The Balanced Brain: The Science of Mental Health

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars | 64 ratings

Price: 20.44

Last update: 12-21-2024


About this item

This audiobook narrated by Camilla Nord reveals how we can use what we’ve learned about the brain to improve our mental health

There are many routes to mental well-being. In this groundbreaking book, neuroscientist Camilla Nord offers a fascinating tour of the scientific developments that are revolutionizing the way we think about mental health, showing why and how events—and treatments—can affect people in such different ways.

In The Balanced Brain, Nord explains how our brain constructs our sense of mental health—actively striving to maintain balance in response to our changing circumstances. While a mentally healthy brain deals well with life’s turbulence, poor mental health results when the brain struggles with disruption. But just what is the brain trying to balance? Nord describes the foundations of mental health in the brain—from the neurobiology of pleasure, pain and desire to the role of mood-mediating chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, and opioids. She then pivots to interventions, revealing how antidepressants, placebos, and even recreational drugs work; how psychotherapy changes brain chemistry; and how the brain and body interact to make us feel physically (as well as mentally) healthy. Along the way, Nord explains how the seemingly small things we use to lift our moods—a piece of chocolate, a walk, a chat with a friend—work on the same pathways in our brains as the latest treatments for mental health disorders.

Understanding the cause of poor mental health is one of the crucial questions of our time. But the answer is unique to each of us. Finding what helps your brain rebalance and thrive means finding the answer to this question. With so many factors at play, there are more possibilities for recovery and resilience than we might think.


Top reviews from the United States

  • roberthoward8
    5.0 out of 5 stars Superb Overview of the Molecuar Basis of Mental Health
    Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2024
    Ms Nord brings a valuable research and common sense perspective together in describing why we sometimes feel the way we do, and how pharmacological, psychological and even food interventions play a role.
  • algo41
    4.0 out of 5 stars Challenging, but very informative
    Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2024
    Nord is a well qualified researcher who is both modest and likeable: “Over the years I have done experiments with hundreds of people using various different drugs (although never psychedelics), as well as brain stimulation and psychological therapy treatments.” “What about the microbiome?’ they ask. Frankly, I would like to know the answer to this question myself.” “But try as I might I am pretty lousy at meditation (she notes that she suffers from chronic pain).”

    The focus of the book is depression, but the causes, physiology and treatment of depression overlaps with chronic pain and other disorders so the book is broader in scope. While Nord is almost always clear at the paragraph level, this is a challenging book. Part of the problem is that so much is still unknown, and studies are often inconclusive and even inconsistent. Perhaps, more summary material and better organization might help. The general reader might be less interested in the details and limitations of particular studies.

    One major misconception “presumes there is a separate category of illness, one that is confined to the mind and does not involve biological changes. This category does not exist.” “In the brain, people with a functional neurological disorder show different brain activation compared to someone just faking the same symptom.” “Functional disorders probably have a lot in common with chronic pain, which can also be driven by ‘functional’ changes in the brain (as contrasted to pain signals radiating from a part of the body to the brain). There is an overlap in treatments for chronic pain and for depression; e.g. reduction of inflammation can sometimes be successfully applied to either one.

    When the neurotransmitter serotonin is used as an anti-depressant, it does not work immediately, even if there is a serotonin deficiency, which is neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause of depression. Rather, the serotonin treatment results “in subtle changes in how positively and negatively you process the world around you, eventually starting to improve your mood.” “A negative bias is also seen in people with chronic pain, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, among others.” Interestingly, treatments for depression change “related but distinct aspects of emotion processing, such as perception (in the case of antidepressant medication) and awareness (in the case of therapy)." Studies are ongoing to go from analysis of brain activity to predicting which mode of therapy will work best; I would imagine that as tools for the brain analysis improve, this will become more important in treatment.

    Nord notes that Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is the best treatment for major depression. While there can be short term effects of ECT on memory, within 3 or 4 days these disappear. Transcranial stimulation (non-invasive) can work on conditions where the brain area with the functional disorder is closer to the scalp. Surgical deep brain stimulation involves implanting electrodes in particular brain structures and passing a current directly to those brain cells, with the current controlled by a remote device. A major study of efficacy for depression was terminated, but results for those patients who opted to continue use of the remotes was surprisingly good.

    There is great evidence for the placebo effect, even when the patient is aware that the treatment was or even is a placebo! To my surprise, “deep brain stimulation has been used successfully in over a million patients worldwide and has been a lifeline for people with severe Parkinson’s disease.”
  • Michael
    5.0 out of 5 stars great, informative read
    Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2024
    I enjoyed reading the scientifically backed concepts in this book related to mental health, physical health, and alternative interventions. Very informative and eye-opening. Assisting in creative ways health can be improved.
  • Tom254
    3.0 out of 5 stars Thought there would be more insight
    Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2024
    Book was more like the author having a casual conversation with someone about mental health and the brain. I expected a Professor from Cambridge running a leading lab to have brain images, comparison charts, etc to illustrate and backup some specific findings.
  • Zaphod Beeblebrox
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great insight into the latest neuroscience of mental health
    Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2024
    Heard Camilla Nord on Science Friday and had to read her book. Not disappointed!
  • Kelevilin Kimathi
    4.0 out of 5 stars The balanced brain
    Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2024
    Issue of what constitutes good mental health and how to achieve it is very relevant in the times we live in..The author delves through various interventions that have been explored electrical shocks, diet exercise but at the end there seems to no one silver bullet. Different approaches work for different people.
  • goodorlucky
    2.0 out of 5 stars A master of equivocation
    Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2024
    If you are hoping to learn anything from reading this book, it will be limited. Everyone is different. Drugs and treatments affect individuals differently, nothing works perfectly, and science is merely attempt to prove theories which are little more than opinions. I knew that before I read the book, I was hoping to find an overview of the state of science of the brain, but if the author is correct, little is known.

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