Eagleman’s infectious optimism and enthusiasm do much to make up for the reservations I’ve just expressed. They also let him get away with a certain amount of bold exaggeration. Early on in the book for instance, he tells us that instead of experiencing the outside world directly ourselves, we only experience a fabricated model of reality, one seamlessly and instantly assembled by the brain for our sensory benefit. The real world, he says, is ‘colourless, odourless, tasteless and silent’ and the brain must work overtime to compensate for this barren environment by interpreting the various photons, air compression waves, molecular concentrations, pressure, texture and temperature signals it receives into a meaningful representation of external reality. So far, so good, but Eagleman gives insufficient credit to the brain for the superb job it does. All the incoming signals just mentioned are also an integral part of reality and, far from being somewhat of an illusion or a mere ‘show’, the impression of reality the brain puts together is a remarkably, accurate, dependable and consistent one – indeed, it cannot be otherwise because were this the case we would have utterly failed to successfully manage our environment and evolve as a species. It’s certainly no accident that six expert water colourists, for instance, painting exactly the same scene simultaneously from the same position, will record almost exactly the same visual impression – so much for the notion they individually make much of it up in their heads!

David Eagleman's wide-ranging roundup of the current state of knowledge about the brain is concise, accessible and often very surprising. It's a strange new world inside your head." In the fine tradition of Carl Sagan, Eagleman shows that science is captivating without hyped embellishment, and, if you pay attention, you’ll find yourself immersed in it.” – ForbesA good description of the teen’s brain. “Beyond social awkwardness and emotional hypersensitivity, the teen brain is set up to take risks.” Full of interesting facts spruced throughout the book. “As many as two million new connections, or synapses, are formed every second in an infant’s brain. By age two, a child has over one hundred trillion synapses, double the number an adult has.” From the renowned neuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author of Incognito comes the companion volume to the international PBS series about how your life shapes your brain, and how your brain shapes your life.

Our brain does a great job of filtering, editing and adapting the sensory input we obtain, so that we get a picture of reality that is censored, based on what we need to know for survival and what the brain already knows. What is Reality? - Once we have decided that the self is transitory, the next big question is the nature of reality; what lies out there. Because there is no way we can see this objectively. Reality to us is what we experience; and with our snowflake-unique brain, each experience is bound to be different. As we grow, our social challenges become more subtle and complex. Beyond words and actions, we have to interpret inflection, facial expressions, body language. While we are consciously concentrating on what we are discussing, our brain machinery is busy processing complex information. These operations are so instinctive, they’re essentially invisible. But in every moment of our lives, our brain circuitry is decoding the emotions of others based on extremely subtle facial cues.

The human brain undergoes substantial development throughout our lives, particularly from birth through adolescence. Indeed, it must undergo more development after birth than does the brain of nearly any other species. Our brains are shaped substantially by the context in which they develop. They need all kinds of stimulation and social support to develop optimally. We are very social creatures. For example, we see social relationships even in inanimate objects; babies can demonstrate a preference for characters who are nice as compared to ones who are mean; and we act like the people around us. Kitabı çox bəyəndim❤yazar beynimizlə bağlı bir çox maraqlı məqama toxunaraq, başqa problemlər üçün də həll yollarını göstərmiş, yaxud bu yolda gedən prosesləri izah etmişdir.

This mirroring sheds light on a strange fact: couples who are married for a long time begin to resemble each other, and the longer they’ve been married, the stronger the effect. Research suggests this is not simply because they adopt the same clothes or hairstyles but because they’ve been mirroring each other’s faces for so many years that their patterns of wrinkles start to look the same.This understanding is critical to understanding our history. All across the globe, groups of people repeatedly inflict violence on other groups, even those that pose no direct threat. The year 1915 saw the systematic killing of more than a million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks. In 1994, over a period of 100 days, the Hutus in Rwanda killed 800,000 Tutsis, mostly with machetes. Eagleman gets the writing here off to a great start, with a well-written intro. He's got an excellent writing style that is both interesting and engaging. The book is very readable.

The show and its companion book by Eagleman, “The Brain: The Story of You,” are testaments to the neuroscientist’s fervent belief in the relevance of his field to ordinary people.” – NY Magazine Your brain is a relentless shapeshifter, constantly rewriting its own circuitry – and because your experiences are unique, so are the vast, detailed patterns in your neural networks. Because they continue to change your whole life, your identity is a moving target; it never reaches an endpoint..." It simply means I've been reading a lot of brain books in recent years (and writing articles about the research), so I was eager to see how one of my favorite neuroscientists, David Eagleman, did on this companion book to his PBS series. The writing in the book proper consists of scientific info combined with historical case studies. This is also a format that I feel really works in books, and it worked in this presentation, as well.Our thoughts and our dreams, our memories and experiences all arise from this strange neural material. Who we are is found within its intricate firing patterns of electrochemical pulses. When that activity stops, so do you. When that activity changes character, due to injury or drugs, you change character in step. Unlike any other part of your body, if you damage a small piece of the brain, who you are is likely to change radically.