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THE NEUROSCIENCE OF YOU

HOW EVERY BRAIN IS DIFFERENT AND HOW TO UNDERSTAND YOURS

An informal, highly accessible tour of neuroscience for general readers.

A professor of neuroscience, psychology, and linguistics examines how our brains inspire individual behaviors, thoughts, and actions.

During the first year of the pandemic, Prat, along with millions of others, traded her daily routine for the “pervasive anxiety” of quarantine. The stressful situation inspired the author to delve deeper into individual brain operation and management. The result is a fascinating reverse-engineered exploration of brain design and how methods of thought and behavior are unique to each individual, creating “the story of you.” Prat begins with an informative, congenial introduction to the numerous internal “design features” driving the two “lopsided” sides of our brains and how this asymmetry (along with outside chemicals like caffeine or prescription drugs) shapes its complex neurochemistry. She addresses how the largely “misunderstood” connection between nature and nurture actually creates habit-driven personalities and identities. Moving into how outward factors influence brainpower, Prat details how a brain adapts to changing or challenging environments and how those factors affect one’s ability to focus and create an “understanding of reality through a lens shaped by your life experiences.” The author also includes a series of hands-on evaluative “assessments” for readers who want to tailor her explanations to their own brain design. One evaluation can help a reader determine if they are “a chooser or an avoider.” Furthermore, Prat sheds new light on contemporary research on topics like the “biological pretzel that is epigenetics,” a discipline that can show, for example, how “environmental experiences can create chemical changes in our DNA.” Numerous candidly written footnotes add comedic flair to the narrative, which will be appreciated by readers eager but intimidated to learn how and why their brains generate thoughts, feelings, and decision-making patterns. While Prat doesn’t aim to provide specific diagnoses for mental illnesses, she shines a positive light on how the brain operates from the inside out and from the outside in.

An informal, highly accessible tour of neuroscience for general readers.

Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-5247-4660-5

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: May 27, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022

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THINKING, FAST AND SLOW

Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...

A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.

The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.

Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1

Page Count: 512

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011

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ELON MUSK

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

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A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.

To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023

ISBN: 9781982181284

Page Count: 688

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023

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