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Color psychology is a field of study devoted to analyzing the effect of color on human behavior and feelings. Colors are an important part of our everyday life. Most of the time we take color for granted, as something usual, therefore we don’t attach much importance to it, but according to scientists colors affect us at a subconscious level. According to them, colors have an effect on behavior, the nature and character of people. Special color tests can help us understand a person’s personality and psyche. One of the most prominent and internationally well-known is the Lüscher Color Test.

Freedom-loving yellow is the symbol of vastness and openness, is regarded as the color of intellect – who loves yellow, has a great desire for freedom.

Harmonious Green is the primary color of nature – it symbolizes growth, healing and harmony. Those who love green, are reliable, have a lot of compassion and great social skills. In Islam and Judaism is the color of compassion.

Loyal Blue corresponds to the element of water and symbolizes peace – people who love blue are often admired: because of their solid character and deep loyalty. They often appear very distant and reserved.

Powerful red is symbol of love, sex, excitement. People who love red are Power types – always one step ahead of all others. Motto: You can, if you want. In love they are very sensual.

Connectome by Sebastian Seung
Allen Lane/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
£20/$27

What holds the essence of who we are? It’s all in the way our 100 billion neurons link up, says computational neuroscientist Sebastian Seung.

Gravity’s Engines by Caleb Scharf
Allen Lane/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
£20/$26

Natural selection operates at a cosmic level, as this book reveals, with black holes driving the universe’s evolution.

Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks
Picador/Knopf
£18.99/$26.95

The neurologist and prolific author aims to dispel the stigma that often surrounds hallucinations, and shares his own bewildering experiences - including a chat he had with a spider.

Immortality by Stephen Cave
Biteback/Crown
£20/$25

Death both fascinates and frightens us. It is also a force for progress, says Stephen Cave, who argues that our desire to live forever spurs ingenuity.

Like a Virgin by Aarathi Prasad
Oneworld
£12.99/$19.95

How feasible is virgin birth? Aarathi Prasad looks to the animal kingdom and our history of biological tinkering to suggest that conception without sex or pregnancy could soon be a real possibility.

Pieces of Light by Charles Fernyhough
Profile
£14.99

In this lyrical exploration of our powers of recall, psychologist and novelist Charles Fernyhough argues that our memories are worth cherishing - even though some of what we think we remember is, in fact, fiction.

Regenesis by George Church and Ed Regis
Basic Books
$28

Synthetic biology could extend life and even revive extinct species, but as this book reveals, we must face up to the ethical issues it brings, and soon.

The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty by Dan Ariely
HarperCollins
£16.99/$26.99

Why do people lie and cheat? Dan Ariely explores how we all have an “acceptable” level of dishonesty dictated by our own unique balance between rationality and its opposite.

The Hour Between Dog and Wolf by John Coates
Fourth Estate/Penguin
£20/$27.95

Was a hormone to blame for the financial collapse of 2008? In this book, neuroscientist and former trader John Coates makes a compelling case that testosterone may have been a major force on the road from risk to ruin.

The Particle at the End of the Universe by Sean Carroll
Oneworld/Dutton
£16.99/$27.95

Being in the headlines for weeks has not made the Higgs boson any easier to understand - so allow yourself to be filled in by this fascinating book, in which cosmologist Sean Carroll does not shy away from the difficult stuff.

Passion can be a deep motivator for creative people, but being too concerned with “finding our passion” can be self-limiting.

“The presence of talent is not sufficient. Many people have more than one talent, and wonder what to do with them.”

[Jane Piirto] considers this passion and inspiration “the thorn, because it bothers, it pricks, it causes obsession until it has its way, until the person with the talent begins to work on developing that talent.”

Elizabeth Gilbert […] believes “If you are serious about a life of writing, or indeed about any creative form of expression, you should take on this work like a holy calling.”

Susan Orlean in her book “The Orchid Thief” writes about an interesting aspect of passion: “I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size. It makes the world seem not huge and empty but full of possibility.”

Author Daniel Pink has said, “I find that question very daunting: What’s your passion? I find that almost paralyzing, in a way. I find it less paralyzing to say, What are you interested in doing next?”

I wanted to share with you some wisdom from Sharon Lebell’s contemporary interpretation of Epictetus’ The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness.

Blame

Those who are dedicated to a life of wisdom understand that the impulse to blame something or someone is foolishness, that there is nothing to be gained in blaming, whether it be others or oneself.

Embrace what you get

Events happen as they do. People behave as they are. Embrace what you actually get. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance. … Remember to discriminate between events themselves and your interpretations of them.

Freedom

We are ultimately controlled by that which bestows what we seek or removes what we don’t want. If it’s freedom you seek, then wish nothing and shun nothing that depends on others, or you will always be a helpless slave. … Most people tend to delude themselves into thinking that freedom comes from doing what feels good or what fosters comfort and ease. The truth is that people who subordinate reason to their feelings of the moment are actually slaves of their desires and aversions.

Thinking

If someone were to casually give your body away to any old passerby, you would naturally be furious. Why then do you feel no shame in giving your precious mind over to any person who might wish to influence you.

Attention

When we blather about trivial things, we ourselves become trivial, for our attention gets taken up with trivialities. You become what you give attention to.

Information

The wise do not confuse information or data, however prodigious or cleverly deployed, with comprehensive knowledge or transcendent wisdom.

Conventional thinking

Popular perceptions, values, and ways of doing things are rarely the wisest. Many pervasive beliefs would not pass appropriate tests of rationality. Conventional thinking — its means and ends — is essentially uncreative and uninteresting. Its job is to preserve the status quo for overly self-defended individuals and institutions.

Discussions

Take care not to casually discuss matters that are of great importance to you with people who are not important to you. … Most people only know how to respond to an idea by pouncing on its shortfalls rather than identifying its potential merits. Practice self-containment so that your enthusiasm won’t be frittered away.

Music elicits “a splash” of activity in many parts of the brain, said panelist Jamshed Bharucha, a neuroscientist and musician, after moderator Steve Paulson of the public radio program “To the Best of Our Knowledge” asked about the brain’s response to music.

“I think you are asking a question we can only scratch the surface of in terms of what goes on in the brain,” Bharucha said. [ Why Music Moves Us ]

Images of creative brains reveal complicated activity, but one theme has emerged: Some decline in activity in the prefrontal cortex, a region sometimes called the “CEO of the brain” and associated with cognitive analysis and abstract thought. This area of the brain isn’t turning off; instead, certain processes that are typically prominent recede into the background — for instance, conscious self-monitoring, which produces concerns about doing something correctly, Limb said.

[T]he brain associated with autobiographical self and self-reflection becomes more active in musicians when they are performing.

Musicians offer a conduit to study the larger realm of creativity, said Limb. Improvisation can take place at different levels, but expert musicians have the skill set to improvise at a profound level in a way others cannot, he said.

The appeal of music goes beyond pleasure; people are also drawn to sad and angry music, Bharucha said. “The notion of resonance and synchronization is much more important than making you happy or lifting your spirits.”

Iyer, too, pointed to the importance of music to for creating a common experience.

Music also has a therapeutic power. Panelist Concetta Tomaino, a music therapist, works with patients with neurological problems such as brain injuries, Parkinson’s disease and stroke that have caused them to lose functions, such as memory, and motor and verbal skills.

Yet the structure and emotional content of music can help them to access these functions again, she said. “It speaks to the structures that are shared by musical perception and musical ability with other functions.”