About this item
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. Expectations, beliefs, and self-deception can actively change our bodies and minds.
About the Author
Erik Vance is a native Bay Area writer replanted in Mexico as a non-native species. Before becoming a writer he was, at turns, a biologist, a rock climbing guide, an environmental consultant, and an environmental educator.
His work focuses on the human element of science - the people who do it, those who benefit from it, and those who do not. He has written for The New York Times, Nature, Scientific American, Harper's, National Geographic, and a number of other local and national outlets.
His first book, Suggestible You, about how the mind and body continually twist and shape our realities was inspired by his feature in Discover and is available on Amazon.
