Idiot Brain: What Your Head Is Really Up To

Not only is brain science trendy at the moment, but at least one author has been described by blurb-writers as “the poster-boy of neuroscience”. So thank heavens for Dean Burnett.
   His warts-and-all approach is refreshing: “Don’t get me wrong, there really is nothing as baffling as the human brain; it is incredibly interesting. But there’s also this bizarre impression that the brain is ‘special’, exempt from criticism, privileged in some way, and our understanding of it is so limited that we’ve barely scratched the surface of what it’s capable of. With all due respect, this is nonsense. The brain is still an internal organ in the human body, and as such is a tangled mess of habits, traits, outdated processes and show more inefficient systems. Bottom line: the brain is fallible. It may be the seat of consciousness and the engine of all human experience, but it’s also incredibly messy and disorganised despite these profound roles. You only have to look at the thing to grasp how ridiculous it is: it resembles a mutant walnut, a Lovecraftian blancmange, a decrepit boxing glove, and so on. It’s undeniably impressive, but far from perfect, and these imperfections influence everything humans say, do and experience”.
   The eight chapters here cover, in turn: routine maintenance (i.e. how the brain regulates things like appetite and sleep); memory; fear (from social anxiety to thrill-seeking behaviour); intelligence; the senses; personality; social behaviour; and, finally, how warped the world can look when this organ goes badly wrong. Some of the details are fascinating—a section on apophenia for example (“seeing” connections where there actually aren’t any, “perceiving” meaning and intentionality in randomness) covers superstitions and conspiracy theories. Perhaps most chastening (and to me depressing) is the chapter about groupthink, about humans en masse and the distorting effects being part of a group (clique, team, mob, belief-system, country, anything at all in fact) has on our picture of ourselves, our picture of other people and of the world and the way it works.
   This is detailed, well written and, despite some very good jokes, a serious look in the mirror, eyes wide open. show less

My idiot brain watched the author plugging his book on TV and conspired with Amazon to make me download a copy straight away. Dean Burnett is a neuroscientist and a very funny writer, but I'll admit the 'science part' sometimes illustrated just how stupid the brain can be by making mine switch off. There is a very fine line between learning a lot - the way the brain interprets the senses, how drug addiction takes hold of mind and body - and being way out of my depth, however. I'm not sure all the surveys, studies and footnotes were really necessary, however scientific, but I survived.

A highly entertaining broad overview of the various weird and wonderful things the brain does. Dean Burnett covers the egotism of memory, the painstaking work the brain does to clean up the information from the senses, what happens when things go wrong in the brain, and other interesting bits of psychology such as the cocktail-party effect. This is a good introduction to the brain and still amusing for those who know a fair bit about it.

This book came highly recommended by my neuroscientist friend, and I can see why.

This is a funny, informative, clearly written and (as far as I can tell) comprehensive introduction to the brain in its weird and wonderful functions.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and will definitely re-read in the future. It would have been good to provide a diagram or two to help to provide context for various exotically named brain areas, but otherwise excellent.

A light and sometimes humorous look at the human brain, perfect for anyone (like myself) who has any interest in the subject whatsoever, but not enough interest to delve into, I don't know, a neuroscience textbook.

Also: I now can't quit thinking about the fact that in order to figure out anything about our brains, we have had to use our brains to do it. So weird.

Informative, but I found it a bit tedious and wasn't a fan of the mix of corny humour and in depth descriptions of which bits of the brain were involved. Without even a map of the brain; the latter seemed a bit pointless and broke up the flow of reading.

Useful reference book though!

Pop science with a sense of humor (or humour if you’re British like the author, neuroscientist Dr. Dean Burnett.) This brought together a wide range of topics about the brain's biological and psychological functions and explained how they work in everyday life. Such as: how we can always find room for dessert after a large meal, sometimes see a face in things like the burn marks on toast, and forget why we came into a room. The science was presented in an easy to understand manner but some of the British humor escaped me, which 'as the actress said to the bishop' was probably a blessing.