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

Burnett, Dean

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1443450065 ISBN 13: 9781443450065

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2016

Synopsis

The brain may be the seat of consciousness and the engine of all human experience, but it’s also messy, fallible and disorganized. It’s undeniably impressive, but it’s far from perfect, and these imperfections influence everything that humans say, do and experience. In The Idiot Brain, Dean Burnett celebrates the downright laughable things our minds do to us, as well as exposing the fact that people are often way off in their thinking about how the brain works. For example, did you know that

• your memory is egotistical?
• stress can actually increase your performance at a task?
• conspiracy theories and superstitions stem from your brain’s insistence that the world isn’t random?
• the brain’s limitations mean you really can miss something that’s right under your nose?
• the way the brain’s processing works means that time really does fly if you’re having fun?
• alcohol can sometimes improve your memory?

Dean Burnett’s unpredictable and entertaining first book explores the unexpected side of everyday life, highlighting where conventional thinking is wrong and how our brains trip us up at every turn. This is lucid, funny and smart: in short, the best kind of popular science.

About this title

About the Author

Dean Burnett, PhD, is a neuroscientist and a stand-up comedian. He is based at the Centre for Medical Education at Cardiff University. His widely praised Guardian science blog, Brain Flapping, has been viewed more than sixteen million times in the last three years. He is the author of The Idiot Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head Is Really Up To. Follow him on Twitter @garwboy.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1443450065
• ISBN 13: 9781443450065
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336