Idiot Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head Is Really Up To

Burnett, Dean

3.98

9,753 ratings by Goodreads

9781536617986: Idiot Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head Is Really Up To

ISBN 10: 1536617989 ISBN 13: 9781536617986

Publisher: Audible Studios on Brilliance audio, 2016

A delightful tour of our mysterious, mischievous gray matter from neuroscientist and massively popular Guardian blogger Dean Burnett.

The brain may be the seat of consciousness and the engine of all human experience, but it's also messy, fallible, and disorganized. For example, did you know that your memory is egotistical? That conspiracy theories and superstitions are the inevitable effects of a healthy brain? Or that alcohol can actually improve your memory? (Editor's note: Please listen to the book before testing that last conclusion.)

In Idiot Brain, Dr. Dean Burnett celebrates blind spots, blackouts, insomnia, and all the other downright laughable things our minds do to us while also exposing the many mistakes we've made in our quest to understand how our brains actually work. This is the best kind of popular science - lucid, funny, and whip smart - from a debut author who will be tickling funny bones and firing neurons for a long time to come.

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Review:

Entertaining . . . offers illuminating discussions of the way the memory works, of fear and panic attacks, of our susceptibility to being conned or depressed, and of the marvels of the human senses.

A neuroscientist's irreverent guide to the brain. . . . Burnett manages to both entertain and inform in engaging ways that would benefit the performance of the most humorless pedant.

I really admire Dean Burnett s work. He s very compelling and wise and rational. You know you can trust him and you know it s going to be a great read.--Jon Ronson, best-selling author of So You've Been Publicly Shamed"

An entertaining romp through the science of our mental processes . . . fascinating.--Gaia Vince, author of Adventures in the Anthropocene

I really admire Dean Burnett's work. He's very compelling and wise and rational. You know you can trust him and you know it's going to be a great read.--Jon Ronson, best-selling author of So You've Been Publicly Shamed

About the Author:

Dean Burnett is a neuroscientist who lectures and tutors at the Centre for Medical Education at Cardiff University. He writes the Guardian's popular science blog, Brain Flapping, and dabbles in stand-up comedy. He lives in Cardiff, Wales.

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