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The Neuroscience of You: How Every Brain Is Different and How to Understand Yours
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 brain, while learning what might be going on in the brains of those who are unlike you. With sections like “Focus,” “Navigate,” and “Connect,” The Neuroscience of You helps us see how brains that are engineered differently ultimately take diverse paths when it comes time to prioritize information, use what they’ve learned from experience, relate to other people, and so much more.
While other scientists focus on how “the” brain works “on average,” Prat argues that our obsession with commonalities has slowed our progress toward understanding the very things that make each of us unique and interesting. Her field-leading research, employing cutting-edge technology, reveals the truth: Complicated as it may be, no two brains are alike. And individual differences in brain functioning are as pervasive as they are fundamental to defining what “normal” looks like. Adages such as, “I’m not wired that way” intuitively point to the fact that the brains we’re piloting, educating, and parenting are wonderfully distinct, explaining a whole host of phenomena, from how easily a person might learn a second language in adulthood to whether someone feels curious or threatened when faced with new information. This book invites the reader to understand themselves and others by zooming in so close that we all look gray and squishy.
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 brain, while learning what might be going on in the brains of those who are unlike you. With sections like “Focus,” “Navigate,” and “Connect,” The Neuroscience of You helps us see how brains that are engineered differently ultimately take diverse paths when it comes time to prioritize information, use what they’ve learned from experience, relate to other people, and so much more.
While other scientists focus on how “the” brain works “on average,” Prat argues that our obsession with commonalities has slowed our progress toward understanding the very things that make each of us unique and interesting. Her field-leading research, employing cutting-edge technology, reveals the truth: Complicated as it may be, no two brains are alike. And individual differences in brain functioning are as pervasive as they are fundamental to defining what “normal” looks like. Adages such as, “I’m not wired that way” intuitively point to the fact that the brains we’re piloting, educating, and parenting are wonderfully distinct, explaining a whole host of phenomena, from how easily a person might learn a second language in adulthood to whether someone feels curious or threatened when faced with new information. This book invites the reader to understand themselves and others by zooming in so close that we all look gray and squishy.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published August 2, 2022
490 people are currently reading
6513 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 130 reviews
September 18, 2022
I had a chance to read this book before it came out and... WOW, what a surprise! As a neuroscientist myself, I had grown tired of the many books that come out every year about the brain. They mostly rely on old neuroscience tenets of what a given part of the brain does, while the field, instead, has moved in new directions and began dealing with the brain networks and individual variations. Prat's book, instead, takes you straight at the center of these problems! With a funny, entertaining style, Prat goes through the many different ways in which small differences in brain structure, neurochemistry, neural oscillations, and experiences gives rise to the differences in thinking and the personality quirks that make each person unique. The book is surprisingly deep, detailed, and up-to-date with the most exciting science in the field, and yet Prat's ability to explain difficult concepts and scaffold the material keeps it a pleasure to read. She is, quite literally, the teacher we all have hoped to have. So, while laughing at her anecdotes and being bedazzled by the juicy trivia (including a meta-trivia on why we find trivia so interesting!), you find yourself learning about how brain-computer interfaces work or how machine learning can be used to read your thoughts from a brain scan. Perhaps what comes though most strongly is Prat's genuine love for the brain and for how unique and interesting everyone is, once we stop putting them onto bins and start looking at how everyone works. Definitely a must read, I can't recommend this book enough!
June 4, 2022
This book is truly fascinating! The tests and exercises were my favorite parts. It goes pretty deep into the details of neuroscience which at times were difficult for me to get all the way through. But I still learned a lot about myself and why I perceive the world the way I do, not to mention why other people might perceive it differently than me. Probably we could all benefit from a dose of understanding in that regard. Highly recommend if you love science and learning more about how the brain works.
Thank you to PENGUIN GROUP Dutton and NetGalley for the opportunity to access this free e-arc in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you to PENGUIN GROUP Dutton and NetGalley for the opportunity to access this free e-arc in exchange for an honest review.
July 30, 2022
What a great and fun book! I highly recommend it! This book has something for everyone, from those with no prior exposure to neuroscience to those of us who have spent years studying it but sometimes lose the forest for the trees.
Chantel Prat teaches us about neuroscience in an engaging, fun (and funny) way. She opens up the world of neuroscience in the way Carl Sagan opened up the cosmos. She uses stories to show how neuroscience has helped her understand why she is the way she is, as well as why each of us is the way we are, and she does this with great enthusiasm and humor. She even contrasts her brain with the brains of those to whom she is closest, her husband and daughter. I really appreciate this since one of my own motivations in studying neuroscience and psychology has been to understand why I seem so different from most people I know. Throughout the book she shows how neuroscience can help you understand why you are the way you are, and why you are unique and different from everyone else.
Prat’s own career has focused on understanding individual differences, and she uses her own research as well as that of many others to stress that everyone is unique. Her perspective is very different from those who might be interested in classifying people as “normal” or “abnormal” on various dimensions. She is interested in where each person lies on a variety of measures, for example, how they utilize each hemisphere of the brain or how their mix of neurotransmitters (the chemicals neurons use to communicate with each other) might be different from others, and how this helps or hinders a person in particular situations. She also provides many tests, exercises, and games (both in the book and on the associated website) that give you insight into how your own brain is organized and how it is different from others.
Another theme in the book is that because research cognitive psychologists have focused on trying to describe the “normal” or average brain in understanding brain function, often eliminating from their studies people categorized as not normal, and because their results are typically presented as summaries or averages, they sometimes completely miss what is going on in individual brains. In the worst case, they describe a mythical average brain which is in fact different from almost any actual person’s brain. Prat illustrates this in her own research on how the left and right hemispheres of the brain work together in language understanding, and how they work differently in different people.
As a researcher, Prat does not oversimplify how our brains work, and she accurately describes neuroscience as a work in progress, where we are always learning new things about the brain and revising what we thought we previously knew. This gives the book an integrity that is sometimes lacking in books written for people new to a field.
The book is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on what Prat calls brain designs, or how differences in the biology of different people’s brains influence the way they think, feel, and behave. The second part focuses on brain functions, primarily how people’s brains interact with their environments to enable them to act and adapt in their worlds.
Neuroscience of You is full of fun facts and stories, while also informing you about some of the latest research in neuroscience. Read it for fun and to learn, and then reread it. I guarantee that each time you read it you’ll pick up something new, and if you’re interested in learning more, Prat provides notes that point you to further research on the topics she covers.
This is Prat’s first book and we can only hope that there will be many more to come!
Chantel Prat teaches us about neuroscience in an engaging, fun (and funny) way. She opens up the world of neuroscience in the way Carl Sagan opened up the cosmos. She uses stories to show how neuroscience has helped her understand why she is the way she is, as well as why each of us is the way we are, and she does this with great enthusiasm and humor. She even contrasts her brain with the brains of those to whom she is closest, her husband and daughter. I really appreciate this since one of my own motivations in studying neuroscience and psychology has been to understand why I seem so different from most people I know. Throughout the book she shows how neuroscience can help you understand why you are the way you are, and why you are unique and different from everyone else.
Prat’s own career has focused on understanding individual differences, and she uses her own research as well as that of many others to stress that everyone is unique. Her perspective is very different from those who might be interested in classifying people as “normal” or “abnormal” on various dimensions. She is interested in where each person lies on a variety of measures, for example, how they utilize each hemisphere of the brain or how their mix of neurotransmitters (the chemicals neurons use to communicate with each other) might be different from others, and how this helps or hinders a person in particular situations. She also provides many tests, exercises, and games (both in the book and on the associated website) that give you insight into how your own brain is organized and how it is different from others.
Another theme in the book is that because research cognitive psychologists have focused on trying to describe the “normal” or average brain in understanding brain function, often eliminating from their studies people categorized as not normal, and because their results are typically presented as summaries or averages, they sometimes completely miss what is going on in individual brains. In the worst case, they describe a mythical average brain which is in fact different from almost any actual person’s brain. Prat illustrates this in her own research on how the left and right hemispheres of the brain work together in language understanding, and how they work differently in different people.
As a researcher, Prat does not oversimplify how our brains work, and she accurately describes neuroscience as a work in progress, where we are always learning new things about the brain and revising what we thought we previously knew. This gives the book an integrity that is sometimes lacking in books written for people new to a field.
The book is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on what Prat calls brain designs, or how differences in the biology of different people’s brains influence the way they think, feel, and behave. The second part focuses on brain functions, primarily how people’s brains interact with their environments to enable them to act and adapt in their worlds.
Neuroscience of You is full of fun facts and stories, while also informing you about some of the latest research in neuroscience. Read it for fun and to learn, and then reread it. I guarantee that each time you read it you’ll pick up something new, and if you’re interested in learning more, Prat provides notes that point you to further research on the topics she covers.
This is Prat’s first book and we can only hope that there will be many more to come!
September 26, 2022
I own this book, but I ended up getting the audiobook and listening through it because I just love hearing Chantel talk about this stuff! Here's a neuroscientist you can geek out with about various fandoms while she just casually drops some intense neuro-knowledge and makes you intrigued about yourself and other people! Chantel's writing is engaging, funny, and super informative--a breeze of a book to read on such a complicated topic.
The book has a bunch of fun tests to see what kind of a brain you, the reader, have - and consequently, what drives you, whether it's the type of curiosity you exhibit, or the type of memory you have. And lest you feel intimidated, the whole premise here is that you just want to find out about you (and maybe about other people), and discard the whole notion of comparing yourself to others or their performance. It really ought to be obvious, but I was still kind of mind-blown at the very top of the book, when Chantel reminds us that when science talks about "normal" or "typical," the typical comes from a globally-speaking very un-typical group: mostly young, white, college-educated grad students who are subjected to these tests! They are not typical at all! It really puts things into perspective, especially in our era of everyone getting a TikTok diagnosis of something. But what if we're all "normal" - because difference is the norm? And that's what we should use as the underlying understanding for how to build better educational systems, workplaces, and so on.
My favorite chapters in the book are about bilingualism (because I'm bilingual, so for very selfish reasons) and how it affects thinking - both by slowing down certain processes, but also expanding some others - and about curiosity. I've always been fascinated by whether curiosity can be taught, because I truly feel that a lot of problems in this world would be solved if people were curious about other people's experiences, or other forms of information than what we're used to, and so on. It doesn't need to mean that we have to always accept everything; but having that tendency to say "how about I see what this could do?" instead of "I don't think learning about this is worth the effort" seems like it could keep our brains active.
I learned a lot about myself by reading this book, and doing the tests as honestly as I could (I completely froze in one and failed it magnificently - but it made me curious to know why that happened!) and I highly recommend it to everyone, especially if you ever dread that Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner where you'll inevitably end up arguing politics with relatives whose view points you have a terrible time understanding (and vice versa!). ;)
The book has a bunch of fun tests to see what kind of a brain you, the reader, have - and consequently, what drives you, whether it's the type of curiosity you exhibit, or the type of memory you have. And lest you feel intimidated, the whole premise here is that you just want to find out about you (and maybe about other people), and discard the whole notion of comparing yourself to others or their performance. It really ought to be obvious, but I was still kind of mind-blown at the very top of the book, when Chantel reminds us that when science talks about "normal" or "typical," the typical comes from a globally-speaking very un-typical group: mostly young, white, college-educated grad students who are subjected to these tests! They are not typical at all! It really puts things into perspective, especially in our era of everyone getting a TikTok diagnosis of something. But what if we're all "normal" - because difference is the norm? And that's what we should use as the underlying understanding for how to build better educational systems, workplaces, and so on.
My favorite chapters in the book are about bilingualism (because I'm bilingual, so for very selfish reasons) and how it affects thinking - both by slowing down certain processes, but also expanding some others - and about curiosity. I've always been fascinated by whether curiosity can be taught, because I truly feel that a lot of problems in this world would be solved if people were curious about other people's experiences, or other forms of information than what we're used to, and so on. It doesn't need to mean that we have to always accept everything; but having that tendency to say "how about I see what this could do?" instead of "I don't think learning about this is worth the effort" seems like it could keep our brains active.
I learned a lot about myself by reading this book, and doing the tests as honestly as I could (I completely froze in one and failed it magnificently - but it made me curious to know why that happened!) and I highly recommend it to everyone, especially if you ever dread that Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner where you'll inevitably end up arguing politics with relatives whose view points you have a terrible time understanding (and vice versa!). ;)
October 28, 2023
Eloquent writing yet down to earth. Dr. Prat made a mighty impact on me. I wanted to give this five stars but I think the general reader would appreciate some infographics or illustrations. This made the most sense to me with a little anatomy background. Still, a fantastic read and I think all science books should be strive to be so informative, fresh, and yet relatable. Many wow and “huh” moments.
August 2, 2022
Among the many books published every year that have the brain as a topic, there are some that are written in a very serious way and others, like this one, that are written for the readers interested primarily in knowing themselves more than their brain. There is nothing wrong with that, but let's say that the target audience of this book is the readers of self-help books rather than those who are passionate about neuroscience, because they are unlikely to find something among these pages that they have not already read.
Tra i tanti libri pubblicati ogni anno che hanno come argomento il cervello, ce ne sono alcuni che sono scritti in modo molto serio e altri, come questo, che strizzano l'occhio al lettore interessato soprattutto a conoscere se stesso piú che il suo cervello. Non c'é niente di male, ma diciamo che il target di questo libro sono i lettori dei libri di auto aiuto piuttosto che quelli appassionati alle neuroscienze, perché difficilmente potrebbero trovare tra queste pagine qualche cosa che non hanno ancora giá letto.
I received from the Publisher a complimentary digital advanced review copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.
Tra i tanti libri pubblicati ogni anno che hanno come argomento il cervello, ce ne sono alcuni che sono scritti in modo molto serio e altri, come questo, che strizzano l'occhio al lettore interessato soprattutto a conoscere se stesso piú che il suo cervello. Non c'é niente di male, ma diciamo che il target di questo libro sono i lettori dei libri di auto aiuto piuttosto che quelli appassionati alle neuroscienze, perché difficilmente potrebbero trovare tra queste pagine qualche cosa che non hanno ancora giá letto.
I received from the Publisher a complimentary digital advanced review copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.
November 2, 2022
Blinks:
1. Brains that specialize in different functions interpret the world in varied ways. This may cause one area of the brain to be stronger than other parts or at the expense of other parts. Taxi cabs in London have specialized brains.
2. Your brain's lopsidedness affects how you process information. Left brain is computational and right is more contextual so humans can be lopsided to one side or the other or more balanced.
3. Your brain is a unique neural cocktail, and its ingredients shape your personality. Dopamine levels affect your attitude and personalities. Dopamine can drive our introvert or extrovert personalities, but this is just one hormone in a cocktail of many shaping our personalities.
4. Experience creates lenses through which we filter the world.
1. Brains that specialize in different functions interpret the world in varied ways. This may cause one area of the brain to be stronger than other parts or at the expense of other parts. Taxi cabs in London have specialized brains.
2. Your brain's lopsidedness affects how you process information. Left brain is computational and right is more contextual so humans can be lopsided to one side or the other or more balanced.
3. Your brain is a unique neural cocktail, and its ingredients shape your personality. Dopamine levels affect your attitude and personalities. Dopamine can drive our introvert or extrovert personalities, but this is just one hormone in a cocktail of many shaping our personalities.
4. Experience creates lenses through which we filter the world.
dnf
March 11, 2023I can’t tolerate this book any longer. I picked up a non-fiction so that i can get the facts without having to go through unnecessary scenarios. Omg the author went on and on for 4-5 pages about something i could summarize in a sentence. This pissed me off because i would love to know more about neuroscience. This book’s just too tedious to glean useful information from, and i have to DNF.
July 26, 2022
Great book and fun to read. I learned much and will interview Chantel Prat about her amazing work.
January 18, 2023
This was a super interesting book and now it has me wondering how much of it my brain will retain.... Come on lil motorways help me remember !!
July 31, 2022
Let’s talk about brains! Not usually the type of book I’d grab first. This is a great book and gave me many insights into how my brain works and an appreciation for how others might work. The way it is written is not too Sciency. It’s more like as if you were just having a chat with neuroscientist with a great sense of humor. It makes you laugh and that adds to the enjoyment of the adventure! Favorite chapter: “Connect”. Enjoy and learn!
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November 11, 2022The Neuroscience of You (2022) is an accessible primer to the human brain that explores how our individual quirks arise. Packed with practical tests and cutting-edge insights into why you think differently from others, it invites you to take a closer look at your brain and discover what makes it unique– and how to understand others and their quirks better.
Chantel Prat is a professor at the University of Washington with appointments in the departments of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Linguistics; with affiliations at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, the Center for Neurotechnology, and the Institute for Neuroengineering. She is a recipient of the Tom Trabasso Young Investigator Award from the Society for Text and Discourse and a Pathway to Independence Award from the National Institutes of Health. Prat also speaks internationally at events like the World Science Festival. She is featured in the documentary film I Am Human. Her studies have been profiled in media ranging from Scientific American, Psychology Today, and Science Daily to Rolling Stone, Popular Mechanics, Pacific Standard, Travel + Leisure, and National Public Radio.
FULL SCRIBE https://shrib.com/#Jazlynn289nQx1
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Discover how every brain is wired differently, and what this means for our behavior.
What makes us who we are?
Everyone’s brain is structurally different– even the brains of identical twins conjoined at birth– and these structural differences matter. They shape how we see the world, and how we decide to operate in it. It affects whether we’re thrill seekers, how good we are at picking up languages, and even how we feel about karaoke.
Despite their importance, the biological differences in our brains are rarely discussed. The field of neuroscience has been dominated by a one-size-fits-all approach for over a century. What we know about brains is usually informed by scientists who focus on how brains work on average, glossing over our individual differences. But this is a missed opportunity to understand ourselves, other people, and the brain more deeply.
In this book, we’ll draw upon the cutting-edge insights of neuroscientist Chantel Prat, who researches how brains differ, and why small differences in our brains can cause big differences in our characters.
You’ll discover how our brain’s lopsidedness affects how we approach problems, that our neurochemical cocktail determines how extraverted we are, and why it is that brains see colors differently. Ready? Let’s zoom into the inner workings of your brain and discover what makes you you.
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Brains that specialize in different functions interpret the world in varied ways.
Have you ever heard of The Knowledge?
It’s the test required to be a taxi driver in London, and it’s one of the most famously difficult exams in the world. The test demands that you memorize London’s 20,000 windy streets and every business or landmark on each street. The test weeds out over half the people who take it— even if they’ve studied for it for years. It’s a truly herculean task!
A landmark study in 2000 showed that drivers who successfully acquired The Knowledge of London’s streets have a larger-than-average tail of the hippocampus, the region of the brain that is associated with spatial memory. In other words, by repeatedly asking their brains to perform specific tasks– like memorizing London, a complex and disorganized system– the taxi drivers actually changed their brains’ physicality.
Studying the cabbies’ brains led to another important discovery: though the tail of the hippocampus grows as they study for The Knowledge, the top of the hippocampus was actually smaller than average. Researchers then compared the brains of the taxi drivers to those operating in a similar environment: London bus drivers. They found that the taxi drivers had superior spatial memory to the bus drivers, but they had worse short-term memory and visual memory.
What this head-to-head comparison shows us is that there’s a cost to specialization. Certain enhancements of one type of memory will crowd out brain regions that are performing other jobs. After all, there’s only so much room in any given brain! Now, it’s not just that specialization leads your brain to perform certain functions better at the expense of other functions. What ends up happening is that brains that specialize in different functions end up interpreting the world in different ways– which is what Dr. Prat’s book is all about.
To begin to break down why that is, it’s helpful to think of our brains as finite information-processing machines operating in an essentially infinite environment. And in order to do its job effectively of keeping you alive in the big bad universe, your brain has to process the infinite environment into manageable pieces. In other words, it’s constantly filtering, and filling in the missing blanks with what it thinks is probably happening. It’s a bit like being given a stack of blurry photographs and being asked to make a movie with them. You have to decide which images are important and how to connect the dots to make a coherent video when there is missing information.
And because brains are structurally different and shaped by different experiences, they’ll process information in varying ways. One brain will deal with its inherent limitations differently than another, by relying on the computations and functions at which it’s more adept in order to figure out what is happening. And this is a major factor in why we have so much variation in worldviews and behaviors!
Now let’s take a closer look at how specific features of our brains will lead us to operate in varied ways in the real world. We’ll start with how the degree of our brain’s lopsidedness affects how we solve problems.
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Your brain’s lopsidedness affects how you process information.
Imagine the human brain for a moment. It’s about three pounds, and it looks something like a large walnut, with two largely independent hemispheres connected at the core.
Now, this isn’t a very unique brain design. We can find divided brains throughout the animal kingdom, within all vertebrate animals.
What’s peculiar to humans is that our brains are, on average, remarkably lopsided, with the left hemisphere tending to be larger. This cerebral asymmetry is actually what makes us particularly good at complex speech and analytical tasks. But some of us are more lopsided than others, and it’s these variations of degree that make a difference in how we approach problem solving.
You might have heard analytical people described as left-brained, and creative people are considered right-brained. There’s a grain of truth to this, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. In reality, your strengths aren’t determined by which hemisphere is the “boss” of your brain— rather, it’s the degree to which your brain is lopsided that affects what types of mental computations you rely on more than others when faced with ambiguous information. This structural difference is a major reason why humans can have widely different interpretations of the same input.
It’s true that the left hemisphere is, in most people, optimally structured for analytical processes— it accomplishes its various functions with a “divide and conquer” approach by executing specialized computations that don’t interact with one another. If someone has a highly lopsided brain, they tend to rely more on computations associated with the left hemisphere. What this looks like in everyday life is that lopsided-brained people tend to solve problems by focusing on its specific details. It’s a bit like building a picture of a forest by processing one tree at a time.
In contrast, the right hemisphere is structured in a way that makes it better equipped to integrate different types of information into a coherent whole. So it builds a picture of a forest with a big-picture approach– it looks at something vertical and brown and says “Hmm, I know I’m in a forest, so this is most likely a tree.” In other words, it relies on wider context to make inferences about a given situation.
Now, all brains have forest and tree capabilities. Both approaches are vital to the many complex tasks we humans perform on a daily basis, so we’ve gotten really good at both over our evolutionary history. But if your brain is more lopsided, you’re more likely to focus on specific details to solve problems, and people with more balanced brains tend to consider the wider context over the specific details.
So, how lopsided is your brain? There are a few quick-and-dirty ways of approaching this question.
First, consider these everyday tasks: Brushing your teeth. Writing with a pen. Eating with a spoon. Opening a box. Holding the top of a broom handle as you sweep.
Now ask yourself if you would perform these tasks only with your dominant hand. Or would you feel comfortable switching between hands for at least some of these tasks?
How about looking into a microscope or the viewfinder of a camera: do you have an eye that you prefer?
If you could only imagine performing these tasks with your dominant hand and your dominant eye, then your brain is likely more lopsided. If you’re more comfortable switching between right and left hands, and right and left eye, your brain is likely more balanced.In the next section, we’ll turn our attention to the smallest parts of our brain features– the neurotransmitters, which are the chemicals that your neurons need to communicate– and dive into why such tiny parts can have a huge impact on us.
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Your brain is a unique neural cocktail, and its ingredients shape your personality.
Ah, coffee. What would life be without it?
There’s a reason caffeine is the most popular drug in the world. In fact, a life without coffee would be a life with less pleasure! That’s because caffeine increases the availability of the neurotransmitter dopamine, the chemical that the pleasure circuits in your brain use to communicate.
Now consider this: what if someone else’s baseline levels of dopamine exceed the boost you get from your morning shot of espresso? In other words, what if they feel generally more pleasure than you? Or the other way around: someone else’s highest feelings of pleasure might be how you feel before you’ve had your morning cup of joe.
Anyone who’s experienced depression knows well how a brain with a lower level of feel-good chemicals can have a fundamentally different experience of the world than someone with higher levels. But dopamine levels profoundly affect our personalities and behaviors, whether we have depression or not.
Dopamine circuits play a big role in decision-making because they’re nudging you through the world in a way that will bring about the most amount of pleasure possible. In effect, differing levels of dopamine from brain to brain will affect how strongly one is motivated toward different behaviors. One key way this plays out in our personalities is in how introverted or extraverted we are.
Extraverted people are those who tend to “turn outward” and seek mental stimulation from external stimuli. Introverted people, on the other hand, often prefer their own thoughts and feelings to the outer world and tend to “turn inward.” You probably have a good idea of where you fall on this continuum.
Converging research demonstrates that dopamine is at least partially responsible for our introversion or extraversion because of how dopamine rewards our brains. It turns out that when unexpected rewards happen to extraverts, their brains actually release more dopamine than in their introverted counterparts. Another way of putting it is: if life were a video game, then extraverts get more pleasure points every time they’re positively surprised. So this makes them extra motivated to seek out outside stimulation.
So what does different susceptibility to dopamine look like in practice? Well, extraverts consistently rate themselves as more optimistic and happier than introverts. They’re also more likely to seek novelty and are more motivated to learn– and it’s no wonder, since external stimulation brings them extra pleasure.
You may be wondering if it’s simply better to be an extravert. It’s true that introversion has been linked to anhedonia and depression. But, despite extraverts experiencing more pleasure, there are also downsides to this design feature. For one thing, additional susceptibility to dopamine makes it more difficult for extraverts to override temptation for things that are bad for us. Extraversion has been linked with obesity and addiction, for example.
Now, let’s zoom back out for a moment and give your right hemisphere some big-picture context to consider. Dopamine is just one neurotransmitter of hundreds that drive the way you think, feel, and behave. Others include oxytocin, serotonin, and cortisol– and they’re all interacting with each other in a delicate balance. If varied levels of just one of these can affect your experience of the world so profoundly, it’s no wonder that the unique mixology of our neural cocktails creates such starkly different individuals!
In the last two sections, we discussed how the brain features of lopsidedness and neurochemistry affect our behavior. Now, in the final section, we’ll explore how our life experiences shape our brains. We’ll discover how our past life creates the lens through which we see the present.
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Experience creates lenses through which we filter the world.
Who here remembers The Dress?
No, not one worn by Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, or Monica Lewinsky.
The Dress was a viral image that took the internet by storm in 2015. It’s a photograph of a striped dress that about half the population saw as blue and black, and the other half as white and gold. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, look up “The Dress” on Wikipedia. What colors do you see?
Dr. Prat posits that The Dress went viral because it’s a very stark example of how our brains create alternate versions of reality. It’s fascinating to discover that even something as basic as the colors of a static image are open to interpretation!
Even when told that the “actual” colors of The Dress in the photograph are blue and black, the people who see it as white and gold usually cannot see its true colors unless the lighting of the image is altered. As it turns out, the reason for this is at least partially due to our life experiences.
The lighting in the viral image is ambiguous, so our brain relies on a shortcut to make sense of the incomplete data it’s faced with. This results in brains with different past experiences making different assumptions about the source of the light, which in turn affects how the brain perceives the colors of The Dress.
If you’re seeing The Dress as white and gold, your brain is assuming that The Dress is in shadow and that the light is coming from behind. Research suggests that this is likely because you’re more familiar with natural lighting and that you’re an early riser. On the other hand, if you’re seeing The Dress as black and blue, your brain is assuming the lighting is coming from the front, probably through an artificial source. This perception correlates with people who tend to be night owls and have more experience with artificial lighting.
Our brains are shaped so profoundly by previous experience due to a process called Hebbian learning. In a nutshell, the theory of Hebbian learning states that when our brains learn something new, neurons are activated and connected with other neurons. At first these connections are weak, but they grow stronger every time the experience repeats, so the process becomes more intuitive. It’s what people mean when they say “neurons that fire together, wire together.”
Hebbian learning influences your brain over your lifespan and allows you to make shortcuts that are critical to your survival, so that you can make split-second inferences without processing an event as new every time. That would be time-consuming and exhausting. Hebbian learning is also at play when we learn skills like driving, that are difficult at first but become more and more automatic over time. But experience-based shortcuts can also lead us into some problematic territories that can be difficult to correct, such as biases.
A telling example of this has been demonstrated many times: people are more likely to assume an ambiguous object is a gun when presented next to a Black person’s face than a white person’s face. This mental shortcut arises without a correlation to someone’s actual experiences with Black people and guns, especially considering that gun ownership is common across many demographics in the United States.
So where do these biased mental shortcuts come from, if not from direct experience? Well, if your brain does not have direct experiences with something in real life– or some people– then it’s more likely that its database entry on a given topic is based on what it sees on television or in fictitious depictions. In this way, systemic biases can quite literally shape the way your brain perceives the world.
Changing your brain’s perception isn’t as simple as just becoming aware of your biases. Remember, those who see The Dress as white and gold can’t flip their perception just because they discover it’s actually blue and black. Instead, correcting your brain’s shortcuts is more likely to occur if you expose yourself to diverse and real-world experiences, and become more intentional about the types of narratives you feed your mind.
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Small differences in our brains that we’re either born with or adapt to create big differences in our thoughts, behaviors, emotions, and abilities. Just consider that the DNA blueprints that underlie chimp and human brains differ by only 5 percent– but that 5% allows humans to send complex messages in split-seconds across the globe, while the chimp’s day is occupied with finding food and picking nits.
Or on a much subtler level, think about how differently you feel in the morning versus in the evening. The changes in neurochemical signaling throughout the course of just twelve hours can cause a significant difference in how you’re experiencing the world. The point is: our differences matter, and a neuroscience that looks into them can provide a window into the self.
Chantel Prat is a professor at the University of Washington with appointments in the departments of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Linguistics; with affiliations at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, the Center for Neurotechnology, and the Institute for Neuroengineering. She is a recipient of the Tom Trabasso Young Investigator Award from the Society for Text and Discourse and a Pathway to Independence Award from the National Institutes of Health. Prat also speaks internationally at events like the World Science Festival. She is featured in the documentary film I Am Human. Her studies have been profiled in media ranging from Scientific American, Psychology Today, and Science Daily to Rolling Stone, Popular Mechanics, Pacific Standard, Travel + Leisure, and National Public Radio.
FULL SCRIBE https://shrib.com/#Jazlynn289nQx1
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Discover how every brain is wired differently, and what this means for our behavior.
What makes us who we are?
Everyone’s brain is structurally different– even the brains of identical twins conjoined at birth– and these structural differences matter. They shape how we see the world, and how we decide to operate in it. It affects whether we’re thrill seekers, how good we are at picking up languages, and even how we feel about karaoke.
Despite their importance, the biological differences in our brains are rarely discussed. The field of neuroscience has been dominated by a one-size-fits-all approach for over a century. What we know about brains is usually informed by scientists who focus on how brains work on average, glossing over our individual differences. But this is a missed opportunity to understand ourselves, other people, and the brain more deeply.
In this book, we’ll draw upon the cutting-edge insights of neuroscientist Chantel Prat, who researches how brains differ, and why small differences in our brains can cause big differences in our characters.
You’ll discover how our brain’s lopsidedness affects how we approach problems, that our neurochemical cocktail determines how extraverted we are, and why it is that brains see colors differently. Ready? Let’s zoom into the inner workings of your brain and discover what makes you you.
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Brains that specialize in different functions interpret the world in varied ways.
Have you ever heard of The Knowledge?
It’s the test required to be a taxi driver in London, and it’s one of the most famously difficult exams in the world. The test demands that you memorize London’s 20,000 windy streets and every business or landmark on each street. The test weeds out over half the people who take it— even if they’ve studied for it for years. It’s a truly herculean task!
A landmark study in 2000 showed that drivers who successfully acquired The Knowledge of London’s streets have a larger-than-average tail of the hippocampus, the region of the brain that is associated with spatial memory. In other words, by repeatedly asking their brains to perform specific tasks– like memorizing London, a complex and disorganized system– the taxi drivers actually changed their brains’ physicality.
Studying the cabbies’ brains led to another important discovery: though the tail of the hippocampus grows as they study for The Knowledge, the top of the hippocampus was actually smaller than average. Researchers then compared the brains of the taxi drivers to those operating in a similar environment: London bus drivers. They found that the taxi drivers had superior spatial memory to the bus drivers, but they had worse short-term memory and visual memory.
What this head-to-head comparison shows us is that there’s a cost to specialization. Certain enhancements of one type of memory will crowd out brain regions that are performing other jobs. After all, there’s only so much room in any given brain! Now, it’s not just that specialization leads your brain to perform certain functions better at the expense of other functions. What ends up happening is that brains that specialize in different functions end up interpreting the world in different ways– which is what Dr. Prat’s book is all about.
To begin to break down why that is, it’s helpful to think of our brains as finite information-processing machines operating in an essentially infinite environment. And in order to do its job effectively of keeping you alive in the big bad universe, your brain has to process the infinite environment into manageable pieces. In other words, it’s constantly filtering, and filling in the missing blanks with what it thinks is probably happening. It’s a bit like being given a stack of blurry photographs and being asked to make a movie with them. You have to decide which images are important and how to connect the dots to make a coherent video when there is missing information.
And because brains are structurally different and shaped by different experiences, they’ll process information in varying ways. One brain will deal with its inherent limitations differently than another, by relying on the computations and functions at which it’s more adept in order to figure out what is happening. And this is a major factor in why we have so much variation in worldviews and behaviors!
Now let’s take a closer look at how specific features of our brains will lead us to operate in varied ways in the real world. We’ll start with how the degree of our brain’s lopsidedness affects how we solve problems.
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Your brain’s lopsidedness affects how you process information.
Imagine the human brain for a moment. It’s about three pounds, and it looks something like a large walnut, with two largely independent hemispheres connected at the core.
Now, this isn’t a very unique brain design. We can find divided brains throughout the animal kingdom, within all vertebrate animals.
What’s peculiar to humans is that our brains are, on average, remarkably lopsided, with the left hemisphere tending to be larger. This cerebral asymmetry is actually what makes us particularly good at complex speech and analytical tasks. But some of us are more lopsided than others, and it’s these variations of degree that make a difference in how we approach problem solving.
You might have heard analytical people described as left-brained, and creative people are considered right-brained. There’s a grain of truth to this, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. In reality, your strengths aren’t determined by which hemisphere is the “boss” of your brain— rather, it’s the degree to which your brain is lopsided that affects what types of mental computations you rely on more than others when faced with ambiguous information. This structural difference is a major reason why humans can have widely different interpretations of the same input.
It’s true that the left hemisphere is, in most people, optimally structured for analytical processes— it accomplishes its various functions with a “divide and conquer” approach by executing specialized computations that don’t interact with one another. If someone has a highly lopsided brain, they tend to rely more on computations associated with the left hemisphere. What this looks like in everyday life is that lopsided-brained people tend to solve problems by focusing on its specific details. It’s a bit like building a picture of a forest by processing one tree at a time.
In contrast, the right hemisphere is structured in a way that makes it better equipped to integrate different types of information into a coherent whole. So it builds a picture of a forest with a big-picture approach– it looks at something vertical and brown and says “Hmm, I know I’m in a forest, so this is most likely a tree.” In other words, it relies on wider context to make inferences about a given situation.
Now, all brains have forest and tree capabilities. Both approaches are vital to the many complex tasks we humans perform on a daily basis, so we’ve gotten really good at both over our evolutionary history. But if your brain is more lopsided, you’re more likely to focus on specific details to solve problems, and people with more balanced brains tend to consider the wider context over the specific details.
So, how lopsided is your brain? There are a few quick-and-dirty ways of approaching this question.
First, consider these everyday tasks: Brushing your teeth. Writing with a pen. Eating with a spoon. Opening a box. Holding the top of a broom handle as you sweep.
Now ask yourself if you would perform these tasks only with your dominant hand. Or would you feel comfortable switching between hands for at least some of these tasks?
How about looking into a microscope or the viewfinder of a camera: do you have an eye that you prefer?
If you could only imagine performing these tasks with your dominant hand and your dominant eye, then your brain is likely more lopsided. If you’re more comfortable switching between right and left hands, and right and left eye, your brain is likely more balanced.In the next section, we’ll turn our attention to the smallest parts of our brain features– the neurotransmitters, which are the chemicals that your neurons need to communicate– and dive into why such tiny parts can have a huge impact on us.
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Your brain is a unique neural cocktail, and its ingredients shape your personality.
Ah, coffee. What would life be without it?
There’s a reason caffeine is the most popular drug in the world. In fact, a life without coffee would be a life with less pleasure! That’s because caffeine increases the availability of the neurotransmitter dopamine, the chemical that the pleasure circuits in your brain use to communicate.
Now consider this: what if someone else’s baseline levels of dopamine exceed the boost you get from your morning shot of espresso? In other words, what if they feel generally more pleasure than you? Or the other way around: someone else’s highest feelings of pleasure might be how you feel before you’ve had your morning cup of joe.
Anyone who’s experienced depression knows well how a brain with a lower level of feel-good chemicals can have a fundamentally different experience of the world than someone with higher levels. But dopamine levels profoundly affect our personalities and behaviors, whether we have depression or not.
Dopamine circuits play a big role in decision-making because they’re nudging you through the world in a way that will bring about the most amount of pleasure possible. In effect, differing levels of dopamine from brain to brain will affect how strongly one is motivated toward different behaviors. One key way this plays out in our personalities is in how introverted or extraverted we are.
Extraverted people are those who tend to “turn outward” and seek mental stimulation from external stimuli. Introverted people, on the other hand, often prefer their own thoughts and feelings to the outer world and tend to “turn inward.” You probably have a good idea of where you fall on this continuum.
Converging research demonstrates that dopamine is at least partially responsible for our introversion or extraversion because of how dopamine rewards our brains. It turns out that when unexpected rewards happen to extraverts, their brains actually release more dopamine than in their introverted counterparts. Another way of putting it is: if life were a video game, then extraverts get more pleasure points every time they’re positively surprised. So this makes them extra motivated to seek out outside stimulation.
So what does different susceptibility to dopamine look like in practice? Well, extraverts consistently rate themselves as more optimistic and happier than introverts. They’re also more likely to seek novelty and are more motivated to learn– and it’s no wonder, since external stimulation brings them extra pleasure.
You may be wondering if it’s simply better to be an extravert. It’s true that introversion has been linked to anhedonia and depression. But, despite extraverts experiencing more pleasure, there are also downsides to this design feature. For one thing, additional susceptibility to dopamine makes it more difficult for extraverts to override temptation for things that are bad for us. Extraversion has been linked with obesity and addiction, for example.
Now, let’s zoom back out for a moment and give your right hemisphere some big-picture context to consider. Dopamine is just one neurotransmitter of hundreds that drive the way you think, feel, and behave. Others include oxytocin, serotonin, and cortisol– and they’re all interacting with each other in a delicate balance. If varied levels of just one of these can affect your experience of the world so profoundly, it’s no wonder that the unique mixology of our neural cocktails creates such starkly different individuals!
In the last two sections, we discussed how the brain features of lopsidedness and neurochemistry affect our behavior. Now, in the final section, we’ll explore how our life experiences shape our brains. We’ll discover how our past life creates the lens through which we see the present.
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Experience creates lenses through which we filter the world.
Who here remembers The Dress?
No, not one worn by Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, or Monica Lewinsky.
The Dress was a viral image that took the internet by storm in 2015. It’s a photograph of a striped dress that about half the population saw as blue and black, and the other half as white and gold. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, look up “The Dress” on Wikipedia. What colors do you see?
Dr. Prat posits that The Dress went viral because it’s a very stark example of how our brains create alternate versions of reality. It’s fascinating to discover that even something as basic as the colors of a static image are open to interpretation!
Even when told that the “actual” colors of The Dress in the photograph are blue and black, the people who see it as white and gold usually cannot see its true colors unless the lighting of the image is altered. As it turns out, the reason for this is at least partially due to our life experiences.
The lighting in the viral image is ambiguous, so our brain relies on a shortcut to make sense of the incomplete data it’s faced with. This results in brains with different past experiences making different assumptions about the source of the light, which in turn affects how the brain perceives the colors of The Dress.
If you’re seeing The Dress as white and gold, your brain is assuming that The Dress is in shadow and that the light is coming from behind. Research suggests that this is likely because you’re more familiar with natural lighting and that you’re an early riser. On the other hand, if you’re seeing The Dress as black and blue, your brain is assuming the lighting is coming from the front, probably through an artificial source. This perception correlates with people who tend to be night owls and have more experience with artificial lighting.
Our brains are shaped so profoundly by previous experience due to a process called Hebbian learning. In a nutshell, the theory of Hebbian learning states that when our brains learn something new, neurons are activated and connected with other neurons. At first these connections are weak, but they grow stronger every time the experience repeats, so the process becomes more intuitive. It’s what people mean when they say “neurons that fire together, wire together.”
Hebbian learning influences your brain over your lifespan and allows you to make shortcuts that are critical to your survival, so that you can make split-second inferences without processing an event as new every time. That would be time-consuming and exhausting. Hebbian learning is also at play when we learn skills like driving, that are difficult at first but become more and more automatic over time. But experience-based shortcuts can also lead us into some problematic territories that can be difficult to correct, such as biases.
A telling example of this has been demonstrated many times: people are more likely to assume an ambiguous object is a gun when presented next to a Black person’s face than a white person’s face. This mental shortcut arises without a correlation to someone’s actual experiences with Black people and guns, especially considering that gun ownership is common across many demographics in the United States.
So where do these biased mental shortcuts come from, if not from direct experience? Well, if your brain does not have direct experiences with something in real life– or some people– then it’s more likely that its database entry on a given topic is based on what it sees on television or in fictitious depictions. In this way, systemic biases can quite literally shape the way your brain perceives the world.
Changing your brain’s perception isn’t as simple as just becoming aware of your biases. Remember, those who see The Dress as white and gold can’t flip their perception just because they discover it’s actually blue and black. Instead, correcting your brain’s shortcuts is more likely to occur if you expose yourself to diverse and real-world experiences, and become more intentional about the types of narratives you feed your mind.
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Small differences in our brains that we’re either born with or adapt to create big differences in our thoughts, behaviors, emotions, and abilities. Just consider that the DNA blueprints that underlie chimp and human brains differ by only 5 percent– but that 5% allows humans to send complex messages in split-seconds across the globe, while the chimp’s day is occupied with finding food and picking nits.
Or on a much subtler level, think about how differently you feel in the morning versus in the evening. The changes in neurochemical signaling throughout the course of just twelve hours can cause a significant difference in how you’re experiencing the world. The point is: our differences matter, and a neuroscience that looks into them can provide a window into the self.
November 8, 2022
Upfront, I'll add that I am biased because I am a friend of the author. That being said, it is meaningless for me to acknowledge that because I would be harsh if this wasn't good... but it is. This book is a rare find. It is clearly both a theory and research book that is presented in a digestible manner and yet not watering things down. As a researcher, it is strange to read this in the non-academic format and at times I wanted more details on cited work, but that was not an issue at all. Plus for the non-researcher, it can be related to yourself, if that kind of thing matters to you.
What is remarkable about this account (theory) is that it covers the neuroscience of cognition across many levels. It links chemistry, biology, neurology, psychology and cognology (ok, cognition) into one coherent story about how the brain works in a large variety of real-world situations. I'll mention it again, this is rare. Too often researchers focus on narrow accounts (not saying this is not a bad thing) and vaguely consider other levels. This account goes into details across levels and connects them in a way that tells a whole story. As a researcher this is an easily digestible systems theory that can lead one to consider other questions and the desire to seek out other research.
For the non-researchers out there, this book tells a story about how one's brain leads to what we think and do that is grounded in real research. It has quite a few humorous real world references from the time we are currently experiencing and as such should be relatable to all of us.
What is remarkable about this account (theory) is that it covers the neuroscience of cognition across many levels. It links chemistry, biology, neurology, psychology and cognology (ok, cognition) into one coherent story about how the brain works in a large variety of real-world situations. I'll mention it again, this is rare. Too often researchers focus on narrow accounts (not saying this is not a bad thing) and vaguely consider other levels. This account goes into details across levels and connects them in a way that tells a whole story. As a researcher this is an easily digestible systems theory that can lead one to consider other questions and the desire to seek out other research.
For the non-researchers out there, this book tells a story about how one's brain leads to what we think and do that is grounded in real research. It has quite a few humorous real world references from the time we are currently experiencing and as such should be relatable to all of us.
June 15, 2023
The Neuroscience of You by Chantel Prat, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington. The book explores the science of the brain and how it affects our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Prat argues that every brain is different, and that our quirks and differences are what make us unique.
The Neuroscience of You is a well-written and informative book that provides a comprehensive overview of the science of the brain. Prat's personal stories and anecdotes help to make the book more relatable and engaging. The author did a great job of explaining complex neuroscience concepts in a way that was easy to understand. The book is also full of practical tips on how to understand and improve your own brain.
However the author sometimes went off on tangents that were not relevant to the main topic. The book could have used more visuals, such as fMRI images to help illustrate the concepts.
If you are interested in learning more about the science of the brain then I highly recommend reading The Neuroscience of You.
The Neuroscience of You is a well-written and informative book that provides a comprehensive overview of the science of the brain. Prat's personal stories and anecdotes help to make the book more relatable and engaging. The author did a great job of explaining complex neuroscience concepts in a way that was easy to understand. The book is also full of practical tips on how to understand and improve your own brain.
However the author sometimes went off on tangents that were not relevant to the main topic. The book could have used more visuals, such as fMRI images to help illustrate the concepts.
If you are interested in learning more about the science of the brain then I highly recommend reading The Neuroscience of You.
July 2, 2023
Every brain is unique. There's so little that is binary in biology. Everything is on a spectrum and is a combination of so many things. In this book, that is all kept in mind while Chantel Prat details the things we know about our brains based on studies. I like that she acknowledges the biases in these studies and is aware of any generalizations. Most things are a combination of nature and nurture and that idea is at the core of this book. A scientifically skeptical attitude.
Each chapter has some kind of activity to do to better understand your own brain. Some of those activities take the form of quizzes while others are more self reflective or actual physical activities to try out. Since I consumed this book as an audiobook, I only actively did a few of these activities. Images were included in a pdf, but I did not take the time to open the pdf during my commute time while listening to this book. The chapter content is still informative and insightful even without having my individualized results of the activities. Some chapters lean more on your participation than others.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It gave me more insight into how my brain works and how similar and dissimilar it is to others'. I enjoyed the studies showcased in this book. Prat provides excellent context and calls out how biases may come into play with sample sizes and population representation. I liked Prat's personal experiences and experiments especially those done with her daughter.
I've been on a nonfiction kick recently and I love how I often find commonalities between the books even when they're on different subjects. This book brought in concepts from a physics book I recently read as well as a jellyfish book. I've been reading a lot of PNW (especially Seattle) authors and I love how often the Seattle Aquarium comes up in science books.
I give this book a 4/5. If you want to learn more about yourself and thus also others, you'll like this one. You don't need a lot of prior knowledge in brain anatomy, psychology, or philosophy to find merit in this book.
Each chapter has some kind of activity to do to better understand your own brain. Some of those activities take the form of quizzes while others are more self reflective or actual physical activities to try out. Since I consumed this book as an audiobook, I only actively did a few of these activities. Images were included in a pdf, but I did not take the time to open the pdf during my commute time while listening to this book. The chapter content is still informative and insightful even without having my individualized results of the activities. Some chapters lean more on your participation than others.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It gave me more insight into how my brain works and how similar and dissimilar it is to others'. I enjoyed the studies showcased in this book. Prat provides excellent context and calls out how biases may come into play with sample sizes and population representation. I liked Prat's personal experiences and experiments especially those done with her daughter.
I've been on a nonfiction kick recently and I love how I often find commonalities between the books even when they're on different subjects. This book brought in concepts from a physics book I recently read as well as a jellyfish book. I've been reading a lot of PNW (especially Seattle) authors and I love how often the Seattle Aquarium comes up in science books.
I give this book a 4/5. If you want to learn more about yourself and thus also others, you'll like this one. You don't need a lot of prior knowledge in brain anatomy, psychology, or philosophy to find merit in this book.
November 11, 2023
Loving this take on Neuroscience! So often students of neuroscience are taught about the average human brain, or what happens when part of the brain gets damaged. But individual differences between humans rarely get a mention unless it’s in reference to some kind of disorder.
Individual differences may be a popular topic in the field of psychology, but now that we have better technology for it, we can examine biological differences to the same extent that we study psychological ones.
Prat’s book begins very well with a description of lopsidedness of the brain, and this chapter even includes exercises to help determine how lopsided your brain may be. (TBH, I didn’t really need the exercise to know that I’m more left brain.) And it struck me that this approach is a great way to garner interest in neuroscience, so readers can learn what makes them the way they are.
Part one covers the costs and benefits of various brain differences, in terms of lopsidedness, neurotransmitter system strength, and brainwave synchronisation. Then part two covers brain functions, including focus, adapting, navigating, exploration, and social connection.
The prose is rich with juicy detail, but I won’t repeat much of that here, because if you’re interested, you should definitely read the book.
Prat has an engaging writing style, making the subtopics easily digestible and understood. This is helped in particular with her use of metaphor, even referencing swipe-rights on Tinder!
There was one part however, where the metaphors became too convoluted: “Each of the corresponding electrical storms shapes the landscape of your brain’s database.”
The book has a good flow to it, each chapter building on what was learned in the one previous. And there are convenient summaries at the end of every chapter.
The reference section takes up almost half of the tome, so suffice to say, this has all been very thoroughly researched.
All in all, I have to recommend this book to anyone interested because it’s both very insightful and well written. Not to mention very intriguing and informative.
In places it even reads like a novel, and I felt particularly invested in the story of Prat’s neuroscience work with her husband. Highly recommended.
Individual differences may be a popular topic in the field of psychology, but now that we have better technology for it, we can examine biological differences to the same extent that we study psychological ones.
Prat’s book begins very well with a description of lopsidedness of the brain, and this chapter even includes exercises to help determine how lopsided your brain may be. (TBH, I didn’t really need the exercise to know that I’m more left brain.) And it struck me that this approach is a great way to garner interest in neuroscience, so readers can learn what makes them the way they are.
Part one covers the costs and benefits of various brain differences, in terms of lopsidedness, neurotransmitter system strength, and brainwave synchronisation. Then part two covers brain functions, including focus, adapting, navigating, exploration, and social connection.
The prose is rich with juicy detail, but I won’t repeat much of that here, because if you’re interested, you should definitely read the book.
Prat has an engaging writing style, making the subtopics easily digestible and understood. This is helped in particular with her use of metaphor, even referencing swipe-rights on Tinder!
There was one part however, where the metaphors became too convoluted: “Each of the corresponding electrical storms shapes the landscape of your brain’s database.”
The book has a good flow to it, each chapter building on what was learned in the one previous. And there are convenient summaries at the end of every chapter.
The reference section takes up almost half of the tome, so suffice to say, this has all been very thoroughly researched.
All in all, I have to recommend this book to anyone interested because it’s both very insightful and well written. Not to mention very intriguing and informative.
In places it even reads like a novel, and I felt particularly invested in the story of Prat’s neuroscience work with her husband. Highly recommended.
August 11, 2022
This was a really good book. I found it so easy to follow and it was so interesting. If you have ever wanted to know what type of thinker you are. Then this book is for you.
Not only does the author talk about the research she is involved in but also has little tests you can take to see what type of thinker you are. She explains what side of the brain you are using. It also uses examples of people who has adhd which will definitely be useful for those who have this. I read it in one sitting. I was so engrossed in this book I lost track of time. It was so fascinating, interesting and so very useful. I definitely learned so much from reading it and can't wait to read sections of this book again and take all the tests. This is a book that you will re read time and time again. I love how it explains everyone's brain works differently. It was obvious that the author had a vast knowledge in this area. She explains everything so well. I definitely recommend this book to all those who have a interest in learning how there brain works.
So much praise goes out to the author and publishers for creating such a fascinating book that will be so useful and interesting to many people.
Not only does the author talk about the research she is involved in but also has little tests you can take to see what type of thinker you are. She explains what side of the brain you are using. It also uses examples of people who has adhd which will definitely be useful for those who have this. I read it in one sitting. I was so engrossed in this book I lost track of time. It was so fascinating, interesting and so very useful. I definitely learned so much from reading it and can't wait to read sections of this book again and take all the tests. This is a book that you will re read time and time again. I love how it explains everyone's brain works differently. It was obvious that the author had a vast knowledge in this area. She explains everything so well. I definitely recommend this book to all those who have a interest in learning how there brain works.
So much praise goes out to the author and publishers for creating such a fascinating book that will be so useful and interesting to many people.
August 2, 2025
Really interesting book on the neuroscience that makes up each and everyone of us. However the introduction ruined this book for me as did not hook me but rather did the opposite. It felt like this roadmap she was trying to layout was just a confusing trip of jumping around to random parts of the brain. Despite that i pushed on and was curious in the information she was providing, but countless times she would talk about a concept for too long it go boring. The oxytocin bit was beat like a dead horse like I understand it creates connection but we didnt need 40 pages to understand that.
Overall its a friendly book to people that dont know much about neuroscience but beyond that i probably wouldn’t recommend it
Overall its a friendly book to people that dont know much about neuroscience but beyond that i probably wouldn’t recommend it
April 8, 2023
This feels like your smart friend is going over research articles with you and for the most part the subject matter is super fascinating and the concept of explaining various things our brains do to make us individuals is intriguing. My ONLY complaint - virtually EVERY page has a footnote. Sometimes they're informative, sometimes funny, sometimes cute, most of the time UNNECESSARY and excessive. I mean, they could just be parentheses. What is this, INFINITE JEST? I hate having to stop my flow to check the footnote only to be confronted with some cute aside, cute as it is. Like seriously, EVERY PAGE. And then having to find where I was in the regular text.
January 24, 2023
An engaging introduction to a fascinating subject. While the information is thorough, the best part of this book are the witty comments and fun quizzes and tests. It could have used a few more subheadings- but otherwise very good. I especially liked the part about learning the languages- yes, I know several of them.
July 29, 2024
Really good for background and understanding fundamentals. Enjoyed the interactive activities and the optional workbook!
June 6, 2025
Super fascinating and deeply engaging! This was very much a nerdy read for me haha
It took me some time to get through because it can be a bit technical, but not overwhelmingly so. I appreciate the author's exploration of concepts related to the brain and how we construct our realities using analogies and examples that were easy to digest.
Reading this just made me realize how much I loooove neuroscience and psychology and all things related to the brain and the mind :)
It took me some time to get through because it can be a bit technical, but not overwhelmingly so. I appreciate the author's exploration of concepts related to the brain and how we construct our realities using analogies and examples that were easy to digest.
Reading this just made me realize how much I loooove neuroscience and psychology and all things related to the brain and the mind :)
November 10, 2022
A gem of a book!!!
It was interesting to read how experience creates lenses through which we filter the world. Alternative realities manenoz :-)
It was interesting to read how experience creates lenses through which we filter the world. Alternative realities manenoz :-)
November 4, 2022
Chantel Prat, a professor at the University of Washington, says neuroscience's focus on how brains work "on average," while obviously valuable, is getting in the way of the research that helps us understand the differences between us, and our individual strengths and weakness.
She writes and narrates in a lively, informal tone, and in each chapter focuses on different areas and functions of our brains, in which we can identify ways in which different people can function very differently
Some of those differences relate to which side of your brain is dominant. The most obvious sign of that is handedness. But brain hemisphere dominance isn't an either/or thing, nor is handedness. It's a continuum, and while most people are left-brain dominant and right-handed, it's a matter of degree. I'm right-handed, more or less, but there are things I do with my left hand, and things I do with whichever hand is more convenient. This includes, when I have to toss coins into a highway toll collection basket, I do it with my left had because that's obviously more convenient than using my right hand to tolls the coins a longer distance across my body. My very right-handed sister and I were mutually astonished when we were taking a trip together and she, while driving, did it with her right hand. She couldn't imagine doing it with her left hand and not having the coins miss the basket because she couldn't throw them accurately enough with her left hand.
But that's a minor example, and there are more important effects. And most people are somewhere in between, like me, with the dominance mostly right or left, but not completely. It affects how other other things than hand dominance work, and how you approach tasks and problems.
There are chapters on how other aspects of the brain, and the relative sizes of its different parts, affect how we focus, and how and why we do it differently; navigation; and how we connect to each other and the world. Prat is a happy extrovert, and happy to talk about the advantages of that, but also takes about the interesting advantages of being an introvert--including a somewhat more realistic approach to the world, and less susceptibility to (my phrasing, not hers) talking yourself into nonsense.
Prat talks about her daughter, one of the really tiny percentage of people who are not only completely left-handed, but has the functions of her brain completely flipped, the left side doing what the right normally does, and the right side doing what the left normally does.
There are little tests in the chapters, that you can use to get a better idea of how your brain works. They're simple, clear, and can be fun as well as informative. They're about understanding yourself, not being graded.
Scattered throughout, in addition to all the excellent science covered in the main text, Prat scatters fun, chatty footnotes with information that is, in its own way, equally interesting and entertaining.
It's a lot of fun, as well as informative. Recommended.
I bought this audiobook.
She writes and narrates in a lively, informal tone, and in each chapter focuses on different areas and functions of our brains, in which we can identify ways in which different people can function very differently
Some of those differences relate to which side of your brain is dominant. The most obvious sign of that is handedness. But brain hemisphere dominance isn't an either/or thing, nor is handedness. It's a continuum, and while most people are left-brain dominant and right-handed, it's a matter of degree. I'm right-handed, more or less, but there are things I do with my left hand, and things I do with whichever hand is more convenient. This includes, when I have to toss coins into a highway toll collection basket, I do it with my left had because that's obviously more convenient than using my right hand to tolls the coins a longer distance across my body. My very right-handed sister and I were mutually astonished when we were taking a trip together and she, while driving, did it with her right hand. She couldn't imagine doing it with her left hand and not having the coins miss the basket because she couldn't throw them accurately enough with her left hand.
But that's a minor example, and there are more important effects. And most people are somewhere in between, like me, with the dominance mostly right or left, but not completely. It affects how other other things than hand dominance work, and how you approach tasks and problems.
There are chapters on how other aspects of the brain, and the relative sizes of its different parts, affect how we focus, and how and why we do it differently; navigation; and how we connect to each other and the world. Prat is a happy extrovert, and happy to talk about the advantages of that, but also takes about the interesting advantages of being an introvert--including a somewhat more realistic approach to the world, and less susceptibility to (my phrasing, not hers) talking yourself into nonsense.
Prat talks about her daughter, one of the really tiny percentage of people who are not only completely left-handed, but has the functions of her brain completely flipped, the left side doing what the right normally does, and the right side doing what the left normally does.
There are little tests in the chapters, that you can use to get a better idea of how your brain works. They're simple, clear, and can be fun as well as informative. They're about understanding yourself, not being graded.
Scattered throughout, in addition to all the excellent science covered in the main text, Prat scatters fun, chatty footnotes with information that is, in its own way, equally interesting and entertaining.
It's a lot of fun, as well as informative. Recommended.
I bought this audiobook.
October 7, 2022
I love neuroscience and was immediately drawn to this book! Chantel is a great writer and I love how her personality shines through in the writing as well. Even the most fascinating information can be a bit dry with certain authors, but certainly not with her. I really enjoyed her sharing various experiments and studies that they performed and the information gleaned. This book has some intriguing insights as I was really happy with how the author presented the information in an informative, but neutral manner, as opposed to pushing personal platforms like so many recent releases. The experiments in the book and on her site were fun and engaging and overall, I felt the book does help the reader to both understand oneself a little better and others. And at the very least, to understand that we have no idea how other individuals' minds work and should act and judge accordingly, with more grace and kindness.
Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.
Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.
October 20, 2022
This was really interesting. This will be a book that I will go through certain parts, again and again. Especially some of the tests. This had a lot of fresh, up-to-date research that has been going on and what certain findings currently may suggest. It is written in a fun, entertaining style that really grips the reader. I think it has broad mass appeal due to the writing style. I learned a lot through reading this book. Obviously there is still so much we don't know, we only understand a tiny bit of the puzzle, but this was great to learn about what we currently know and what is currently being tested/what may be discovered in the near future. I really reccomend this if learning about the brain interests you. I will be keeping an eye to see if she releases any other books, no matter the subject matter, I will read them cause I enjoyed this book immensely.
August 21, 2025
"...differences in how our brains work shape not only the way we see the world but the decisions we make about how to behave in it."
"...your experiences helped to shape you into what you are today."
"...every single life experience changes your brain."
"The fact that something about your brain causes you to think, feel, or behave in a certain way does not necessarily mean either that you were born that way or that it can't change. The truth is that your brain is a moving target."
"...because things like "maleness" and "femaleness" are very strongly entangled in nature/nurture interactions. For example, from the moment a baby is born, adults use language differently with males and females. A baby's biology, from moment zero, shapes their experiences based on the expectations people have of them."
"You are neither an actor in nor the passive observer of your reality. You are the creator of it."
"However, contrary to the popular notion of the "left-brained" analytical person and the "right-brained" creative type, the most striking distinction between human brains isn't which hemisphere is "in charge" of things. Instead, differences in our characteristics ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving are driven by our degree of lopsidedness, or how big the differences between our two hemispheres are."
"In the most lopsided brains, the left hemisphere takes more of a divide-and-conquer approach, using expert modules to focus on the tree-level details, while the right hemisphere is specialized for looking at the big picture, or the forest level."
"For now, suffice to say that although all brains have both forest and tree capabilities somewhere, the more lopsided your brain is, the more likely it is that you will come to focus on specific features, or details, to solve complex problems, while those with more balanced brains are more likely to rely on the big picture. And keep in mind that for both types of brains, experience with a particular task can shift you toward a more detail-oriented information processor."
"...the disadvantages of having extremely lopsided brains include increased vulnerability to injury, as well as potentially weaker functioning in things that require seeing the big picture."
"One person's baseline mental state could feel like you after a shot of espresso, while for another, your morning brain before coffee or tea might be their personal high."
"As it turns out, when unexpected rewards happen to extraverts, their brains release more dopamine than when something with the same value happens to introverts."
"In fact, 90 percent of the serotonin in your body is created in your digestive tracts."
"You may have been born with a certain type of brain engineering, but the environment your brain exists in also has a significant effect on how it works."
"Though it can feel like gaslighting when someone has a different reality from yours, it's also entirely possible that you both were reporting your version of the truth. At the end of the day, the way people remember a story reflects differences in the way they experienced the original event. The scientific explanation for this bolts down to differences in perspective."
"...your brain isn't just passively viewing the world... It is creating your understanding of reality through a lens shaped by your life experiences."
"...the less experience you have in real life with a particular type of person, place, or thing, the more likely it is that your brain's database entry for that topic is based on what you see on television, or read about in the news, on social media, or in fictitious depictions. Remember that your brain doesn't really care if you're experiencing something, remembering it, or imagining it—all of these mental experiences count. In this way, many of our brains literally become shaped by the systemic biases of our society as we consume the versions of reality created by others."
"...we need to be more intentional about what kinds of experiences feed our brains."
"...it's important to become aware of the sources of information we're feeding our brains."
"Curiosity is a mental state that both precedes and facilitates learning. Put simply, curiosity is the subjective feeling one gets when their brain wants to take in a piece of information in front of them. As a result, the more curious you feel in any given situation, the more prepared your brain is to remember what happens next."
"...your curiosity in any given situation depends on what you already know about the world. Put simply, your curiosity gets piqued when something either surprises you based on what you thought you knew or because you experience a knowledge gap—a type of mental conflict that occurs when you need more information before deciding what to do in a given situation."
"...surprise can drive learning as much as, or more than, pure interest."
"...each new piece of information we acquire shifts our knowledge maps around a bit, because this knowledge becomes connected to other things we know. And at the center of this knowledge map is our understanding of our selves and our place in the universe. So even though I might never go into outer space, or need to estimate the age of a jellyfish, the things I learn about infinity and immortality change the way I think about myself. Importantly for the framework, they also change the kinds of predictions I might make about what I might find in unexplored spaces."
"Psychologists who study how we form and hold beliefs have long known that when people are surprised by information that is inconsistent with that they believe to be true, they don't often behave rationally. Instead, they ignore or even discredit evidence that is inconsistent with their beliefs—a phenomenon known as confirmation bias."
"...your experiences helped to shape you into what you are today."
"...every single life experience changes your brain."
"The fact that something about your brain causes you to think, feel, or behave in a certain way does not necessarily mean either that you were born that way or that it can't change. The truth is that your brain is a moving target."
"...because things like "maleness" and "femaleness" are very strongly entangled in nature/nurture interactions. For example, from the moment a baby is born, adults use language differently with males and females. A baby's biology, from moment zero, shapes their experiences based on the expectations people have of them."
"You are neither an actor in nor the passive observer of your reality. You are the creator of it."
"However, contrary to the popular notion of the "left-brained" analytical person and the "right-brained" creative type, the most striking distinction between human brains isn't which hemisphere is "in charge" of things. Instead, differences in our characteristics ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving are driven by our degree of lopsidedness, or how big the differences between our two hemispheres are."
"In the most lopsided brains, the left hemisphere takes more of a divide-and-conquer approach, using expert modules to focus on the tree-level details, while the right hemisphere is specialized for looking at the big picture, or the forest level."
"For now, suffice to say that although all brains have both forest and tree capabilities somewhere, the more lopsided your brain is, the more likely it is that you will come to focus on specific features, or details, to solve complex problems, while those with more balanced brains are more likely to rely on the big picture. And keep in mind that for both types of brains, experience with a particular task can shift you toward a more detail-oriented information processor."
"...the disadvantages of having extremely lopsided brains include increased vulnerability to injury, as well as potentially weaker functioning in things that require seeing the big picture."
"One person's baseline mental state could feel like you after a shot of espresso, while for another, your morning brain before coffee or tea might be their personal high."
"As it turns out, when unexpected rewards happen to extraverts, their brains release more dopamine than when something with the same value happens to introverts."
"In fact, 90 percent of the serotonin in your body is created in your digestive tracts."
"You may have been born with a certain type of brain engineering, but the environment your brain exists in also has a significant effect on how it works."
"Though it can feel like gaslighting when someone has a different reality from yours, it's also entirely possible that you both were reporting your version of the truth. At the end of the day, the way people remember a story reflects differences in the way they experienced the original event. The scientific explanation for this bolts down to differences in perspective."
"...your brain isn't just passively viewing the world... It is creating your understanding of reality through a lens shaped by your life experiences."
"...the less experience you have in real life with a particular type of person, place, or thing, the more likely it is that your brain's database entry for that topic is based on what you see on television, or read about in the news, on social media, or in fictitious depictions. Remember that your brain doesn't really care if you're experiencing something, remembering it, or imagining it—all of these mental experiences count. In this way, many of our brains literally become shaped by the systemic biases of our society as we consume the versions of reality created by others."
"...we need to be more intentional about what kinds of experiences feed our brains."
"...it's important to become aware of the sources of information we're feeding our brains."
"Curiosity is a mental state that both precedes and facilitates learning. Put simply, curiosity is the subjective feeling one gets when their brain wants to take in a piece of information in front of them. As a result, the more curious you feel in any given situation, the more prepared your brain is to remember what happens next."
"...your curiosity in any given situation depends on what you already know about the world. Put simply, your curiosity gets piqued when something either surprises you based on what you thought you knew or because you experience a knowledge gap—a type of mental conflict that occurs when you need more information before deciding what to do in a given situation."
"...surprise can drive learning as much as, or more than, pure interest."
"...each new piece of information we acquire shifts our knowledge maps around a bit, because this knowledge becomes connected to other things we know. And at the center of this knowledge map is our understanding of our selves and our place in the universe. So even though I might never go into outer space, or need to estimate the age of a jellyfish, the things I learn about infinity and immortality change the way I think about myself. Importantly for the framework, they also change the kinds of predictions I might make about what I might find in unexplored spaces."
"Psychologists who study how we form and hold beliefs have long known that when people are surprised by information that is inconsistent with that they believe to be true, they don't often behave rationally. Instead, they ignore or even discredit evidence that is inconsistent with their beliefs—a phenomenon known as confirmation bias."
November 21, 2022
This was a really interesting and well informed deep dive into how brains work and all the different processes and elements that can vary from person to person. However, in the spirit of “every brain is different” I was hoping for more of an exploration and embrace of the range of neurodiversity. I was disappointed that there wasn’t more on cognitive variations like autism, and that when it was discussed it was described using the language of deficit and impairment. Autistic people, scholars and authors (Devon Price, Nick Swift among others) have spoken and written about the need to leave a pathology paradigm behind and view autism as a natural part of a neurodiverse population, and I wish Prat had more knowledge of this movement.
April 6, 2023
It’s rare for me to not finish a book but I could not get through this one. In half the book I took no worthwhile notes, and just kept thinking, yep, it’s kind of obvious what you’re saying. If you want to someone to tell you that left-handedness is not all or nothing and different sides of a brain have different purposes, I guess you can read it. I don’t find that very insightful.
Instead I’d recommend Brain Rules. It’s less academic and much more practical.
Instead I’d recommend Brain Rules. It’s less academic and much more practical.
December 6, 2022
I listened to the audio of this book, and think it would be better as a paper read, even though the tone of it is very conversational. There are a number of tests the author has included as part of "understanding your brain" and they felt like they would have been much better if you had the instructions and questions in writing.
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