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1. The brain as leadership hardware
A heavy energy user with limits that leadership rarely acknowledges. · individual
2. A day of switching and deciding
A typical executive schedule read as a series of demands on neural tissue. · individual
3. What survives of ego depletion
The replication record for the glucose and resource accounts, and the narrower claim that remains. · individual
4. Speed against accuracy, and the stress shift
A simplified hierarchy of fast and slow processing, and how stress tilts it. · individual
5. Networks over regions
Why capacity depends on coordination between regions, with working memory and emotion regulation as examples. · individual
6. No central controller
How behaviour emerges from competing processes, and what that means for habit and humility. · individual
7. The prefrontal cortex and the amygdala
What each structure does for leadership, what it costs, and how stress changes the balance between them. · individual
8. The hippocampus and the insula
Memory and context on one side, and bodily signals and empathy on the other. · individual
9. Conflict, error and reward
The anterior cingulate cortex as monitor, and the striatum as the engine of reward learning and habit. · individual
10. The default mode network, the clock and the autonomic system
Self-referential thought, the master circadian clock and the body's rhythm regulator. · individual
11. Dopamine and serotonin
Prediction error, wanting and learning on one side, and mood, status and impulse control on the other. · individual
12. Noradrenaline and cortisol
Arousal and attention on one timescale, and the slower stress cascade and its costs on another. · individual
13. Oxytocin, trust and the group
A bonding hormone whose effects depend on context, and whose reputation as the trust chemical is oversold. · team
14. Feedback loops and emergence
How the brain behaves as a system: loops at several timescales, push-pull between regions, and properties that no part explains alone. · individual
15. Leverage, tipping points and history
Five practical consequences of treating the brain as a complex adaptive system. · individual
16. Integration and application
The five insights, a ledger of how the body of the chapter qualifies them, and the closing principles. · individual