Book Review: We Are Our Brains

brainsI’m not sure why, but I am always fascinated with reading books about brains.  Maybe I’m a zombie or maybe it’s because my brain doesn’t quite function right and I’m determined to figure it out by getting an idea by reading a book.  Either way, when I saw We Are Our Brains I just knew I had to check it out.

The book focuses on the brain from the womb through all sorts of different conditions and issues that could affect your brain.  Alzheimers, Schizophrenia, Autism, Sexual Behavior, Addictive Substances, etc.  It has 21 chapters all of which are broken down in to even more sub chapters to focus more on specific things.

The book was really interesting and really made me realize (yet again) just how fascinating the brain is.  I could have done without a few of the photos though.

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.

About the Book

A vivid cross-section of what makes us human.
 
Based groundbreaking new research, We Are Our Brains is a sweeping biography of the human brain, from infancy to adulthood to old age. Renowned neuroscientist D. F. Swaab takes us on a guided tour of the intricate inner workings that determine our potential, our limitations, and our desires, with each chapter serving as an eye-opening window on a different stage of brain development: the gender differences that develop in the embryonic brain, what goes on in the heads of adolescents, how parenthood permanently changes the brain.

Moving beyond pure biological understanding, Swaab presents a controversial and multilayered ethical argument surrounding the brain. Far from possessing true free will, Swaab argues, we have very little control over our everyday decisions, or who we will become, because our brains predetermine everything about us, long before we are born, from our moral character to our religious leanings to whom we fall in love with. And he challenges many of our prevailing assumptions about what makes us human, decoding the intricate “moral networks” that allow us to experience emotion, revealing maternal instinct to be the result of hormonal changes in the pregnant brain, and exploring the way that religious “imprinting” shapes the brain during childhood. Rife with memorable case studies, We Are Our Brains is already a bestselling international phenomenon. It aims to demystify the chemical and genetic workings of our most mysterious organ, in the process helping us to see who we are through an entirely new lens.

Did you know?
 
• The father’s brain is affected in pregnancy as well as the mother’s.
• The withdrawal symptoms we experience at the end of a love affair mirror chemical addiction.
• Growing up bilingual reduces the likelihood of Alzheimer’s.
• Parental religion is imprinted on our brains during early development, much as our native language is.

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