"[The Overflowing Brain] is a highly sane look at the increasingly insane demands of the information age."—Publishers Weekly
"Klingberg does his best to keep the material accessible, with lots of anecdotes..."—Washington Post
Named Most Important Book of 2008 by SharpBrains.com!
"...[The Overflowing Brain] has a scholarly tone, but Klingberg provides a good balance between the science and the practical...An interesting book..."—Sacramento Book Review
"Klingberg writes in an engaging, conversational style....He...does a straightforward job of explaining the background science without being overly simplistic....The description of his initial pilot studies, his larger validation experiments, and his extension to neuroimaging studies makes for an interesting narrative..."—New England Journal of Medicine
"...an elegant scientific book of the most accessible type...."—Neuron
"There are several reasons I think so highly of this book... Klingberg brilliantly and (yes) patiently explains for non-scholars such as I (a) how and why our brains overflow with an increasingly greater number of 'messages' from an increasingly greater number of information sources (e.g. other persons, electronic and print media, The Web, telephones, billboard), (b) how and why at least some of it is retained by working and long-term memory capabilities, and (c) what we must do to achieve and then maintain a balance of working load with working memory capacity..."—Dallas Business Commentary Examiner
"Klingberg presents a lively and well-informed survey of a number of topics dealing broadly with attention, working memory, intelligence, and neuroscience....Klingberg writes beautifully, and he is strikingly knowledgeable about a variety of topics in cognition and neuroscience. By the end of the book, Klingberg has made an important and persuasive case for the importance of the systematic training of working memory."—As reviewed in PsycCRITIQUES
"How to measure, train and enhance working memory is the subject of The Overflowing Brain, an absorbing first book by neuroscientist and physician, Torkel Klingberg, who is well known for his studies of young people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder...Klingberg's brief book packs a considerable punch."—The Lancet
As the technological environment speeds up to a maddening degree, Klingberg, a professor of developmental cognitive neuroscience at Sweden's Karolinska Institute, warns that the huge burden of information overload and multitasking can exceed the limits of our slowly evolving "stone-age" brain. Using data showing the subtle increase in IQ scores during the last century and its link to educational improvements, Klingberg notes a gap between the rapidity of electronic high-tech devices and the brain's relatively slower capacity to process information, leading to memory malfunctions. The text can be somewhat academic, but the amount of scientific fact translated to something the reader can use is still sizable, including keen writing on the impact on working memory of problem solving, meditation, computer games, caffeine and the existence of attention deficit disorder. Klingberg also reviews the evidence that mental "exercise" can increase the capacity of working memory. A highly sane look at the increasingly insane demands of the information age, this book discusses with precision a subject worthy of attention. B&w illus. (Nov.)
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