The Well-Tuned Brain: Neuroscience and the Life Well Lived

by Peter C. Whybrow

The Well-Tuned Brain is a call to action. Swept along by the cascading advances of today’s technology, most of us take for granted that progress brings improvement. Despite spectacular material advance, however, the evidence grows that we are failing to create a sustainable future for humanity. We are out of tune with the planet that nurtures us.

Technology itself is not the problem, as Whybrow explains, but rather our behavior. Throughout its evolution the ancient brain that guides us each day has been focused on short-term survival. But fortunately we are intensely social creatures. Without the caring behaviors that flow from intimate attachments to others, we would be relying on a brain that is only marginally adapted to the complexity of the problems we must now face together. Today we must grapple with survival, not in its immediacy but over the long term.

The first step in finding our way forward is to reexamine who we are as creatures of this planet. To this end, Whybrow takes us on a fascinating tour of self-discovery, drawing extensively upon his decades of experience as a psychiatrist and his broad knowledge of neuroscience and human behavior.

Illustrated throughout with engaging personal stories, the book’s trove of cutting-edge science is enriched by philosophical, historical, and cultural perspectives. What emerges is a summons to rediscover the essential virtues of earlier nurturing, of mentored education, and an engagement with the natural world through curiosity and imagination.

Neuroscience can open the search for a better future. But technology alone will not save us. To achieve success we will need the strength and wisdom of our better nature as humane social beings.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Science, Neuroscience, Brain, Philosophy

1 pages, Audio CD

First published May 18, 2015

Reviews

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting thesis. Whybrow is a neuropsychiatrist who has studied the behavior and chemistry of the brain, but this book pulls in the full scope of life. He espouses that the three critical facets of life hinge on our genetic makeup, our life's experiences, and the culture we live in. I certainly agree on that. He then suggests that the earth will take care of all of us when we begin to use our brain intelligently to understand moral behavior, plan for the long term instead of looking for instant gratification, start understanding how a good educational system is structured, and understand what a good diet is. I can agree on that. What he doesn't address is the fact that we aren't all intellectuals and way too many of us are way too greedy to ever think of anything except ourselves. And his book is written in very scientific and technical prose to the point that it will be only a tiny percentage of Earth's 7 billion people who will ever read the book and attempt to lead us to a more intelligent status.

[Pegggggy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Listened in the car. much too much history and pretty unrelated personal stories for my taste, and not enough "what you can do to tune" (i.e. - remedy??) And the epilogue was wayyyyy too long.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would give the first part of the book (Who Do you Think You Are?) a 2 and the second part (How to Live?) a 4, and thus a 3 overall.

One of my biggest problems with Part I was Whybrow's use of the word "we." He frequently employs a generalized second person that obscures differences in social and economic power and thus narrows too much on individual-level diagnoses and solutions.

This lack of attentiveness to wider social structures can be seen in the invocation of "character" as a way to tame our instincts. Self-command is certainly a good value, and one not too often practiced. But a society of atomistic individuals displaying self-command is a rather uninspiring ideal. I would have liked to see a revised definition of character that manages to combine self-command with an activist instinct toward positive social transformation: a fusion of eliciting the best in oneself and working to elicit the best in each other. One can see this under the surface in some of the sections in Part II, but it's just lurking, never really asserted or explored.

His talk about cultivating meaningful personal relationships, revitalizing communal spaces, more sustainable food systems, education geared at the full self, and a stewardship ethic is all well-taken. He weaves together anecdotes and scientific research in an oft compelling and eminently readable way. But to get that bottom-up change that he says is essential, and that is a key to operationalizing any of this, then we need a more social understanding of self (and self-interest). His book at times feels like an attempt to reassert the need to read Adam Smith's "Theory of Moral Sentiments" along with "The Wealth of Nations"--the need for the moralization of economics. But the incentives of the system itself need to change, not just individual behavior. Changing the system, of course, will require changes in individuals, but we need to explore more the dynamic, bidirectional/cross-fertilizing nature of this.

[Jonathan Vazquez-Perez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Our brains are incredible but they're also glitchy. What I mean is there is a concept called vestigially which means that throughout evolution we developed phenotypes (in this case behaviors) that in one way or another helped us survive, our brains are still driven by instincts that were beneficial in the "african savanahs" or during the "caveman days" when things were dangerous and scarce.. with this being said, a lot of our vestigial behavior is prompting us to act in a way that maximizes short term reward, gives us a predilection to minimizing energy exertion, be very danger aware and paranoid, and gets us to enact instincts of splurge and excess. In plain english, it's easy for us to get stuck 1) thinking short term gratification over long term, 2) we are lazy thinking we have to conserve precious energy, 3) we develop fears, biases, victim thinking and stereotypes on things we don't understand 4) and although we live in a society of high affluence (here in USA) we still indulge in excess as our brains are thinking in scarcity. ON TOP of these vestigial behaviors we also have a society that pushes on those glitches for it's personal agenda or just out of cultural development, so it's a double edged sword..evolution and culture to re-enforce those old hard wired behaviors. The BRIGHT side to all this is that if we have awareness of this (I just gave you a bit) we can now move to a better place, because these is many people out there who although have the same brain still go on to use the executive part of their minds who has control of all these old behaviors (the prefrontal cortex) to move toward behaviors that are more long term focused and sustainable, because at the end of the day this comes down to economics, (the art of decision making with scarce resources).. we have limited time, energy and supplies. We can also create a culture where instead of fighting the uphill battle of being surrounded by stimulus that preys on that old wiring we can instead use a culture that celebrates our strong will, our ideals, long term thinking and a tempered behavior that doesn't create a "tragedy of the commons" situation for all of us.

[Lai Yunn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book revolves around a central theme of human instinctual reflexive thinking vs reflective conscious reasoning, and the tendency towards instant gratification vs long term gains; frequently relating to Adam Smith's concept of free market: the balancing between self interest and social sentiment.
It explored the theme from perspective of neuroscience and brain activity, historical events and social phenomenon. The writing is layman and easy to read through. However its heavily laden with wide range of references and quotes from Hayek to Darwin and many more, with little elaboration (not to my personal liking). Feels lengthy and repetitive at certain areas. Title feels slightly 'misleading' as it offers little insights on 'remedy'.

[Oxana Kotova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Мастрид.
Одна из лучших книг, погружающих в научпоп о нейрофизиологии.
В книге на примерах показано как строятся наши первичные реакции на стрессовые ситуации и как их можно редактировать сознательно.

Я бы отнесла ее в разряд настольных книг.

[Gusenica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Довольно интересная книга о мозге и о том, что пора бы задуматься о его "настройке". Если большую часть жизни мы живем "на автомате", используя привычки, которые сформировало или даже навязало нам наше окружение, то управляем ли мы сами своей жизнью?

[Alex Arasawa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting content, but a lot of it is bogged down by the verbose writing of the author.

[Abhishek Choudhary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of disconnected writing. Not at all a fan of writing style though the subject matter is very important. Also feel like book should have been longer and with more expositions at places.

[George F Greenwald · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for thinking people

Extraordinary expose on the human psyche; why we make good and bad decisions, and why we get "trapped" into wanting what we really don't need.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a well done book, but I was a little disappointed because I was expected more neuroscience. However, that's not his only purpose, which is to show how we need to change our behavior. Those more interested in economics fill find this a great book.

[Roger Wu · Rating 1 out of 5]

Good premise but was very thin and didn't really enlighten on anything.