Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi everyone
i recently bought a book ‘neurosceience For dummies’ in an attempt to understand the mechanics of the autistic mind. May not be the first stop for some people but I really wasn’t too sure where to go to with their being so much to choose from online. I prefer to go straight to the foundation. Do you have any opinions on where I am best to pry into? I’m not too good with having a book in front of me unless I know what I am going to focus on, it overwhelms me. This often happens, I get something because I am aware that it will be helpful, but I can’t tackle it unless I am fully aware of a small area I can begin with. Does this happen to any of you?
Any other doses of advice? I’m interested in basically what areas of the brain are supposedly non typical, why, behaviours induced, along with self help techniques.
Best wishes!
If you want to go to the foundation of neuroscience, I would recommend Michael Gazzaniga's textbooks (they are widely used in undergraduate psychology classes). Gazzaniga is one of the leading researchers in cognitive neuroscience and knows a lot about pretty much everything in the field. Here's one of the books below (and is quite up-to-date):
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cognitive-Neuroscience-Biology-Michael-Gazzaniga/dp/0393922286/ref=dp_ob_image_bk
I would prefer these compared to autism-specific books as well, because it covers everything (attention, memory, visual perception, cognitive control, social neuroscience), it gives a much fuller picture of how the mind works.
"Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind" might be a little intense to read if you are completely new to the field (but should be ok if you have a psychology or biology background). So if you want to start off with something easy, you can look at his "Psychological Science" textbook aimed for beginners. Another way to find good books is to go to look at the Psychology 101 Syllabuses in various university websites. They might include a textbook they use for the course. You can also take "Introduction to Psychology" courses online for free like coursera: www.coursera.org/.../introduction-psych