Here are 100 books that Neurocomic fans have personally recommended if you like
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I never really thought much about how limited and exclusionary our society’s ideas about intelligence are until my daughter, who has Down syndrome, was required to take her first IQ test before she started kindergarten. That experience led me to research the history of the IQ test and how it has shaped our culture’s ideas about intelligence in pernicious ways. I am a college professor who is working to change the educational and employment opportunities available to people with intellectual disabilities. I hope you enjoy the books on this list. May they lead you to reconsider what you think it means to be smart.
I love Sack’s empathy toward his patients and his commitment to telling a different and highly unique narrative about the human experience. His classic collection of essays is not about intelligence, but each patient he writes about knows and understands the world differently than what is considered normal.
Sacks makes room for the challenges and brilliance of all ways of being in the world.
If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self - himself - he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.
In this extraordinary book, Dr. Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients struggling to adapt to often bizarre worlds of neurological disorder. Here are people who can no longer recognize everyday objects or those they love; who are stricken with violent tics or shout involuntary obscenities, and yet are gifted with…
Kevin Davis is the author of three non-fiction books about the criminal
justice system, The Wrong Man,Defending the Damned and The Brain Defense. Davis has also authored eight
nonfiction children’s books. He’s an award-winning journalist and magazine
writer based in Chicago.
This was a much-needed cautionary examination of the increasing hype
about neuroscience. Following a period in which neuroscience suddenly
became a pop culture phenomenon, Brainwashed aims to tamp things down. The book
takes issue with how mainstream media trumpeted studies that supposedly show
how the brain “lights up” when we kiss, listen to music or engage in other
activities. Satel and Lilienfied explain what brain scans and neuroscientific
reports really reveal and don’t reveal.
What can't neuroscience tell us about ourselves? Since fMRI,functional magnetic resonance imaging,was introduced in the early 1990s, brain scans have been used to help politicians understand and manipulate voters, determine guilt in court cases, and make sense of everything from musical aptitude to romantic love. But although brain scans and other neurotechnologies have provided ground-breaking insights into the workings of the human brain, the increasingly fashionable idea that they are the most important means of answering the enduring mysteries of psychology is misguided,and potentially dangerous.In Brainwashed , psychiatrist and AEI scholar Sally Satel and psychologist Scott O. Lilienfeld reveal how…
Kevin Davis is the author of three non-fiction books about the criminal
justice system, The Wrong Man,Defending the Damned and The Brain Defense. Davis has also authored eight
nonfiction children’s books. He’s an award-winning journalist and magazine
writer based in Chicago.
Adriane Raine has been studying the brains of convicted murderers for
decades and his fascinating and accessible book uses neuroscience to help
explain, though not excuse, their behavior due to anomalies and injuries to
their brains. Raine makes a strong case that various impairments to the brain
can inhibit the ability to put the brakes on impulsive, antisocial, and harmful
behavior.
Adrian Raine is one of the world's leading authorities on the minds of the violent, the criminal, the dangerous, the unstable. An Anatomy of Violence is the culmination of his life's work so far, offering the latest answers to some of the most difficult questions: what are the causes of violence? Can it be treated? And might it one day be stopped?
Are some criminals born, not made? What causes violence and how can we treat it? An Anatomy of Violence introduces readers to new ways of looking at these age-old questions. Drawing on the latest scientific research, Adrian Raine…
Kevin Davis is the author of three non-fiction books about the criminal
justice system, The Wrong Man,Defending the Damned and The Brain Defense. Davis has also authored eight
nonfiction children’s books. He’s an award-winning journalist and magazine
writer based in Chicago.
Is the brain a separate, independent entity from who we are? Do our
brains control us, or do we control our brains? Or is it something in between?
In an often lyrical, easy-to-understand narrative, neuroscientist David
Eagleman argues that it’s the unconscious that influences most of what we do,
even before we’re aware that we’ve decided to do something.
If the conscious mind--the part you consider to be you--is just the tip of the iceberg, what is the rest doing?
In this sparkling and provocative book, renowned neuroscientist David Eagleman navigates the depths of the subconscious brain to illuminate its surprising mysteries. Why can your foot move halfway to the brake pedal before you become consciously aware of danger ahead? Is there a true Mel Gibson? How is your brain like a conflicted democracy engaged in civil war? What do Odysseus and the subprime mortgage meltdown have in common? Why are people whose names begin with J more like…
I have always been fascinated by psychology and the science behind why people are the way they are. This is probably why as a journalist, I’ve always been drawn to writing personal profiles of fascinating people, digging deeper into how they overcame various obstacles and setbacks. I have read so many leadership books that focus on success, but really found a gap when it came to those in-depth stories, which is why I wrote The Setback Cycle, a career advice book that focuses specifically on that messy middle part of leadership. My goal was to share the stories of people who overcame setbacks while offering an actionable framework that guides us through our own.
I was fascinated while reading this book because it taught me so much about how the brain works, why we are the way we are, and how our brains differ. I enjoyed how the author debunked that if we’re more “right-brained,” we’re more creative, and if we’re more “left-brained,” we’re more creative.
The concept is a whole lot more nuanced than that. I also appreciated her take on nature vs. nurture and how that impacts the way our brains work. It took me a long time to read this because there was so much information to digest, but I felt like the education I received from this book was invaluable.
From University of Washington professor Chantel Prat comes The Neuroscience of You, a rollicking adventure into the human brain that reveals the surprising truth about neuroscience, shifting our focus from what’s average to an understanding of how every brain is different, exactly why our quirks are important, and what this means for each of us.
With style and wit, Chantel Prat takes us on a tour of the meaningful ways that our brains are dissimilar from one another. Using real-world examples, along with take-them-yourself tests and quizzes, she shows you how to identify the strengths and weakness of your own…
I fell in love with technology when I wrote my first computer program at age 14 when there was no public Internet, no personal computers, no iPhone, no cloud. I have made technical contributions to every era of computing from mainframes, to PCs, Internet, Cloud, and now AI. I was recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering. AI currently surpasses my wildest imagination on the art of what’s possible. I'm still passionately working in technology at Google focused on how to live healthier lives. I believe we can make AI the telescope of the future, to helping everyone live long and healthy lives.
The opening paragraph of this book is pure poetry in motion, putting me in a trance and craving to read the entire book.
You wouldn’t know this is a book about neuroscience when reading the opening lines in Chapter 1. Connectome is a thought-provoking exploration of the brain's neural connections and their potential to transform our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world.
Given that artificial intelligence is inspired by neuroscience it’s a great book to understand how the brain works.
Connectome, by Sebastian Seung is 'One of the most eagerly awaited scientific books of the year ... intellectually exhilarating, beautifully written, exquisitely precise yet still managing to be inspirational' Irish Times
What really makes us who we are? In this groundbreaking book, pioneering neuroscientist Sebastian Seung shows that our identity does not lie in our genes, but in the connections between our brain cells - our own particular wiring, or 'connectomes'.
Everything about us - emotions, thoughts, memories - is encoded in these tangled patterns of neural connections, and now Seung and a dedicated team are mapping them in order…
I have wondered about what goes on in the brains of animals and people since I was a youth. My research career began by studying how some genes affect behavior. Little surprise, it turns out, that many such “behavioral” genes influence the way the brain is built. So, I began to study brain development using embryos from a variety of experimental laboratory animals and developed a university course on this topic. When I retired, I decided to share what I learned. The other books on this list are great examples of readable books that would likely be exciting to anyone else interested in the story of how the human brain is built.
This book picks up brilliantly from where Zero to Birth leaves off. It’s the story of how the brain encodes the reality of the world outside the womb, how our experiences change the brain, and how we acquire knowledge, skills, and sociability.
I found this book to be extremely readable. It’s full of fascinating and illustrative examples of how the human brain continues to change to function effectively in the real world.
'This is the story of how your life shapes your brain, and how your brain shapes your life.'
Join renowned neuroscientist David Eagleman on a whistle-stop tour of the inner cosmos. It's a journey that will take you into the world of extreme sports, criminal justice, genocide, brain surgery, robotics and the search for immortality. On the way, amidst the infinitely dense tangle of brain cells and their trillions of connections, something emerges that you might not have expected to see: you.
I’ve been passionate about science as a way of learning how nature works and approaching truth since I was a pre-teen. After five decades of basic research, teaching, and management in physics, I can distinguish good science from pseudoscience even beyond my own areas of expertise. I am greatly disturbed by attempts to undermine science in public policy-making when its findings conflict with ideology, religious beliefs, or business bottom lines. My passion project, via my blog debunkingdenial.com, is to explain to teachers and the public the underlying science and the flaws in science denial across a wide range of topics at the interface with public policy.
I love this book because it reveals that we are all creatures of neuronal habit, which brainwashers exploit to their own benefit. The neurons that trigger most frequently tend to dominate our thoughts. I see how the brain science revealed in Taylor’s book helps to account for our current Age of Misinformation.
With advertiser-click business models, social media allows would-be brainwashers to repeat and spread their messages beyond their former wildest imaginations. They need only plant a misinformation seed to see it spread virally by users whose neurons have been preconditioned to accept and like the message. I feel that social media regulations are needed to mitigate the creation of echo chambers in which brainwashed messages sow political polarization that threatens to make nations ungovernable.
Throughout history, humans have attempted to influence and control the thoughts of others. Since the word 'brainwashing' was coined in the aftermath of the Korean War, it has become part of the popular culture and been exploited to create sensational headlines. It has also been the subject of learned discussion from many disciplines: including history, sociology, psychology, and psychotherapy. But until now, a crucial part of the debate has been missing: that of any serious reference to the science of the human brain. Descriptions of how opinions can be changed, whether by persuasion, deceit, or force, have been almost entirely…
I have worked on the brain in Oxford since 1970, and my job also required me to teach students, not just in lectures but also in tutorials. This taught me how to communicate clearly.
In my own scientific work, I was amongst the first to use functional brain imaging to visualize the
human brain at work. I have written seven books and edited an eighth. My particular specialisation is decision making and the brain areas (such as the prefrontal cortex) that support it. I have just published a monograph of nearly 500 pages on the prefrontal cortex, aimed at other scientists in the field. I am a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Ramachandran is famous for studying some of the disorders that can be produced for the brain. One such is phantom limb pain. Some people who have had an arm amputated continue to feel that arm, and even to have pain in it. Ramachandran devised an ingenious experiment to try to abolish that feeling. This and other clever ideas are described in this book. Readers will quickly appreciate that science is like the humanities in requiring creativity.
Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran is internationally renowned for uncovering answers to the deep and quirky questions of human nature that few scientists have dared to address. His bold insights about the brain are matched only by the stunning simplicity of his experiments -- using such low-tech tools as cotton swabs, glasses of water and dime-store mirrors. In Phantoms in the Brain, Dr. Ramachandran recounts how his work with patients who have bizarre neurological disorders has shed new light on the deep architecture of the brain, and what these findings tell us about who we are, how we construct our body image,…
I have wondered about what goes on in the brains of animals and people since I was a youth. My research career began by studying how some genes affect behavior. Little surprise, it turns out, that many such “behavioral” genes influence the way the brain is built. So, I began to study brain development using embryos from a variety of experimental laboratory animals and developed a university course on this topic. When I retired, I decided to share what I learned. The other books on this list are great examples of readable books that would likely be exciting to anyone else interested in the story of how the human brain is built.
Not only does this book provide an up-to-date account of where science is at in terms of our basic understanding of how the brain works, but it also succeeds in putting this knowledge into a compelling history of basic discoveries. I really enjoyed this aspect of Cobb's book and tried to incorporate it into my book.
So, I found it to be an excellent introduction to neuroscience and a great book about the process of how science progresses in jumps. It engenders real excitement in this still very lively field of study and celebrates the key advances in our conceptual understanding of the brain.
This is the story of our quest to understand the most mysterious object in the universe: the human brain.
Today we tend to picture it as a computer. Earlier scientists thought about it in their own technological terms: as a telephone switchboard, or a clock, or all manner of fantastic mechanical or hydraulic devices. Could the right metaphor unlock the its deepest secrets once and for all?
Galloping through centuries of wild speculation and ingenious, sometimes macabre anatomical investigations, scientist and historian Matthew Cobb reveals how…
