Rewire Your Brain: Think Your Way to a Better Life Paperback – March 5, 2010

"Rewire Your Brain" by Dr. John B. Arden was an excellent book that I recommend reading to anyone interesting in the brain and good mental health. Through this review of the book, I hope to give you an overview of the text while sharing my personal opinion on the text as a whole, followed by specific overviews of chapters that really hit home with me, and I'll wrap up the review with a look at the literally writing aspects of the book in terms of style and structure.PURPOSE & OVERVIEWSelected as a book to supplement my reading in my Introduction to Neuroscience course at Georgia Tech, I was caught by the plain but brilliant cover of the book as well as the short summary. Printed with a brain expressed through what appears to be colored rubber bands, the illustration on the front intrigued me and already got me thinking about plasticity and how the knowledge that we have is moldable and can be stretched to a multitude of purposes. The book is filled with facts that are brought to the reader with short anecdotes following the physiological overview. By doing this the book takes the neuroscience terminology that is crucial to the book and makes it very digestible. I am a Pre-Health undergraduate currently pursuing a Bachelors of Science in Biomedical Engineering with a Minor in Computer Science focusing on Intelligence. While physiology is nothing new to me, this book does an exceptional job in relaying the connection between why things happen physiologically and how one can take this knowledge and apply it to daily lifestyle for healthier living. The diction of the book is not overcomplicated outside of the neuroscience terms, which can be scribbled down on the side as a reference for those that feel that they may forget them as they progress throughout the book. The chapters of the book are in order as follows: "Firing the Right Cells Together", "Taming Your Amygdala", "Shifting Left", "Cultivating Memory", "Fueling Your Brain", "Healthier Habits: Exercise and Sleep", "Social Medicine", "Resiliency and Wisdom", and "The Mindful Attitude". These chapters cover the topics or neuroplasticity, anxiety, depression, eating, exercise, sleep, social interaction, resiliency, and focus.CHAPTER 1: FIRING THE RIGHT CELLS TOGETHERThis opening chapter sets the foundation of the whole book with the concept of "Cells that fire together, wire together". Here Dr. Arden discusses how the brain is a dynamic being with the capacity to remember what you want it to remember. As the opener, he covers fundamental parts of the brain, their function, neuronal activity, and the occurrence of neuroplasticity. Something that was difficult with the chapter was the consistent usage of abbreviations of acronyms for various cortices of the brain. While the original term had been presented earlier in the book, there was no refresher for terms such as the Orbitofrontal Cortex (OBC). Arden goes onto sharing interesting tidbits of information such as: "The corpus callosum of a woman is denser than that of a man. This means that the two hemispheres of a woman's brain work more evenly together." Wrapping up this section, Arden shares a novel method he calls FEED that is fitted for rewiring your brain. The method has four stages: Focus, Effort, Effortlessness, and Determination. With coverage of each stage, Arden expertly bridges the technique to a realistically applied example to rid the presence of any inaccurate of vague interpretation.CHAPTER 3: SHIFTING LEFTTitled on the premise that the left frontal lobe promotes positive feelings while the right frontal lobe promotes negative feelings, the chapter discusses dealing will passivity. As done commonly throughout the book, Arden uses a patient he was familiar with to open the section. In this case, it was a woman who was depressed and was bringing those around her down as a result. It was interesting to see how ideas were so interconnected such as with information that the woman's "emotional state...at any given time shaded her perceptions, thoughts, and memories." We all feel down at some point at this chapter really helps with telling you how to deal with that, and like most people would want, backs it up with science. As is repeated throughout the book, motivation is a large component to promoting mental health, and it really shows in this section. Arden lays out how easy it is to spiral out of control once passivity kicks in and how that leads to depression. As these neurons fire together to relay this negative sensation, they wire together and the mood gets reinforced, making it harder to get out of that negative state-of-mind as initially mentioned in the mantra from Chapter 1. The rest of the chapter effectively breaks down how to "shift left" with positive methods as follows: Priming positive moods, light chemistry, constructive narratives, taking action, aerobic boosting, wiring positive thinking, and social medicine.CHAPTER 7: SOCIAL MEDICINEIn this segment of the book, Arden takes on discussion of healthy relationships and how closes personal connections yield decreases in health problems, longer lives, and less depression and anxiety. From here he continues to discuss the impact that progressive social disconnectedness has. By following "social medicine" techniques, he points to increases in health such as lower blood pressure and cortisol levels among many others. With a large range of components going into the systems involved in "social medicine", Arden clearly presents them in categories of Neurotransmitters, Brain Structures, and the Central Nervous System. Following that, the chapter is further split into a discussion into the main forms of social communication and how they fit into the model of "social medicine". The categories are as follows: touch, nurturance, bonding and attachment, empathy, and love. This chapter really brought me into the book with the natural flow of ideas from one to the other. The points made were very easy to understand and were interesting to learn about, given the physiological factual backing for each statement.WRITING STYLE AND STRUCTUREPrefacing the book to run through the high points of the book, Arden lines up the reader on what to expect. From there he was able to keep my attention through intriguing anecdotes and examples that I had not heard of in the past. Arden made sure to continually connect prior and future references in the book to bridge multiple connections with the topics discussed for the purpose of tying the whole book together. While the use of abbreviations got difficult to keep up with while reading the book, if a list, electronic or physical is kept up, I think that the readability of the book can be seen as very easy.Overall, I felt that this book really brought fascinating content to the table while definitely educating me on key neuroscience topics. Dr. Arden's selection of content to cover really grabs the audience and it sure dragged me in as I would read further and further into the book. As far as my personal development goes, I think the FEED method was the most beneficial, but I'll leave it to the book to cover that with any readers that take this review to heart and pick up this book.

"Rewire your brain" by Dr. Arden is a very worthwhile book to read and through this review, I hope to quickly explain the basis of the book while encouraging you to read it. First I will give a short overview of the whole book and then I will go into a detailed review of my favorite sections, finally finishing with some tips that I believe will make this read even more rewarding.I chose this book to read for my intro to neuroscience course expecting a technical book, although labeled "accessible" on the back cover review, written from a professional to other professionals. I was pleasantly surprised that this book was, in fact, accessible and was able to give me a lot of insight on how interconnected and changeable the brain is as well as practical ways I could apply this changeability to better my life. In all honesty, when I ordered this book, I only briefly scanned the description to make sure it had neuroscience concepts so that I could read it for my class. It wasn't until I received the book that I realized that it was a self-help book. Now after reading it, I would recommend this book to everyone, not only to those looking for help due to a difficult mental issue they are encountering. I am a biology and psychology undergraduate senior and have spent the past 5 years immersed in classes about neurons, psychological disorders, physiology, etc. but I was able to learn so much from this book. For example, I have heard all throughout my life that eating right and exercising are good for your brain, but I was never told a simple how. This book does this beautifully in my favorite section of the book. The style of the book was straight forward and simple. There were no long or complicated words outside of the neurological terms necessary. The author would begin each section with a story of a patient he had worked with and then continued with how each topic affects the brain and how use this knowledge to our advantage. There were 9 chapters in this book covering basic neuroplasticity, anxiety, depression, memory, healthy eating, exercise and sleep, the benefits of social interactions, resiliency, and attention. I will go into more detail on a few of my favorite chapters below.CH 1: Firing the right cells togetherThis section is essentially the meat of the whole book. Here the author introduces the concept of a changeable brain and what this means to us. He describes how the different parts of the brain function, how neurons work, and how neuroplasticity occurs. Due to the content of this section, you may think that this part of the book would be more of a textbook type read, however that is not the case whatsoever. Dr. Arden manages to keep this section simple and interesting. He even throws in some fun facts that I really enjoyed about how a woman's brain and a man's brain differ. Here is one example: "Since woman's brains have a better connection between the two hemispheres ... words often carry more emotional meaning for women than they do for men." I definitely see this amongst the couples that I know. The most important part of this chapter is where the author introduces his method of how to rewire the brain. He uses a method he calls FEED, in which you focus, take effort to change, reach effortlessness, and finally are determined to stay in practice. This is explained very well and is followed up with a short example that allows you to relate this method to everyday life.CH 2: Taming your AmygdalaThe chapter is the anxiety section, a section that I think everyone can relate to very well since I'm sure everyone has experienced some type of anxiety at some point in their life. Dr. Arden draws you into this section by beginning with a story about a patient of his with public speaking anxiety. This was a perfect way to begin this chapter because not having any fear associated with public speaking is, I'm sure, a very small minority. That there is a way to stop this fear is very exciting because public speaking is something that has to be done all throughout life, from school to the workplace. The author then goes on to explain how anxiety negatively affects the brain and also how to moderate this anxiety. As it turns out, a common theme in rewriting the brain is to do the thing you don't want to in a method of "challenging the paradox": "Challenging the paradox involves doing away with avoidance and replacing it with exposure". In his theory, the more you expose yourself, the less anxiety you will experience.CH 5 Fueling your brain and CH 6 Exercise and SleepIf you have no interest in any other parts of this book, I would recommend getting this book just for these 2 chapters. These were by far my favorite chapters of this book. As I talked about before, you always hear how eating right, exercising, and getting enough sleep is good for your body. But Dr. Arden goes one step further and actually explains why this is, down to the chemicals and parts of the brain involved. I won't go into any detail since I don't want to ruin the fun of reading these chapters, but trust me, they are fascinating.Although this book was mostly easy to read, there were parts of the book that I found myself quickly scanning over because of the use of technical language, particularly in regards to the different parts of the brain. In some sections, the author would introduce many parts of the brain at once and this barrage of abbreviations could get overwhelming. While reading, I kept thinking that I wished I had made a quick list of different parts of the brain so that I could easily refer to it. A tip I would give to make this book even more rewarding would be to keep a sheet of paper or an index card near you when reading, even during the first chapter. Each time a part of the brain is introduced, jot it down with its basic function, what side of the brain its in, what topic it influences, and what changes it. Then if this part is talked about again, add the new information to the list. This way you have a sort of cheat sheet for quick reference while you read the book and even after.By combining readability, relatable passages, and fascinating content, Dr. Arden creates a book that I believe everyone would benefit by reading. In fact, I am planning on re-reading this book while taking my own advice of making a so called cheat sheet so that I can get everything I can out of this book. So to end, I just wanted to say that even while I wrote this review, I used Dr. Arden's method of FEED. As he tells you in the attention section, it is important to focus when you are trying to attend to something. I took to heart this advice and tried my best to focus by turning off my TV and closing my internet browsing windows, and of course was able to write this review faster and in a more organized way than if I hadn't.

Lots of good information on how the brain functions, the role of diet, etc. This book is more than merely a how to book on creating new and good habits. The author explains neural functions and interactions that generate, process, and expedite thoughts.