Receptors

Receptors by Restak M.D., Richard. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780553374414.

What if there were a pill that could change you from an introvert to the exuberant extrovert you always wanted to be? A capsule to make you more assertive, creative, or intelligent? What is you could "design" your own brain? Who would you be? Only a few years ago such possibilities seemed the stuff of science fiction, but in todays laboratory remarkable new advances in brain research are making such transformations a reality. In Receptors, famed neuropsychiatrist Richard Restek leads us on an exhilarating--and sometimes disquieting--scientific adventure into this bold new frontier. He shows us how break-through discoveries are enabling neuroscientists to decode the mysteries of the human brain, holding out the exciting possibility of relieving, and ultimately even curing, conditions such as memory loss, depression, schizophrenia, Parkinsons, and even Alzheimers disease. He documents the likelihood that in the very near future, it will be possible to alter our own brains, to choose the personality we want. How we cope with such godlike power is one of the fascinating questions he poses in this challenging and thought-provoking book. From the levitating ointments of medieval "witches" to the magic mushrooms of southern Mexico, from the LSD of the psychedelic age to the latest discoveries of todays psychopharmacologists, Dr. Restak provides a vivid and lucid account of humanitys unceasing effort to understand and harness the powers of the mind--and the possibility that solutions to some of the brains deepest mysteries may be close at hand.