Suggestible You, Erik Vance
Suggestible You, Erik Vance
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Suggestible You
The Curious Science of Your Brain’s Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

Author: Erik Vance

Narrator: Richard Powers

Unabridged: 9 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/08/2016


Synopsis

This riveting narrative explores the world of placebos, hypnosis, false memories, and neurology to reveal the groundbreaking science of our suggestible minds. Could the secrets to personal health lie within our own brains? Journalist Erik Vance explores the surprising ways our expectations and beliefs influence our bodily responses to pain, disease, and everyday events. Drawing on centuries of research and interviews with leading experts in the field, Vance takes us on a fascinating adventure from Harvard’s research labs to a witch doctor’s office in Catemaco, Mexico, to an alternative medicine school near Beijing (often called “China’s Hogwarts”). Vance’s firsthand dispatches will change the way you think—and feel.Continuing the success of National Geographic’s brain books and rounding out our pop science category, this book shows how expectations, beliefs, and self-deception can actively change our bodies and minds. Vance builds a case for our “internal pharmacy”—the very real chemical reactions our brains produce when we think we are experiencing pain or healing, actual or perceived. Supporting this idea is centuries of placebo research in a range of forms, from sugar pills to shock waves; studies of alternative medicine techniques heralded and condemned in different parts of the world (think crystals and chakras); and most recently, major advances in brain mapping technology. Thanks to this technology, we’re learning how we might leverage our suggestibility (or lack thereof) for personalized medicine, and Vance brings us to the front lines of such study.

About Erik Vance

Erik Vance is a science writer based in California and Mexico City. He’s written for Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, the Utne Reader, Scientific American, and National Geographic. He’s a contributing editor at Discover magazine.

About Richard Powers

Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory, and Bewilderment was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Robert on November 18, 2018

Placebos, nocebos, hypnosis, false memories are discussed and related study conclusions revealed. It's an interesting read for sure, but it left me longing for more actionable strategies. It almost felt like the author said, "Here are some fascinating things that happen in the mind. Cool, huh?" Inde......more

Goodreads review by Ami on December 03, 2016

Could the key to future health treatments lie buried within our own brains? Can we trick our minds into healing ourselves, losing weight, or digging up distant memories? In this riveting narrative, acclaimed science journalist Erik Vance explores the surprising power of suggestibility and how our ex......more

Goodreads review by Kent on May 14, 2017

I don't know how to do it, but the placebo effect isn't a mind trick. The placebo effect is an, as yet, unexplained cascade of neuro-chemicals that humans access when other humans help them. It is our immune system gone social. We know that part of the impact is natural occurring opioids. We know th......more

Goodreads review by Emily on February 06, 2017

This book was not at all what I expected when I picked it up, so I had to think about how to rate it. The author is a former Christian Scientist who discusses the relative merits of one's ability to heal oneself through convincing him or herself that s/he can. Usually in an unknowing manner- like ta......more

Goodreads review by Anastasia on November 19, 2018

Suggestible You by Erik Vance explains the way our expectations and beliefs influence or responses to various situations and events. A fascinating account of the science and research into the mind and how it can be influenced.......more


Quotes

“Science journalist Vance takes an inspired journey into the profound and often unnoticed powers of our brains…offer[ing] an understanding of the ways in which beliefs can lead to a better life.” Publishers Weekly

“An eye-opening exploration of the intersection between philosophy and science and a fascinating peek into our innermost selves.” Kirkus Reviews