Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life (2004)

Engaging, fun inquiry into the brain and how it works. I learned some things about how I think and why. Johnson personalizes what he talks about, and I found that it added to my enjoyment to hear how he applied what he learned to his own life. Not stringently scientific, but worth a read. ( )

Johnson is a very engaging writer, with a keen turn of phrase and an ability to connect complex theory with everyday experience (the story of the windblown window is particularly affecting). Here he covers many of the current investigations into neuroscience with considerable learning and appealing humour. But at the end - and I lost momentum about 3/4 of the way through - I was left feeling this is a collection of really interesting magazine articles, rather than an integrated whole. Good journalism, but not quite best in class. ( )

I found this book to be an uphill slog after the first chapter. Although there were moments of interesting tidbits when he would introduce a new topic (I particulary was interested in his description of "mind-reading", knowing what someone is feeling by watching their facial expressions and how autistic people are deficient in this ability), but for the most part the author seemed overly preoccupied with explaining to the reader what the results were of the tests he took. As in something to the effect of, "the results showed that my brain processes the blah blah blah in the xy quadrant..." At one point after an fMRI scan where the machine took pictures of him reading someone else's work and then of him reading his own writing, the latter of which showed up as lit up areas in the brain far more than the former, the researcher (laughingly) said when asked how she would describe the results "And this one- I'd say this one was someone reading his favorite author". In response, the author chuckled "It was a vanity project from the beginning." I feel that statement nailed the whole book, not just that experiment. I did push on through the book as I am interested in learning as much as I can about neuroscience, and the technology he explored is good to know about, but it was really tedious reading him going on so much about himself. In addition, it seemed that after introducing a subject in a fairly direct, understandable manner, that he would then expand on it unnecessarily, using a multitude of everyday examples that really beat the horse dead. I found myself saying "I get it already, get on with it" many times. The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge was a far more interesting book, which I would highly recommend over this book. ( )

In a nutshell, this is Johnson’s story about his foray into locating the secrets of the/his human brain (at least per available technology circa 2003) with the ultimate goals of both offering his audience a basic understanding of the chemical nature of mental activity and reframing Freudian thought in the context of a more sophisticated understanding of these processes (positioning the Freudian model as essentially empirical and necessarily metaphorical as a distant precursor to certain technologies at our disposal today).

As horrible as this description might sound, Johnson is typically an engaging writer, so I went for it. I was not disappointed. His narrative follows a series of research “discoveries” such as the “Attention Trainer” neurofeedback helmut, utilized to analyze and possibly treat the omnipresent ADD syndrome (I can’t help but think of Ferris Bueller’s Principal cycling through the suburbs) and the two-foot diameter fMRI tube that enables brain slice imaging to locate neural hot spots as they relate to different mental tasks (sounds most uncomfortable). Discussions of the role of the amygdala and brain chemicals such as oxytocin are articulated through a personalized lens (instilling his fear instinct as 9/11 unfolded blocks away and enabling his wife’s “tending instinct” towards their baby, respectively). It’s all quite interesting and well worth the 30 cent late fee.

He also mentions the Simon Baron-Cohen Autism Quotient Test. If you personally sense a certain social retardation – regardless of phone number memorization skills – I would warn you to refrain from Googling this one. ( )

General Background and Overview
Mind Wide Open is subtitled "Your brain and the neuroscience of everyday life" and that's as good a description of the book as any. Basically, it's a trip through what happens to your brain - including which areas of it process, and what neurochemicals are released - when you're in various emotional and functional states.

Good Stuff
With my general fascination for communication, psychology, and just understanding what makes people tick it's probably no surprise to anyone that I enjoyed this book. Some of it reinforced what I'd learned back when I was doing my psych degree and some of it superceded it (no surprise there either - I kind of have to cringe when I realise my degree was going on 15 years ago now, and there's a frakload of research taken place since then).

Aside from the general subject matter, though, I did enjoy the author's somewhat dry, amused writing voice, and one comment especially stands out in my mind. He was talking about the different parts of your brain that light up under an fMRI when you're doing different kinds of things, and reflecting on the fact that there was a trend a few years back to try and engage 'more of the brain', since only around 10% was in use at any one time. His comment was that *of course* only 10% was in use... if any more was, it would be far too distracting and stop us focussing on what we needed to be most aware of. In fact, he claims, saying our brains would function better if only we used more of them at any one time was like saying that Shakespeare would have been such a better writer if only he'd been able to get all 26 letters of the alphabet into every word he wrote, instead of the paltry few he did use in each. And I have to admit... I'd never thought of it like that!

I also liked the way the author used examples of different states, phobias, associations and memories in his own life to illustrate his general information. And finally, I like that he makes all the information he goes through practical: it's not just about 'hey, here's the area of your brain that lights up when you do x' - there's also a fair amount of 'this is how you can use this principle in practice to help you deal with a phobia, or with depression, etc'

Bad Stuff
Hmmmmm... there's nothing specifically that stands out for me as bad stuff in this book. Perhaps the writing voice is going to annoy some folks, and perhaps the author is a little too convinced that neuroscience is the be-all and end-all that holds all the answers. Additionally, there's a lot that's presented as "what is", rather than "what could be", but I'm not sure if that's a function of writing style, or actually the way the author thinks.

Ratings and Recommendations
I really enjoyed this book, and I'd highly recommend it to folks who are interested in psychology generally. It might also be at least a little helpful for flistmembers who are dealing with depression, control issues and/or phobias in their lives - it's not likely to suddenly give them all the answers they need, but it might well offer other avenues to explore either on their own or along with their current counsellors.

I'm going to give the book an 7.5/10 - a solid read, at least for me, and I hope it will be useful for other people too. ( )