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

Burnett, Dean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1443450073 ISBN 13: 9781443450072

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2017

Synopsis

A neuroscientist’s delightful tour of our mysterious, mischievous, entirely fallible grey matter

It’s happened to all of us at some point. You walk into the kitchen, or flip open your laptop, or stride confidently up to a lectern, filled with purpose?and suddenly haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re doing. Welcome to your idiot brain.

Yes, it is an absolute marvel in some respects?the seat of our consciousness, the pinnacle (so far) of evolutionary progress and the engine of all human experience?but your brain is also messy, fallible and about 50,000 years out of date. We cling to superstitions, remember faces but not names, miss things sitting right in front of us and lie awake at night while our brains replay our greatest fears on an endless loop.

Yet all of this, believe it or not, is the sign of a well-meaning brain doing its best to keep you alive and healthy. In The Idiot Brain, neuroscientist 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. Expertly researched and entertainingly written, this book is for everyone who has wondered why their brain appears to be sabotaging their life, and what on earth it is really up to.

About this title

About the Author

DEAN BURNETT is a neuroscientist, an experienced tutor and lecturer, and a regular blogger/contributor to the Guardian and other publications. The author of The Idiot Brain and The Happy Brain, he has appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air, CBC’s The Current, Ireland’s NewsTalk and countless platforms and publications in the UK. The TV rights for The Idiot Brain were purchased by Whoopi Goldberg’s One Ho Productions. Dean Burnett is currently a research associate (honorary) at Cardiff University Psychology School. He lives in Cardiff with his wife, their two children and an alarmingly psychopathic kitten named Pickle.

From the Back Cover

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, and exposes the fact that people are often way off in their thinking about how the brain works.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1443450073
• ISBN 13: 9781443450072
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336