Treat the Brain and Nervous System

Appendix B: Suggested Reading

Appendix C: Resource Groups

The Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives

The European Dana Alliance for the Brain

About the Editors

Index

"There is no doubt that the three editors (all leading brain experts) and the more than 80 contributors (all physicians from major American medical institutions) are eminently qualified."

-Library Journal

"If your interest in the brain is [practical], this encyclopedic family guide will tell you everything you need to know."

-Psychology Today

INTRODUCTION:

WELCOME TO YOUR BRAIN

You may have picked up this book because you suspect that you or someone close to you is experiencing problems connected with the brain. Alternatively, you may have picked it up because you have always been interested in the brain, or because your curiosity has been stimulated by a news report about exciting scientific discoveries. Being able to provide helpful information in all those situations is why we were so excited to participate in creating The Dana Guide to Brain Health and why so many excellent scientists and clinicians have contributed their expertise to it. Never before has a book like this been created. In fact, only in recent decades have we learned enough about the brain to assemble this overall guide to its development, health, and disorders.

Whatever your reason for reading these words, the chances are pretty high that The Dana Guide to Brain Health will be useful to you in your lifetime. That is because diseases of the brain rank at the top of the list of our most serious health problems. The most common brain disease, stroke, has a lower frequency than cancers and heart diseases, but the total effects of all the brain diseases—including strokes, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, schizophrenia, and many more conditions described in this volume— account for more long-term care and more chronic suffering than all other medical problems put together.

The cumulative cost of brain diseases may startle you. It is so high because many of the brain’s most devastating diseases begin early in life and can last for a lifetime. But brain-related diseases are also fairly common, even more so when we expand that group to include disorders involving the rest of our nervous system. One survey in the 1990s found that nine out of ten Americans had either an illness involving their brain or nervous system or had a friend or relative experiencing one.

Furthermore, brain health controls our everyday lives. Medical diagnoses like clinical depression, substance abuse, and Alzheimer’s disease have become topics of daily conversation. They all relate to the brain, as do less dire conditions like migraine headaches, tics, and dyslexia. How much do we know about these disorders? How much should you be concerned about them in your own life? The Dana Guide to Brain Health offers you the essential brain information and, when possible, health-preserving advice.

It has become increasingly apparent in recent decades that, like it or not, the brain and nervous system are involved in every aspect of our health. Conditions of the mind affect those of the body, and vice versa. For centuries people have been able to see the obvious bases for cancer, heart disease, and other physical illnesses, but now we can also see the mechanisms of many nervous-system disorders. Recent advances in the biology of brain function have begun to clarify the brain’s physical basis and to reveal the interplay among the many genes on which the brain relies. We are starting to understand how each of us inherits some degree of vulnerability to such complex diseases as epilepsy, stroke, schizophrenia, depression, and alcoholism, which may nor may not emerge in a person’s lifetime.

Even if you and your loved ones stay neurologically and psychologically healthy, we believe that you will find great value in this book. Your brain is the basis for who you are: your intellect, your personality, your emotional states. We all depend on our brains for our graceful (or not so graceful) movements, our vocabularies, our capacities to learn and remember, even our ability to sleep soundly. We are also inevitably affected by the brains of our friends, relatives, colleagues, and people we randomly encounter in our lives because their brains help determine their behavior toward us. The human brain is said to be the most complex tissue ever known, and we are a long way from understanding it. Yet the brain is involved in so many aspects of our lives that we will undoubtedly benefit from learning all we can about it.

In the last half-century, technological breakthroughs have let us discover more about the brain than in all the previous millennia. We still know far less than what we do not know, but our methods for watching the brain in action (such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, which is explained in chapter 2) are giving us greater insight into which of its complex parts work together to do what and when. With the complete inventory of the human genome now accessible, we are likely to make substantially more progress. Already we know that humans seem to have around 30,000 genes, at least half of which the brain either uses exclusively or shares with just a few of the more complex other organs. Gradually we will learn where to look for the effects of brain-related genes in health and in the early stages of disease. So much progress is being made in understanding the brain that almost every day brings reports of discoveries. This book can help you understand that exciting new science and what it could mean to you and your loved ones.

We hope The Dana Guide to Brain Health will prove helpful to you in working with your doctors and other health professionals. Unfortunately, we all know that the time available for medical consultations is limited; physicians feel as much frustration about that situation as patients do. The Dana Guide to Brain Health will give you a head start on how to explain to your doctor what you think may be wrong. You can list the pertinent symptoms and their history in a way that will let you and your doctor make the most of your appointment. This book also provides information on diagnostic tests and possible treatments. Use it to assemble your questions about what you should expect and what you’ll need to watch out for.

The Dana Guide to Brain Health thus offers not only a ready reference to our latest understandings of brain diseases but also information to help you participate in your own family’s care. It is important to state, however, that you should always follow your doctors’ advice rather than what you read in this book if there is a disagreement. Every individual’s medical condition is different, and your doctors will know about your particular situation. We have to discuss the general case, and often at a very basic level. Furthermore, with the pace of brain research today, it is possible that new treatments and medications will become available to you.

To help you keep up with those advances, The Dana Guide to Brain Health provides you with two more important resources. Toward the back of the book is a listing of the many organizations devoted to people who have brain disorders and to their families. These groups can often provide more detailed information on diseases, referrals to doctors, moral support, and tips on dealing with chronic or fatal conditions. In addition, recognizing the rapid progress researchers are making in providing new diagnosis and treatment options, The Dana Foundation maintains a Web page that reports new findings on brain health. To find it, start at the Foundation’s main page: www.dana.org

The Dana Guide to Brain Health is the product of many people’s work: not simply ours and that of the many fine contributors, but also that of all the scientists whose studies of the brain have led us to this point. We hope that you will enjoy learning from this book as much as we have enjoyed preparing it for you.