title: The Developing Mind: Toward a Neurobiology of Interpersonal Experience
author:  Daniel J. Siegel 
description: We know that what other people do and say to usAespecially when we're youngAhelps shape our later ideas and emotions. We also know more than ever about how neurons, neurotransmitters and the structures in our brains create and affect our minds and personalities. Siegel, who directs the Infant and Preschool Service at UCLA, connects our life among others to the life in our brains: his hefty, ambitious work tries to show how both create our selvesAhow "human connections shape the neural connections through which the mind emerges." A chapter on memory explains how "neural networks," "engrams" and "retrieval cues" help us form stories about our pasts; a chapter on our attachments to parents and others links current neuroscience to some of the most exciting and useful work in recent clinical psychology. Why can't we remember what we did at age three? Why are some children unusually shy? What is the biochemistry of humiliation, and how can it be "toxic to the developing child's brain"? New and plausible answers to these questions emerge from Siegel's synthesis of neurobiology, research psychology and cognitive science. Siegel explains all the technical terms he uses, and assumes no prior knowledge. And despite his frequently dry and quite detailed prose, his subjectAhow we become the people we areAdeserves to hold many readers spellbound. <br />Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  [Praise for](part0007.xhtml#aHCC)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [THE DEVELOPING MIND](part0007.xhtml#aHCC)
  
  
  
  
  
  “Welcome to an intellectual feast that will also enrich your emotional life.
  Siegel is masterful at synthesizing multidisciplinary knowledge to give us an
  understanding of the mind that is both scientifically rigorous and richly
  imbued with experiential meaning. The third edition of this classic text
  incorporates new findings from thousands of recent studies, while retaining
  the fresh excitement of the field of interpersonal neurobiology that Siegel
  inaugurated 20 years ago. Indispensable reading for anyone interested in how
  the mind emerges from the interface between brain and interpersonal
  experience.”
  
  
  —ALICIA
  
  
  F. LIEBERMAN
  
  
  , PhD, Irving B. Harris Endowed Chair in Infant Mental Health and Professor,
  Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco
  
  
  “I can only describe this as a unique and astounding book about child
  development that every 