How the Brain Thinks

by Graham J. Desborough

Calling on new research in neuroscience and a new interpretation of old ideas, this book tackles the age-old questions of how thinking, consciousness and emotion happen.

We can be irrational and unpredictable but we are completely understandable, the author explains in this fascinating introduction to our complex inner world.
At a fundamental level, he suggests, thinking happens when areas within the frontal cortex use the components of attention, emotion and memory to produce higher order functions such as consciousness and perception. These thought processes are similar in most of us. We are uniquely unpredictable simply because we all have a mix of different genes and experience.

The value of story, why you should drive with your lights on, confusion around definitions of consciousness and our voice within, and new ways of thinking about feelings and emotion, are some of the topics on which this book offers fresh insights.

Chapters include explanations and key insights into:

• Attention, Consciousness and Our Internal Narrative
• Emotion - At the Core of Thinking
• Memory - Stored Experience
• Perception
• Biology of the Brain

Genres: Science, Nonfiction

298 pages, Paperback

Published July 1, 2019

About the author

Dr Graham Desborough has been a General Practitioner since 1982. In 1994, he wrote a Masters dissertation on judgement and decision making. He then set out to explain how we think. Finally, his book How the Brain Thinks is the result.
His other main interests are mountaineering, photography and his family that now includes three daughters and four grandchildren. He currently lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Reviews

[Narilka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dr. Graham Desborough, a General Practitioner by trade, has always been fascinated by how the brain thinks. The realm of neuroscience has grown in leaps and bounds in recent years and yet there has been a lack of general consensus on how exactly it is that our brains think, with many scientists and researchers using the same words to explain the topic but with entirely different meanings. In his book How the Brain Thinks Dr. Desborough has brought together the most recent understanding on the subject and provided in easy to understand terminology a fairly complicated subject.

The book is written in a accessible manner for those of us not in the medical/scientific community and includes a glossary of the most commonly used terms with how they're applied in the context of this book. The first half of the book focuses primarily on the functions of the brain using a concept he calls FACE MaP (Frontal cortex, Attention, Emotion, Consciousness, Memory and Perception) and how these all combine to become the thinking brain. The second half of the book is about brain biology, giving a great overview of the physical brain itself and how neural function works.

At just under 300 pages, this book serves as a good introduction to the topics. Each of the FACE MaP concepts themselves are fascinating and I found it quite interesting about how much confusion their still is about how each one works and even on the general terminology in some cases. About the only downside is I did not find the book to be engaging enough to read in one shot, instead read it in small portions spread out over time. Still, it's fascinating stuff and has given me a starting point for further research into the areas I found most interesting.

I won a copy of this book in a GoodReads giveaway.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Received as a GoodReads giveaway. Disclaimers: I have no special scientific background, and I have not yet read the entire book. I've read about a third of it and flipped through the rest. This will likely be in my "treadmill Kindle reading" rotation for a while, and I'll gradually read more sections of it. As a layperson, I found it pretty easy to read and understand, and it covers some interesting questions on our brains function, consciousness, memory, emotions, etc. It didn't grab me enough to make me sit down and read it straight through, though. It's a "small portions at a time" read for me.