VenueAwesome Books Downtown 

Date11/23/2012 

Time7:00 PM - 9:00 PM  

Event TypeReading 

GenreMultigenre 

Sponsor 

Cost $0.00
 

Description and Reader Names: Our brains can’t help but look forward. We spend very little of our mental lives completely in the here and now. Indeed, the power of expectations is so pervasive that we may notice only when somebody pulls back the curtain to reveal a few of the cogs and levers responsible for the big show.

We all know expectations matter—in school, in sports, in the stock market. From a healing placebo to a run on the bank, hints of their self-fulfilling potential have been observed for years. But now researchers in fields ranging from medicine to education to criminal justice are moving beyond observation to investigate exactly how expectations work—and when they don’t.

In Mind Over Mind, journalist Chris Berdik offers a captivating look at the frontiers of expectations research, revealing how our brains work in the future tense and how our assumptions—about the next few milliseconds or the next few years—bend reality. We learn how placebo calories can fill us up, why wine judges can’t agree, how fake surgery can sometimes work better than real surgery, and how imaginary power can be corrupting. We meet scientists who have found that wearing taller and more attractive avatars in a virtual world boosts confidence in real life, gambling addicts whose brains make losing feel like winning, and coaches who put blurry glasses on athletes to lift them out of slumps.

Along the way, Berdik probes the paradox of expectations. Their influence seems based on illusion, even trickery, but they can create their own reality, for good or for ill.

Expectations can heal our bodies and make us stronger, smarter, and more successful, or they can leave us in agony, crush our spirit, and undermine our free will. If we can unlock their secrets, we may be able to harness their power and sidestep their pitfalls.

Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, history, and fascinating true stories of expectations in action, Mind Over Mind offers a spirited journey into one of the most exciting areas of brain research today.

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Chris Berdik was born and raised in Pittsburgh and graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School in 1992. His first taste of journalism was a college internship at Pittsburgh magazine. As a journalist, Chris has been a staff editor at the Atlantic Monthly and Mother Jones magazine, and his writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the Los Angeles Times, New Scientist, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and Salon, among others. He now lives in Boston with his wife, Meaghan and their three-year old twins, Isabel and Oliver. Mind Over Mind is his first book.

Carolyne Whelan received her MFA in poetry and nonfiction at Chatham University in 2009, where she was a finalist for Best Thesis. She was awarded an Honorable Mention in the Sacramento Poetry Center Prize for a Single Poem, a partial scholarship to the Vermont Studio Center, and attended A Room Of Her Own Foundation's 2011 Retreat. Her first chapbook, The Glossary of Tania Aebi, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2011. Her work has appeared in a number of journals and can be found archived at carolynewhelan.com. She lives in Pittsburgh where she works at The Midwife Center.

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Address 1929 Liberty Avenue 

Address 2 

Address 3 

CityPittsburgh 

StatePA 

Zip15222 

Days/Hours of Operation 

Primary Contact PersonBob Ziller 

Primary Contact Emailbobziller@gmail.com 

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AuthorCarolyne Whelan 

Websitehttp://cargocollective.com/carolynewhelan 

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Short bio: Carolyne Whelan received her MFA in cross-genre at Chatham University, where she won first finalist for Best Thesis. She was awarded an Honorable Mention in the Sacramento Poetry Center Prize for a Single Poem. Her first chapbook, The Glossary of Tania Aebi, will be published by Finishing Line Press in August, 2011. Her work has appeared or is forth-coming in Eclectica, Poetry Now, and Chapter & Verse, among others, as well as in a collaborative chapbook, Are You Free? (Glass Key Press, 2009). She lives in Pittsburgh, PA as a part-time legal secretary, writing instructor and freelance writer.