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Brain Buzzed: How The Brain Changes Itself and Deceives Us – Essential Insights Everyone Should Know About How Our Minds Work.
Your brain can fool you and change itself in miraculous ways. Knowing how can make a difference in your life. You'll learn and emotion-driven risk assessmentsInaccurate pattern recognition, memory, and value perceptionsNeuroplasticity, neurogenesis, and epigeneticsMind-body connection and meditationIn Brain Buzzed, Dr. Marlin Cluts offers 39 intentionally brief insights in fun, bite-sized chapters. Specifically writing for the lay person, Cluts combines a curiosity of learning (a doctorate in Human Performance Technology), with the brevity of the business world (a retired CEO). The results, though entertaining, could inspire better decisions, empowerment, and a more satisfying life.
Check the table of contents in "Look Inside" for a full list of 39 topics. Each chapter is a concise overview supported by scientific studies. References and recommendations are provided for further reading.
Check the table of contents in "Look Inside" for a full list of 39 topics. Each chapter is a concise overview supported by scientific studies. References and recommendations are provided for further reading.
160 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 25, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 15, 2021
Digital ARC provided by Netgalley
It was a very interesting lecture and even if some of the facts were well known to me since I am using some of the examples in the psychoeducation of some of my patients, it was nice to refresh my memory. For a newbie or a passionate of psychology or how our mind works this book can represent some nice lecture and article recommended for further investigation, study and new interesting topics and experiments to discover.
It was nice to discover some very important books as recommended lectures after each important part of the book. I have already read those books and indeed are very important for everyone who is searching to reach self-awareness and have a better and meaningful life.
It was a very interesting lecture and even if some of the facts were well known to me since I am using some of the examples in the psychoeducation of some of my patients, it was nice to refresh my memory. For a newbie or a passionate of psychology or how our mind works this book can represent some nice lecture and article recommended for further investigation, study and new interesting topics and experiments to discover.
It was nice to discover some very important books as recommended lectures after each important part of the book. I have already read those books and indeed are very important for everyone who is searching to reach self-awareness and have a better and meaningful life.
April 15, 2021
Marlin Cluts introduces several fascinating psychological topics in layman's terms in a concise, easily readable prose that I liked but the science is somewhat simplified and poorly sourced, largely relying on second or third hand news clips. The author says his background is in business rather than neuroscience but he has an EdD, and as such I think he could have done a better job referencing the science he discusses in the book.
The first chapter is an interesting look at how our pattern seeking brains may lead us astray, eg. when trying to estimate statistical probabilities. There are funny and embarrassing examples of how pigeons and rats may predict things better than humans, because we think we're so smart and we see patterns in randomness.
The second chapter talks about selective attention that may help us focus on what we want but the danger is that we miss aspects that we didn't focus on. The author concludes, "So we should try to go into any situation with both our minds and eyes wide open, seeking different perspectives, so we can experience what's truly happening in the moment -and so we can fully appreciate sudden encounters with the new and amazing." Certainly, it is often useful to be willing to see things from different perspectives but "any situation" is a very broad generalization, and it is not always beneficial to spend mental energy on constant re-evaluation. Given the vast amount of stimuli and information that surrounds us at any time, I don't believe that it is possible to fully appreciate everything that's happening around us for any length of time. We can shift our focus on something new or amazing, but it is still going to be selective as our attentional capacity is always finite and we can never attend to everything at once.
The next few chapters discuss things that may unconsciously bias our decision making, such as the amount or recency of exposure, our tendency to seek information that confirms our bias, the power of hindsight, the halo effect, the sunk cost fallacy and other things that cause us to value things differently even though it may not be completely rational. Our memories are not completely reliable and may be twisted by emotions, the verbal context or other information. If we're overloaded by too much information we may be unable to make any decisions at all, or the selective nature of information that reaches us may distort our narrative and cause us to perceive relative risks erroneously.
This section is just a short, easily read introduction to these concepts in layman's language, and the treatment of any the topics is necessarily brief and superficial. But if you're interested in cognitive biases and efficient decision making the first part of Brain Buzzed can point you to several fascinating areas of study that you may want to explore further. For those looking for solutions it does not offer much beyond increased awareness of potential sources of bias.
The second part of the book deals with neuroplasticity (the ways our brains learn to reorganize themselves) and presents examples of positive findings when researchers were able to see the effects of practice, exercise, laughter, positive attitudes or meditation on people's brains or thinking, or when rehabilitation helped brain injured people regain the functions by using different neural paths in the brain. These are complex issues and the book may simplify them somewhat but the book is written in a chatty entertaining style and the language is easy to understand without a science background. The neuroplasticity section also glances upon a number of topics that don't traditionally get classified under neuroplasticity, such as recovery from abdominal surgery or the effect of sea air on asthma and skin conditions, and refers to some research that appear to be based on psychological opinion surveys and experiments without accompanying evidence of brain changes that would tie in more closely with brain plasticity.
Does Brain Buzzed give an accurate representation of what the science says? Well, that is anybody's guess. Unfortunately the book is rather poorly sourced. Don't get me wrong, there is an extensive list of references (the last appendix ends at 85% on my Kindle and the last 15 % contains the reading list) but the author relies mostly on second or third hand sources such as Time Magazine, Huffington Post, Yahoo News, Business Insider, Daily Mail, or Good Morning America, and even supposing he paraphrases those articles accurately it's not always a given that news sources or blogs described the results or the significance of the research correctly. Sometimes news articles tend to pick and choose the most clickbaity material, to oversimplify complex matters and to ignore the criticism and the opposing voices.
Consider this section, sourced to Time: "In fact, some people are genetically predisposed to happiness by virtue of busy prefrontal cortexes. Research on infants has provided confirmation. Davidson measured left prefrontal cortex activity in babies less than a year old with their mothers present, and then again when their mothers briefly left the room. Some babies cried hysterically the minute the other left. Others were more resilient. The babies with the higher activity in the left prefrontal cortex were the ones who didn't cry. As many parents can attest, some babies are just born to be happy."
Without reading Davidson's research, I am fairly certain that something relevant is missing from this explanation, because just because babies behave differently it's giant leap to assume that this is attributable to genetical predisposition. Several environmental and situational factors may contribute to general brain development, current brain activity or a baby's behavior, and this passage says nothing about whether their genes were even mapped in this study.
There is a section on the benefits of sea air and salty water that is sourced only to the WSJ (not even a specific article in that prestigious publication), and some passages that lack any sourcing. Even when the book refers to a particular research study that got particular results, the author doesn't usually link to the original research article, just a summary on a blog or a news site. I attempted to look up a few sources to find out the methodology but some links were no longer accessible, I was blocked from a few by GDPR, and some of the news articles that I was able to read didn't link to the original research they discussed. I'd have had to go digging deep in research databases to find the original studies and it seemed like too much work for a simple book review that I'm not getting paid for.
TL;DR: Brain Buzzed introduces several fascinating topics in a pleasant, engaging, concise drive-by style that will make you want to learn more about them, but if you're looking for a more in-depth scientific evaluation of any of this you should read something that is based on original sources.
I received a free review copy from Netgalley and I'm leaving a voluntary review.
The first chapter is an interesting look at how our pattern seeking brains may lead us astray, eg. when trying to estimate statistical probabilities. There are funny and embarrassing examples of how pigeons and rats may predict things better than humans, because we think we're so smart and we see patterns in randomness.
The second chapter talks about selective attention that may help us focus on what we want but the danger is that we miss aspects that we didn't focus on. The author concludes, "So we should try to go into any situation with both our minds and eyes wide open, seeking different perspectives, so we can experience what's truly happening in the moment -and so we can fully appreciate sudden encounters with the new and amazing." Certainly, it is often useful to be willing to see things from different perspectives but "any situation" is a very broad generalization, and it is not always beneficial to spend mental energy on constant re-evaluation. Given the vast amount of stimuli and information that surrounds us at any time, I don't believe that it is possible to fully appreciate everything that's happening around us for any length of time. We can shift our focus on something new or amazing, but it is still going to be selective as our attentional capacity is always finite and we can never attend to everything at once.
The next few chapters discuss things that may unconsciously bias our decision making, such as the amount or recency of exposure, our tendency to seek information that confirms our bias, the power of hindsight, the halo effect, the sunk cost fallacy and other things that cause us to value things differently even though it may not be completely rational. Our memories are not completely reliable and may be twisted by emotions, the verbal context or other information. If we're overloaded by too much information we may be unable to make any decisions at all, or the selective nature of information that reaches us may distort our narrative and cause us to perceive relative risks erroneously.
This section is just a short, easily read introduction to these concepts in layman's language, and the treatment of any the topics is necessarily brief and superficial. But if you're interested in cognitive biases and efficient decision making the first part of Brain Buzzed can point you to several fascinating areas of study that you may want to explore further. For those looking for solutions it does not offer much beyond increased awareness of potential sources of bias.
The second part of the book deals with neuroplasticity (the ways our brains learn to reorganize themselves) and presents examples of positive findings when researchers were able to see the effects of practice, exercise, laughter, positive attitudes or meditation on people's brains or thinking, or when rehabilitation helped brain injured people regain the functions by using different neural paths in the brain. These are complex issues and the book may simplify them somewhat but the book is written in a chatty entertaining style and the language is easy to understand without a science background. The neuroplasticity section also glances upon a number of topics that don't traditionally get classified under neuroplasticity, such as recovery from abdominal surgery or the effect of sea air on asthma and skin conditions, and refers to some research that appear to be based on psychological opinion surveys and experiments without accompanying evidence of brain changes that would tie in more closely with brain plasticity.
Does Brain Buzzed give an accurate representation of what the science says? Well, that is anybody's guess. Unfortunately the book is rather poorly sourced. Don't get me wrong, there is an extensive list of references (the last appendix ends at 85% on my Kindle and the last 15 % contains the reading list) but the author relies mostly on second or third hand sources such as Time Magazine, Huffington Post, Yahoo News, Business Insider, Daily Mail, or Good Morning America, and even supposing he paraphrases those articles accurately it's not always a given that news sources or blogs described the results or the significance of the research correctly. Sometimes news articles tend to pick and choose the most clickbaity material, to oversimplify complex matters and to ignore the criticism and the opposing voices.
Consider this section, sourced to Time: "In fact, some people are genetically predisposed to happiness by virtue of busy prefrontal cortexes. Research on infants has provided confirmation. Davidson measured left prefrontal cortex activity in babies less than a year old with their mothers present, and then again when their mothers briefly left the room. Some babies cried hysterically the minute the other left. Others were more resilient. The babies with the higher activity in the left prefrontal cortex were the ones who didn't cry. As many parents can attest, some babies are just born to be happy."
Without reading Davidson's research, I am fairly certain that something relevant is missing from this explanation, because just because babies behave differently it's giant leap to assume that this is attributable to genetical predisposition. Several environmental and situational factors may contribute to general brain development, current brain activity or a baby's behavior, and this passage says nothing about whether their genes were even mapped in this study.
There is a section on the benefits of sea air and salty water that is sourced only to the WSJ (not even a specific article in that prestigious publication), and some passages that lack any sourcing. Even when the book refers to a particular research study that got particular results, the author doesn't usually link to the original research article, just a summary on a blog or a news site. I attempted to look up a few sources to find out the methodology but some links were no longer accessible, I was blocked from a few by GDPR, and some of the news articles that I was able to read didn't link to the original research they discussed. I'd have had to go digging deep in research databases to find the original studies and it seemed like too much work for a simple book review that I'm not getting paid for.
TL;DR: Brain Buzzed introduces several fascinating topics in a pleasant, engaging, concise drive-by style that will make you want to learn more about them, but if you're looking for a more in-depth scientific evaluation of any of this you should read something that is based on original sources.
I received a free review copy from Netgalley and I'm leaving a voluntary review.
March 2, 2022
At just 162 pages, this is a very readable overview of some recent insights into how the brain works. The accounts are (seemingly) dictated by the author’s interests, rather than any thematic concerns, so the content is difficult to characterise.
The book opens with a warning about trying to over-think things. When green and red lights lit randomly, with green predominating 80% of the time, rats and pigeons out-performed human guesses about which light would be next. They guessed green all the time, and so they were right 80% of the time. Humans tried to work out a pattern and consequently failed, and achieved a poor 68%.
In another chapter the point is well made that our analysis of risk is skewed by the vividness (and repetition) of news coverages. Violent crime has fallen in the US by 51% between 1993 and 2018 – but that is not the impression which most people have.
We also hear about how money affects happiness. Going from earning less than $20,000 per year to more than $50,000 doubles people’s happiness. But then increases tail off until exceeding $90,000 a year makes little difference to happiness.
Generally the facts are reported clearly and in an interesting way. Sometimes however, more information would be helpful. For example, we hear that people can be over-reliant on the past. To support this we hear that 25 exemplar companies from a 1982 book on excellence are no longer in business (Kindle 25%). But how many of those businesses have ceased trading because of ‘a reliance on the past?’ The text juxtaposes two facts, but it doesn’t establish causality.
Elsewhere in the book, orthodoxies are challenged. We hear that epigenetics has shown that fruit flies can be ‘shocked’ to pass on a new fear to later generations (42%). And contrary to the stability of IQ, children between the ages of 12 and 16 can rise and fall in their IQ scores by more than 20 points (50%).
Towards the end of the book themes begin to cluster around ‘happiness’ and how to induce it, as an ‘increased activity in the left prefontal cortex’ (62%). This is interesting, but the book spreads itself thin trying to cover cognitive biases and happiness.
As if that wasn’t enough, we also get ponderings on the role of religion, or ‘neurotheology.’ Apparently people with a high level of faith, are twice as likely to report being ‘very happy’ and they are at lower risk of depression and various health risks (66%).
This was an enjoyable read, and it is a good straight-forward introduction to a range of interesting issues. On a developmental note, I think the book may have covered too great a breadth. If the material had been separated into two books, one on cognitive issues and one on happiness, then each could have had a fuller treatment.
The book opens with a warning about trying to over-think things. When green and red lights lit randomly, with green predominating 80% of the time, rats and pigeons out-performed human guesses about which light would be next. They guessed green all the time, and so they were right 80% of the time. Humans tried to work out a pattern and consequently failed, and achieved a poor 68%.
In another chapter the point is well made that our analysis of risk is skewed by the vividness (and repetition) of news coverages. Violent crime has fallen in the US by 51% between 1993 and 2018 – but that is not the impression which most people have.
We also hear about how money affects happiness. Going from earning less than $20,000 per year to more than $50,000 doubles people’s happiness. But then increases tail off until exceeding $90,000 a year makes little difference to happiness.
Generally the facts are reported clearly and in an interesting way. Sometimes however, more information would be helpful. For example, we hear that people can be over-reliant on the past. To support this we hear that 25 exemplar companies from a 1982 book on excellence are no longer in business (Kindle 25%). But how many of those businesses have ceased trading because of ‘a reliance on the past?’ The text juxtaposes two facts, but it doesn’t establish causality.
Elsewhere in the book, orthodoxies are challenged. We hear that epigenetics has shown that fruit flies can be ‘shocked’ to pass on a new fear to later generations (42%). And contrary to the stability of IQ, children between the ages of 12 and 16 can rise and fall in their IQ scores by more than 20 points (50%).
Towards the end of the book themes begin to cluster around ‘happiness’ and how to induce it, as an ‘increased activity in the left prefontal cortex’ (62%). This is interesting, but the book spreads itself thin trying to cover cognitive biases and happiness.
As if that wasn’t enough, we also get ponderings on the role of religion, or ‘neurotheology.’ Apparently people with a high level of faith, are twice as likely to report being ‘very happy’ and they are at lower risk of depression and various health risks (66%).
This was an enjoyable read, and it is a good straight-forward introduction to a range of interesting issues. On a developmental note, I think the book may have covered too great a breadth. If the material had been separated into two books, one on cognitive issues and one on happiness, then each could have had a fuller treatment.
April 11, 2021
This is an enjoyable, easy to read book, Cluts has pulled together a number of concise essays on the workings of the brain, along with plenty of details for further reading. This is certainly not a book for professionals in the area, it doesn't go into enough detail, but for those who have a more than passing interest in our brains, I would highly recommend it as a jumping-off point.
February 17, 2021
A decent collection of research articles summarized, although not be a neuroscientist or physician. The blurb makes it sound a bit more impressive than it really is.
March 31, 2021
Thanks to Netgalley for a copy of the book. Review in a few days.
February 18, 2021
I really enjoyed this book! I’m so interested in psychological matters; how the brain works, why they work etc. This was a really interesting take on how the brain works, how you can notice it’s patterns and when they’re in play. Whether that’s making decisions, during tests/examinations and even during conversations with others.
This book was full of information but still managed to be short and concise. I didn’t find it hard to get into, I feel like you could easily read this without any background knowledge of psychology to have an understanding.
Marlin Cluts has also included references of the studies mentioned in the appendices which is a nice addition, so if you’re intrigued to learn more, you can simply search the study.
It’s always fascinating to learn more about our bizarre and exceptional brains, how much it has control over and how certain therapies can engage your brain to enable you to change your whole way of thinking. It’s incredible just how much your brain actually does, and Marlin Cluts really opens up new horizons to try, to help increase happiness and change the plasticity of your brain.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone whose interested in anything to do with the brain or the psychology behind it. I will definitely be picking up a copy ASAP!!
This book was full of information but still managed to be short and concise. I didn’t find it hard to get into, I feel like you could easily read this without any background knowledge of psychology to have an understanding.
Marlin Cluts has also included references of the studies mentioned in the appendices which is a nice addition, so if you’re intrigued to learn more, you can simply search the study.
It’s always fascinating to learn more about our bizarre and exceptional brains, how much it has control over and how certain therapies can engage your brain to enable you to change your whole way of thinking. It’s incredible just how much your brain actually does, and Marlin Cluts really opens up new horizons to try, to help increase happiness and change the plasticity of your brain.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone whose interested in anything to do with the brain or the psychology behind it. I will definitely be picking up a copy ASAP!!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews