Burnett should give a TED talk. His book will appeal immensely to general readers and deserves a place on college reading...
A neuroscientist’s irreverent guide to the brain.
In this witty and informative debut, popular Guardian science blogger and sometime stand-up comedian Burnett (Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences/Cardiff Univ.) describes “the weird and peculiar processes” of the brain and the bizarre behaviors that often result. “You have only 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,” he writes. “It’s undeniably impressive, but it’s far from perfect, and these imperfections influence everything humans say, do and experience.” Sustaining that tone throughout, the author traces the habits, traits, and inefficiencies of the organ that defines us. In vivid, highly accessible language, he explains how the brain controls appetite, sleep, memory, hearing, touch, attention, and other processes and how it works when we fall in love, become delusional, or convince ourselves that we’re brilliant when we are not. Why do we remember faces before names? Why do our egos often override accuracy? Why do emotional memories of negative events fade faster than positive ones? How is it that you can enter a room and have no idea why you decided to go there? Did you know that the thrill of fear and the gratification gained from sweets emanate from the same region (the mesolimbic pathway) of the brain? Whether describing the absurd inefficiencies of having both a primitive reptile brain (for survival) and a neocortex (governing advanced abilities) or explaining why less intelligent people are often more confident or why the Myers-Briggs personality test may not be that useful, Burnett manages to both entertain and inform in engaging ways that would benefit the performance of the most humorless pedant. In each instance, he piques readers’ interest with some whacky or puzzling behavior and thoughtfully explains the underlying neuroscience.
Burnett should give a TED talk. His book will appeal immensely to general readers and deserves a place on college reading lists.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-393-25378-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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