The Idiot Brain

Download or read book The Idiot Brain written by Dean Burnett and published by Guardian Faber Publishing. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 GOODREADS BEST SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY BOOK AWARD '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 *** Why do you lose arguments with people who know MUCH LESS than you? Why can you recognise that woman, from that thing... but can't remember her name? And why, after your last break-up, did you find yourself in the foetal position on the sofa for days, moving only to wipe the snot and tears haphazardly from your face? Here's why: the idiot brain. For something supposedly so brilliant and evolutionarily advanced, the human brain is pretty messy, fallible and disorganised. 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?** In The Idiot Brain, neuroscientist Dean Burnett tours our mysterious and mischievous grey (and white) matter. Along the way he explains the human brain's imperfections in all their glory and how these influence everything we say, do and experience. Expertly researched and entertainingly written, this book is for anyone who has wondered why their brain appears to be sabotaging their life, and what on earth it is really up to. **Editor's note: please read the book before testing this conclusion.

Download or read book The Happy Brain written by Dean Burnett and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Funny, wise and absolutely fascinating.' Adam Kay, author of This Is Going to Hurt *** Do you want to be happy? If so - read on. This book has all the answers* In The Happy Brain, neuroscientist Dean Burnett delves deep into the inner workings of our minds to explore some fundamental questions about happiness. What does it actually mean to be happy? Where does it come from? And what, really, is the point of it? Forget searching for the secret of happiness through lifestyle fads or cod philosophy - Burnett reveals the often surprising truth behind what make us tick. From whether happiness really begins at home (spoiler alert: yes - sort of) to what love, sex, friendship, wealth, laughter and success actually do to our brains, this book offers a uniquely entertaining insight into what it means to be human. *Not really. Sorry. But it does have some very interesting questions, and at least the occasional answer.

Download or read book The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding the Brain written by Arthur Bard and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2002-07-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You’re no idiot, of course. You know your own mind, but when it comes to understanding what’s really going on in your head—all those synapses! all those neurons!—you feel like you’re just about brain-dead. Don’t let it unnerve you! The Complete Idiot’s Guide® to Understanding the Brain proves that you don’t need to be a genius to be in the know—and gives you lots of fun stuff to think about, too. In this Complete Idiot’s Guide®, you get: • The history of human knowledge of the brain. • Insights into what causes brain disorders—and how best to treat them. • Thoughtful tips about the many different ways we learn new information. • Fascinating, little-known facts about the nervous system.

Download or read book The Accidental Mind written by David J. Linden and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You've probably seen it before: a human brain dramatically lit from the side, the camera circling it like a helicopter shot of Stonehenge, and a modulated baritone voice exalting the brain's elegant design in reverent tones. To which this book says: Pure nonsense. In a work at once deeply learned and wonderfully accessible, the neuroscientist David Linden counters the widespread assumption that the brain is a paragon of design--and in its place gives us a compelling explanation of how the brain's serendipitous evolution has resulted in nothing short of our humanity. A guide to the strange and often illogical world of neural function, The Accidental Mind shows how the brain is not an optimized, general-purpose problem-solving machine, but rather a weird agglomeration of ad-hoc solutions that have been piled on through millions of years of evolutionary history. Moreover, Linden tells us how the constraints of evolved brain design have ultimately led to almost every transcendent human foible: our long childhoods, our extensive memory capacity, our search for love and long-term relationships, our need to create compelling narrative, and, ultimately, the universal cultural impulse to create both religious and scientific explanations. With forays into evolutionary biology, this analysis of mental function answers some of our most common questions about how we've come to be who we are.

Download or read book Emotional Ignorance written by Dean Burnett and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2023-01-10 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why can't we think straight when hungry? What's the point of nightmares? And why can't we forget embarrassing memories? Emotions can be a pain. After losing his dad to Covid-19, Dean Burnett found himself wondering what life would be like without them. And so, he decided to put his feelings under the microscope - for science. In Emotional Ignorance, Dean takes us on an incredible journey of discovery, stretching from the origins of life to the end of the universe. Along the way he reveals: - why we would ever follow our gut; - whether things really were better in the old days; - why it's so hard to stop doomscrolling; - and how sad music can make us happier. Combining expert analysis, brilliant humour and powerful insights into the grieving process, Dean uncovers how, far from holding us back, our emotions make us who we are.

Download or read book The Complete Idiot's Guide to Baby Brain Games written by Lawrence E. Shapiro and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Play that stimulates young minds. Play is the language that babies know best. Here, readers will find over 300 games to play with infants from one week to eighteen months old. Divided into games that stimulate cognitive, language, emotional, and social development, this book will delight parents and babies as it helps foster mental and physical growth. • Written by an internationally recognized authority on brain games for babies • No other book on infant play has as many games or is as effective in linking games with their mental and physical health benefits • Focused on helping parents teach their babies how to learn, rather than pushing them beyond their developmental level

Download or read book The Idiot written by Elif Batuman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction • A New York Times Book Review Notable Book • Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction “Easily the funniest book I’ve read this year.” —GQ “Masterly funny debut novel . . . Erudite but never pretentious, The Idiot will make you crave more books by Batuman.” —Sloane Crosley, Vanity Fair A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself. The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings. At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan's friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin's summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer. With superlative emotional and intellectual sensitivity, mordant wit, and pitch-perfect style, Batuman dramatizes the uncertainty of life on the cusp of adulthood. Her prose is a rare and inimitable combination of tenderness and wisdom; its logic as natural and inscrutable as that of memory itself. The Idiot is a heroic yet self-effacing reckoning with the terror and joy of becoming a person in a world that is as intoxicating as it is disquieting. Batuman's fiction is unguarded against both life's affronts and its beauty--and has at its command the complete range of thinking and feeling which they entail. Named one the best books of the year by Refinery29 • Mashable One • Elle Magazine • The New York Times • Bookpage • Vogue • NPR • Buzzfeed •The Millions