(Part 2) Best products from r/Neuropsychology

Good point! I mentioned how attention is necessary for initial entry of information into working memory, but you're right that I did not go much beyond that. Part of the reason for my non-answer is that it's really complicated and not well understood. However, the tl;dr, as I understand it, seems to be:

1. Probably, alerting and selective attention are necessary to get information into WM. In other words, you gotta notice something and decide to focus on it -- and not on other things -- for that piece of info to enter WM.
   
2. Attention does not really seem involved in maintaining information in WM.
   
3. Probably, sustained attention and attentional shifting are necessary for WM manipulation. That is, you have to keep paying some attention to the information over time while you're mentally manipulating it, and you also have to multitask to pay attention to whatever else you're doing -- even if it's just monitoring whether you're making errors or not -- while you're manipulating the information. I said multitasking because that's the lay term, but multitasking is not really doing two things at once; it's really switching really quickly back and forth between two different tasks, which is divided attention or attentional shifting.
   
4. Probably, WM is also to some degree necessary for future attention, in a complicated, subtle way -- specifically, one of the things we use WM for is to make mental models of the future that we hold on to while we're doing whatever we're doing in the present [technical detail: this is probably at the level of the cerebellum]. Our mental models likely guide and orient our attention, which then feeds into the alertness and selective attention features of attention. An example of this is - say you're reaching to put a glass of water on the table. You likely generate a mental model of how you expect this to go while you're performing the task, and this guides your ability to become alert to if anything is not going according to this plan, so that you can then pay attention to it.
   
   So there's a close, interconnected, possibly reciprocal, not-super-well-understood-yet relationship between the two constructs. For interested NP students, I'd recommend Posner & Petersen's (1990) classic, The Attention System of the Human Brain and Fougnie's (2008) The Relationship between Attention and Working Memory (PDF Warnings on both of those). If I've piqued your interest in the cerebellar contributions to WM, you can't go wrong with Koziol & Budding's work on the subcortical contributions to cognition; they even have a slim volume specifically on ADHD.

/r/musiccognition welcomes you, friend. Also I'd suggest this book on music emotions topic David Huron - Sweet Anticipation. Music and the Psychology of Expectation.

A general literature review is a good place to start. Keep your eye out for meta-analyses in particular. TBI in general (and especially mTBI) is such a hot button topic it should be easy to come up with information about mTBI and cognition in civilians. If you want to extend this to include Veteran's, I'd recommend including terms such as "blast injury" in your search terms. google scholar is a great general resource if your university databases are not panning out easily. If you can find articles but can't access them due to paywalls, there are ways to get around those that I won't mention here as they are illegal (but easy enough to find if you do a google search).

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Putting aside the research articles, Michael McCrea put out an excellent book addressing the current state of the field regarding mTBI, PCS, and treatment recommendations.

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If you are looking for Veteran specific recommendations, that may be a little tricky. Some VA's have more treatment options/better treatment programs than others, and some list these resources on their websites. Peruse some VA's located in larger cities (Boston, San Francisco, LA/San Diego, etc.) and look over their websites for possible options. Some of the Veteran's advocacy groups may also have resources.

> Here's the thing about science. It's really hard. And almost all of it is definitely not perfect. But it's arguably the best current method we have ...

Here's the thing about freethinking: it's even harder, because you can never narrow your scope or limit your mind.

"It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine"

Marcia Angell, “Drug companies & doctors: a story of corruption," NY Review of Books, 56 #1, 15 Jan

https://www.amazon.com/The-Truth-About-Drug-Companies/dp/0375760946/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400820070&sr=8-1&keywords=drug+companies+corruption

Best place to start is:
http://www.amazon.com/Human-Brain-Book-Rita-Carter/dp/0756654416/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1313985947&sr=8-2

All picture based and a lot is covered. Generally a cool book even if you know a bit about the brain.

Measuring brain activity would be done with an EEG (electroencephalogram). This is done with electrodes placed on the scalp and feed through an amplifier to a program on a computer that can read the "brain waves." If you want people to "quiet their mind," you are looking for a change from beta activity to alpha activity in their brain waves (unless you want them to go to sleep). You will want to read up on neurofeedback to see what people are doing in this area.

Google around for DIY EEG devices. I have no idea how well they work, but people are out there playing around and making EEGs at home. Here is a guy that hacked an EEG toy. This product went out of business, so I don't know if you could pick up a head band cheap and hack it.

If you are still at the university, you may want to ask around in the biology or physiology department (maybe even psychology). They may have an amplifier system used for class labs that you can borrow that can do EEG (I have one sitting in my office collecting dust). Examples would be Biopac or PowerLab. These would not be cheap to buy yourself, but like I said, there could be a spare one laying around in a supply closet in the teaching labs.

this is personally my favorite book, as an engineer interested in AI

http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/0805078533/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314019670&sr=8-1

Switch: How To Change Thngs When Change is Hard
I would love this book.

I would love to do this, I suggest Phantoms in the brain.

Eric Kandel's Principles of Neural Science would be a great starting point.

There are two great books that talk about exactly this.

1. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind which focuses on social issues.
   
   
2. Story of the Human Body which focuses on biology and medical issues.

Blumenfeld's Neuroanatomy Through Clinical Cases is the classic text, and deservedly so.

The Human Brain Coloring Book is a fun, but surprisingly educational and detailed, resource.

I really enjoyed Brain Bugs.

I enjoyed this text:
http://www.amazon.com/Cognition-Brain-Consciousness-Introduction-Neuroscience/dp/0123736773