Here are 100 books that The Brain fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am a scientist in the field of medicine, and I like to read books that provide a surprising insight into our thinking and decision-making with a scientific basis. It is special how we think we are acting rationally while much of our action is influenced by the environment and news that comes our way. Some of the books in my list provide special insights that are refreshing and hold a mirror up to us.
Based on scientific arguments, this book shows how strongly incorrect drives are stuck in our brains, causing us to think that we are making a logical decision, while this is not the case.
The best example I tell everybody: Look at your attic that you want to clean out. You empty your cupboards, and almost always, a large part goes back into the cupboard because it is a waste. But if you are offered the same stuff for free, you usually don't want it.
The message of this example: Your brain finds it difficult to get rid of something you have, and it is a non-rational reaction that occurs in our fixed brain.
The phenomenal international bestseller - 2 million copies sold - that will change the way you make decisions
'A lifetime's worth of wisdom' Steven D. Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics 'There have been many good books on human rationality and irrationality, but only one masterpiece. That masterpiece is Thinking, Fast and Slow' Financial Times
Why is there more chance we'll believe something if it's in a bold type face? Why are judges more likely to deny parole before lunch? Why do we assume a good-looking person will be more competent? The answer lies in the two ways we make choices: fast,…
My fascination with the brain began when I was an undergraduate, and since has grown into an insatiable curiosity about all things neuroscience. Today my main job is teaching courses in the health sciences at The Pennsylvania State University, but I spend much of my free time trying to find ways to make neuroscience understandable to those who share my enthusiasm for learning about it. I mostly do this through my books and a series of short neuroscience videos on my YouTube channel: Neuroscientifically Challenged.
Sleep takes up 1/3 of our lives, and it’s only relatively recently we’ve learned that our brains are incredibly active during this seemingly quiescent period.
In The Nocturnal Brain, Guy Leschziner—a renowned neurologist—describes some of the most intriguing cases of sleep disorders he has encountered in the clinic. The result is a fascinating examination of one of the most important parts of our neurological lives.
A renowned neurologist shares the true stories of people unable to get a good night’s rest in The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep, a fascinating exploration of the symptoms and syndromes behind sleep disorders.
For Dr. Guy Leschziner’s patients, there is no rest for the weary in mind and body. Insomnia, narcolepsy, night terrors, apnea, and sleepwalking are just a sampling of conditions afflicting sufferers who cannot sleep—and their experiences in trying are the stuff of nightmares. Demoniac hallucinations frighten people into paralysis. Restless legs rock both the sleepless and their sleeping partners with unpredictable…
What I love about philosophy (I’ve been a philosophy professor at the University of California, Riverside, since 1997) is not its ability to deliver the one correct answer to the nature of the world and how to live but rather its power to open our mind to new possibilities that we hadn’t previously considered; its power to blow apart our presuppositions, our culturally given “common sense” understandings, and our habitual patterns of thinking, casting us into doubt and wonder. The science writing, fiction, and personal essays I love best have that same power.
Every time I revisit Sacks, especially this book, I am blown away anew at people’s ability to create meaning and value in the face of severe cognitive disability.
A man’s capacity to categorize objects is so impaired that when he moves to leave the room, he mistakenly reaches for his wife’s head instead of his hat. How can he even get through the day? With the help of familiar routines, his loving spouse, and music.
A “lost mariner” can’t retain any new information longer than a few minutes and still thinks he’s living decades ago, but he finds meaning in the timeless ceremonies of his religion. A man repeatedly throws his own leg out of bed and is surprised to find himself on the floor again….
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…
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,…
As a psychologist, I've worked with countless emigrants and international expatriates. People relocate to various parts of the world for different reasons. However, each person’s life struggles, cultural background, experiences, and knowledge help make the world more colorful and richer in so many ways. I encourage people to open themselves to see the world and be receptive and tolerant to those who are different from them. It teaches us to be humbler and more respectful, and to enrich our life in general. My choices are about preparing your mind and your heart for life in another culture. Sometimes a well-crafted novel can offer insights that other media can’t express.
I recommend this book to all people as a basic self-care exercise.
As a psychologist, I always support and empower clients to understand their own mind, body, and spirit as one of the important pathways toward overcoming psychological issues. The author, a leading neurologist, focuses on brain plasticity: the almost miraculous ability of our brains to adapt and change even after significant injury, by citing case studies with explanations that even lay readers can understand.
Our mind and body are interconnected, so learning more about the role of our brain is a good place to start. This book will open your horizons to how powerful and flexible your brain is and how much we can do as a gatekeeper to maintain a healthy being.
The book is easy to read as well as packed with knowledge that can change your way of living.
An astonishing new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Norman Doidge, M.D., traveled the country to meet both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they've transformed-people whose mental limitations or brain damage were seen as unalterable. We see a woman born with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, blind people who learn to see, learning disorders cured, IQs raised, aging brains rejuvenated, stroke patients learning to speak, children with cerebral palsy learning to move with more grace, depression and anxiety…
I am a scientist who has worked at the coal face of the debate around the origin of animals and ‘Snowball Earth’ his entire career, using a combination of experimental and descriptive science. Over three decades, I have witnessed first-hand how careful attention to detail in study after study has removed doubt from once provocative, even crazy, ideas that are now widely accepted. I love reading popular science from the perspective of the hands-on scientist who has witnessed the debate first-hand and contributed to received knowledge by conceiving new experiments, amassing data, and, more than often, in entirely unexpected ways through sheer curiosity.
I cherish this book as I can dip into any part of it and will always learn something new.
I have always been fascinated by the origin of things, and there is nothing more fundamental than the origin of life itself. Nick Lane is on the front line of such research and brings a lot to bear down on this question, from his own laboratory experiments to theoretical biochemistry, all without a hint of condescension. Nick wants to take the reader with him on a personal journey to discover why we are here, and this is a journey I wouldn’t miss for the world.
The Earth teems with life: in its oceans, forests, skies and cities. Yet there's a black hole at the heart of biology. We do not know why complex life is the way it is, or, for that matter, how life first began. In The Vital Question, award-winning author and biochemist Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a solution to conundrums that have puzzled generations of scientists.
For two and a half billion years, from the very origins of life, single-celled organisms such as bacteria evolved without changing their basic form. Then, on just one occasion in four billion…
As any software developer knows, architecture matters. This applies to metaphysics as much as it does to physics. Traditional metaphysics, based on sacred texts that are thousands of years old, is burdened with a considerable amount of tech debt. My goal was to refresh the topic by presenting a metaphysics of entropy, followed by a metaphysics of Darwinism, followed by a metaphysics of memes. The ground covered is the same—how did we get from the dawn of creation to the present day—but the path through the territory is modern, not ancient. I have sought to show that this pathway is fully supportive of traditional ethics, the values we have cherished for thousands of years.
I continue to be amazed by the way in which simple cells and inorganic molecules self-organize to create tissues, organs, and eventually whole babies, all without a master plan. We can brag all we want about generative AI, but this is all done without any centralized computing.
Where did I come from? Why do I have two arms but just one head? How is my left leg the same size as my right one? Why are the fingerprints of identical twins not identical? How did my brain learn to learn? Why must I die?
Questions like these remain biology's deepest and most ancient challenges. They force us to confront a fundamental biological problem: how can something as large and complex as a human body organize itself from the simplicity of a fertilized egg? A convergence of ideas from embryology, genetics, physics, networks, and control theory has begun…
As any software developer knows, architecture matters. This applies to metaphysics as much as it does to physics. Traditional metaphysics, based on sacred texts that are thousands of years old, is burdened with a considerable amount of tech debt. My goal was to refresh the topic by presenting a metaphysics of entropy, followed by a metaphysics of Darwinism, followed by a metaphysics of memes. The ground covered is the same—how did we get from the dawn of creation to the present day—but the path through the territory is modern, not ancient. I have sought to show that this pathway is fully supportive of traditional ethics, the values we have cherished for thousands of years.
Brockman has collected a portfolio of big ideas that warrant profound explanations, and each one provides an intellectual journey that both teaches and delights.
The reader is continually reminded that depth, beauty, and elegance play the same role in theories as they do in software architecture. They signal quality, reliability, and sustainability.
In This Explains Everything, John Brockman, founder and publisher of Edge.org, asked experts in numerous fields and disciplines to come up with their favorite explanations for everyday occurrences. Why do we recognize patterns? Is there such a thing as positive stress? Are we genetically programmed to be in conflict with each other? Those are just some of the 150 questions that the world's best scientific minds answer with elegant simplicity. With contributions from Jared Diamond, Richard Dawkins, Nassim Taleb, Brian Eno, Steven Pinker, and more, everything is explained in fun, uncomplicated terms that make the most complex concepts easy to…
As any software developer knows, architecture matters. This applies to metaphysics as much as it does to physics. Traditional metaphysics, based on sacred texts that are thousands of years old, is burdened with a considerable amount of tech debt. My goal was to refresh the topic by presenting a metaphysics of entropy, followed by a metaphysics of Darwinism, followed by a metaphysics of memes. The ground covered is the same—how did we get from the dawn of creation to the present day—but the path through the territory is modern, not ancient. I have sought to show that this pathway is fully supportive of traditional ethics, the values we have cherished for thousands of years.
The essence of complexity is to extract new capabilities from existing subsystems to generate outcomes that emerge from their interactions. The ratchet principle is core to all innovation at scale.
Essentially, all systems are built upon the underpinning of prior systems, which is why you can still find business processes coded in Assembler running on mainframes.
Life is an enduring mystery. Yet, science tells us that living beings are merely sophisticated structures of lifeless molecules. If this view is correct, where do the seemingly purposeful motions of cells and organisms originate? In Life's Ratchet , physicist Peter M. Hoffmann locates the answer to this age-old question at the nanoscale.Below the calm, ordered exterior of a living organism lies microscopic chaos, or what Hoffmann calls the molecular storm,specialized molecules immersed in a whirlwind of colliding water molecules. Our cells are filled with molecular machines, which, like tiny ratchets, transform random motion into ordered activity, and create the…
My fascination with the brain began when I was an undergraduate, and since has grown into an insatiable curiosity about all things neuroscience. Today my main job is teaching courses in the health sciences at The Pennsylvania State University, but I spend much of my free time trying to find ways to make neuroscience understandable to those who share my enthusiasm for learning about it. I mostly do this through my books and a series of short neuroscience videos on my YouTube channel: Neuroscientifically Challenged.
The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons is a fun, engaging, and well-written introduction to your brain and some of the most interesting characters in the history of neuroscience.
Sam Kean is an excellent science writer—the type who draws you in so much with his storytelling that you forget you’re actually learning something. By the end of this book, you’ll know more about how the brain works, but perhaps better yet you’ll have enjoyed an array of colorful historical tales that explain how our knowledge of the brain has advanced over the years.
For centuries, scientists had only one way to study the brain: wait for misfortune to strike - strokes, seizures, infections, lobotomies, horrendous accidents, phantom limbs, Siamese twins - and see how the victims changed afterwards. In many cases their survival was miraculous, and observers marvelled at the transformations that took place when different parts of the brain were destroyed. Parents suddenly couldn't recognise their children. Pillars of the community became pathological liars and paedophiles. Some people couldn't speak but could still sing. Others couldn't read but could write. The stories of these people laid the foundations of modern neuroscience and,…
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