Neuroscience for Clinicians

This book fills the need for an introductory text that opens the field up to the beginner and takes them to higher-level thinking about neuroscience. Neuroscience has captured the interest of students, professionals, and the general public. In fact it is so new, that there are very few books that gather it together in one text. Neuroscience is an amalgamation of many fields: psychology, cognitive science, chemistry, biology, engineering, philosophy, mathematics, and statistics. People who are new to the discipline have to be able to find their way through all of these fields together. In addition, they need to understand the highly technical lexicon, modeling methods, and theoretical assumptions used to describe brain structure, function, and the interaction between them. This book helps readers navigate the conventions used to describe the brain that developed through the years. The authors crystallize the complex modeling methods and technologies so that readers understand what they are saying and how to use them. They address the important underlying principles and important issues of neuroscience, with the debates and discussions that are ongoing as the field evolves. They also include many salient fine-grained details so that the book is not just an overview, but also a useful guide for many levels of readers.

C. Alexander Simpkins, PHD and Annellen M. Simpkins, PHD are psychologists specializing in neuroscience, psychotherapy, meditation, and hypnosis. The Simpkins have specialized in the unconscious in their research, clinical work, and workshops. They are authors of 26 books, many of them bestsellers. Their most recent books on neuroscience are The Dao of Neuroscience (Norton, 2010), and Neuro-Hypnosis (Norton, 2010). They have also written about meditation for healthy mind-brain change: The Tao of Bipolar Disorder (forthcoming from New Harbinger, 2013), Zen Meditation in Psychotherapy (Wiley, 2012), Meditation and Yoga in Psychotherapy: Techniques for Clinical Practice (Wiley, 2011), and Meditation for Therapists and Their Clients (Norton 2009). Their books have over 20 foreign editions and have won numerous awards. Drs. Simpkins have been practicing psychotherapy for more than three decades, and have taught their meditative and hypnotic methods to facilitate mind-brain change to people of all ages. They have been involved in neuroscience for 15 years and have been integrating it into treatments and helping to bring the most recent research findings to practitioners. They present seminars at professional conferences, state mental hospitals, university campuses, and to popular and professional audiences around the world. They have performed psychotherapy research and are currently doing a neuroscience study of unconscious movement. They studied with psychotherapy masters, including Milton H. Erickson, Jerome D. Frank, Carl Rogers, Lawrence Kubie, and Ernest Rossi, and neuroscience innovators including Vilayanur Ramachandran, Jaime Pineda, Paul and Patricia Churchland, Stephen Anagnostaras, and William Bechtel. Their Eastern philosophy influence along with their commitment to continual learning and therapeutic effectiveness has helped them to see therapy through the crystal of a unique vision, which they bring to you with warmth and clarity in their books and seminars.