My two cents... (review by former research scientist)

books:

	• Making a Good Brain Great: The Amen Clinic Program for Achieving and Sustaining Optimal Mental Performance Daniel G. Md Amen Three Rivers Press, 2006 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 38 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Table Tennis vs. Ping-Pong

I notice that Dr. Amen recommends table tennis as the very best sport to improve your brain. Of course he is not suggesting that basement ping-pong will do the trick. He recommends investing in a skilled table tennis coach who will teach you the correct strokes. I would add that it should be one who will also teach you the new international, competative rules to gain the maximum benefit for your brain. What other sport combines speed and eye-hand coordination with exercise for every muscle group? This book and this sport recommendation is for every age category. Great recommendation Dr. Amen!!!

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My two cents... (review by former research scientist)

I think the two top reviews are very well written, so I am not going to revisit the same territory. In essence, I agree with everything they said. This book is loaded with sound advice, good references, supplement recommendations, etc.

What I wanted to add is that it is a very readable, practical and enjoyable book for anyone. For anyone with a brain (all of us!), it's an inexpensive investment in return for a lifetime of benefits. Dr. Amen focuses a lot on prevention of problems, especially those related to aging and the brain. As a former biochemist, his suggestions make sense and I have implemented them in my own life.

If you are on SSRIs (e.g. Zoloft), have ADD/ADHD or other issues, there is a lot of value added material about how certain supplements can be VERY helpful and as effective as some drugs. He also includes warnings where it is appropriate and they seem to lean on the conservatie side.

I don't have any reservations about this book or the credibility of the author. It's a "no brainer" decision from my perspective, I don't know of one that is better and I read a lot!

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Good reference book

This book has some good guidelines for brain exercises, food, and supplements.

Fine guide to keeping your brain in tip-top shape

I found this a valuable book. Overall, there is fair amount of information. There are no breakthrough insights for optimizing the health of your brain. There's just some practical advice along with explanations of the basic science behind the advice. If you are a regular reader of science and health information, you likely already know a fair amount of the info in this book. Eat right. Exercise. Avoid drugs. Don't get a head injury. Take some supplements. Meditate. Listen to relaxing music. And so on. However, Amen presents the material in an authoritative way, so his insights seem like the product of a huge amount of experience dealing with patients in his clinic.

One thing I liked is that this book does a better job than other health books at working at some level of sophistication in explaining neurophysiological changes going on in the brain. Just to take one example: exercise. Everybody knows exercise improves health and well being. But, for me, I didn't have a real understanding of how aerobic exercise would translate into better brain functioning. One fact I learned is that exercise increases levels of nitric oxide "which helps keep blood vessel walls open and round." If someone is a couch potato, then their levels of nitric oxide will drop and their blood vessels will become constricted and distorted, making them less capable of carrying blood to needed areas of the brain. This restricted flow eventually can lead to full-blown strokes which cut off blood flow completely for some time. Again, just a tidbit, nothing revelatory, but this is one more piece of the puzzle of the brain and its functioning. There are a lot of pieces like that are good to know. Of course, this is only at one level of explanation. One would have to go much deeper to understand the neurophysiology of healthy brain functioning.

I would have liked a better defense of the use of SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) imaging. I had never heard of it. I wonder why almost nobody is using it. Such scans are the basis for almost all of the clinical diagnoses throughout the book. If it is as effective as Amen indicates I am surprised that so few doctors use it. Amen does give some reasons why doctors have been slow to adopt SPECT imaging, although it is hard to judge whether his explanation (basically, doctor's are slow adopters) is correct. Dr. Amen could well be a pioneer of a new method of diagnosis which takes advantage of a rich source of information. I'm not qualified to judge the value of SPECT imaging.

There is of course one problem with any book of this sort. On the one hand, I am extremely impressed by the insights of a physician who can call on the experience of having interpreted over 30,000 patients' brain images. On the other hand, there is the problem in having to accept the authority of someone simply because of their credentials. There's no way to know just reading the book that Amen's explanations of the illnesses are correct. Presumably some degree of simplification is necessary to appeal to a popular audience. But a Freudian psychoanalyst could claim to have examined the same number of patients and arrived at an authoritative diagnosis even though much Freudian psychoanalysis is bunk. I wish I could determine whether some of the more controversial claims are warranted. For example, Amen is extremely conservative about the amount of blunt-force impact that is acceptable for a growing brain. He says that if he had his way no child would ever do a drill practicing bouncing soccer balls on her head. He takes pains to point out how his expertise supports this conclusion. This kind of claim is something for which I would have liked to see more evidence to back it up.

Amen does a decent job in many places of citing extensive references for some of his conclusions. For example, he advocates taking supplements to improve brain health, and there are numerous references to studies published in peer-reviewed journals. Here too, however, I found him somewhat ambiguous about the value of some supplements for healthy people. Is the supplement (vinpocetine, Acetyl-L-carnitine, ginkgo biloba, CoQ10, etc.) only indicated for those suffering from or likely to suffer from conditions like senile dementia? Often Amen doesn't say. For example, he says that "the prettiest brains I have seen are those on ginkgo," implying that healthy people might benefit, but he advises only those "at risk for memory problems or stroke or suffer from low energy or decreased concentration" to consider taking ginkgo. Who doesn't suffer from these problems at times? Maybe everyone might benefit. From what I have read, there is mixed evidence for the value of ginkgo for healthy people. Amen doesn't discuss this issue. I found such omissions disappointing. After all, I want to "make a good brain great," not just make a bad brain better. Many times I would have liked Amen to be more thorough in his treatment of a topic.

My impression of books of this type is that overall they are a valuable read, although, when I consider the total amount of knowledge I have accumulated having read them, I can't help but feel that I haven't really learned all that much.

All said, this is easy reading. I enjoyed a lot of the research anecdotes, where Amen would give a glimpse of a recent study that had been done. For example I found interesting the "proof" that "beautiful women make men stupid". In one study, men who were shown pictures of beautiful women showed a greater likelihood of accepting $15 immediately rather than waiting a few days for $75. And there is a short explanation of why this might be the case. Again, not terribly complex analysis--just an idea to get you thinking about something. This kind of anecdote is the kind of thing Steven Pinker is a master at (see How the Mind Works). You can also find this style of explanation and citation used well in Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness. Amen uses this method to good effect.

All in all, I found this a quick and valuable read. It has some nice tips about tweaking one's mental performance; along the way I think I learned more than a thing or two about how the brain functions.

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Learning How Our Brain Works

This is a scientific book written in layman's language about the functioning of the brain. It contains self tests to determine if the reader has any problem area. Then, suggestions for improvement are offered. Learned so much.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, page 5, 6, 7, 8

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