The Neuroscience of You
How Every Brain Is Different and How to Understand Yours
(Sprache: Englisch)
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...
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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.
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Chapter 1Lopsided
The Two Sides of Your Brain's Story
If I were to show you a picture of your brain, the first thing you'd probably notice is that it looks like a big walnut (no offense), with two largely independent halves, or hemispheres, connected by a high-speed core. As strange as this might sound, it isn't a very unique brain design. In fact, all vertebrate animals have brains that are divided down the middle, and they have probably been engineered this way for hundreds of millions of years.
What makes human brains remarkable in this design space is how lopsided we are, on average. Differences in the size, shape, and patterns of connectivity in our left and right hemispheres leave us far from symmetrical. And as you'll learn in this chapter, these structural differences shape the way each side processes the information it receives.
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 characteristic ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving are driven by our degree of lopsidedness, or how big the differences between our two hemispheres are. And so, this book about the differences between brains will begin with a discussion of the fundamental divide within them. But before we get into the nitty-gritty details about how your brain looks, let's talk about why evolution might have landed on the different options in the first place. The idea, in essence, boils down to specialization.
The costs and benefits of brain specialization
To better understand the pros and cons of having a more lopsided or balanced brain design, let's imagine that your brain is a team made up of two people. If both members of your team are well rounded, and have comparable skill sets, it would be easiest, and most equitable, to distribute tasks
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between them randomly. On the other hand, if one member of your team has incredibly strong verbal skills, while the other is an excellent graphic designer, your team would perform better as a whole if the tasks were systematically assigned to the individual best qualified for the job.
Job assignment in the brain works a bit like this. If the two hemispheres were truly identical to each other, there would be no rhyme or reason to which functions they might come to perform. But as soon as they start to differ-even a little bit-an opportunity is created for one hemisphere to be better suited for certain types of jobs than for others. When this happens, the assignment of jobs across hemispheres becomes more systematic. And as the jobs that a particular brain region is asked to do become more similar to one another, that region can adapt, developing a more specialized structure that allows it to perform the particular type of tasks it's involved in even better.
I assume that the benefits of specialization are somewhat self-explanatory. If everything else were equal, many people would rather have an extremely talented graphic designer on their team than one with average skills. But what if that graphic designer was bad at everything else? If your whole team were made up of people with non-overlapping skills, what would happen if someone needed help or called in sick? One of the measurable costs to specialization in the brain is that the refinement process by which an area becomes specialized makes it better and better suited for doing fewer and fewer things.
Stefan Knecht and colleagues demonstrated this increased vulnerability associated with lopsidedness in a study that looked at language laterality-a term neuroscientists use to describe the extent to which any of your brain's functions come to depend more on one hemisphere than the other. To do so, they first measured changes in blood flow in the two hemispheres when 324
Job assignment in the brain works a bit like this. If the two hemispheres were truly identical to each other, there would be no rhyme or reason to which functions they might come to perform. But as soon as they start to differ-even a little bit-an opportunity is created for one hemisphere to be better suited for certain types of jobs than for others. When this happens, the assignment of jobs across hemispheres becomes more systematic. And as the jobs that a particular brain region is asked to do become more similar to one another, that region can adapt, developing a more specialized structure that allows it to perform the particular type of tasks it's involved in even better.
I assume that the benefits of specialization are somewhat self-explanatory. If everything else were equal, many people would rather have an extremely talented graphic designer on their team than one with average skills. But what if that graphic designer was bad at everything else? If your whole team were made up of people with non-overlapping skills, what would happen if someone needed help or called in sick? One of the measurable costs to specialization in the brain is that the refinement process by which an area becomes specialized makes it better and better suited for doing fewer and fewer things.
Stefan Knecht and colleagues demonstrated this increased vulnerability associated with lopsidedness in a study that looked at language laterality-a term neuroscientists use to describe the extent to which any of your brain's functions come to depend more on one hemisphere than the other. To do so, they first measured changes in blood flow in the two hemispheres when 324
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Autoren-Porträt von Chantel Prat
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.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Chantel Prat
- 2022, 384 Seiten, Maße: 15,8 x 23,5 cm, Gebunden, Englisch
- Verlag: Dutton
- ISBN-10: 1524746606
- ISBN-13: 9781524746605
- Erscheinungsdatum: 29.07.2022
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
Move over, outer space this book is a dazzling tour through inner space. Chantel Prat has a rare, remarkable gift for making neurons sing and dendrites dance, and she s written the smartest, clearest, and funniest book I ve ever read about the brain. Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again, and host of the TED podcast WorkLife
"Prat wants to help readers understand their brain.... She does so in a friendly, personable voice that makes the complexities of the brain accessible.... A highly readable, entertaining, and authoritative book. Recommended for all non-specialists interested in how the brain works."
Library Journal (starred)
"Numerous candidly written footnotes add comedic flair to the narrative, which will be appreciated by readers eager but intimidated to learn how and why their brains generate thoughts, feelings, and decision-making patterns..... [Prat] shines a positive light on how the brain operates from the inside out and from the outside in. An informal, highly accessible tour of neuroscience for general readers."
Kirkus
"Prat... covers the nature of the human brain in her lively and informative debut...There are lots of funny footnotes as well as cutting-edge research on nematode nervous systems, for example and her informal tone goes a long way in making her subject both understandable and enjoyable. This work of popular science sets itself apart."
Publishers Weekly
In The Neuroscience of You, Chantel Prat pulls off the nearly impossible feat of writing a book that is authoritative, personal, technically astute and charming. Prat offers a profound thesis: that there is wonder and beauty in understanding the variation in how brains function. Prat teaches us that these differences should not be fuel for division, but rather, the object of fascination, appreciation, and celebration.
C. Brandon Ogbunu, Yale University, Ideas contributor for Wired Magazine
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Smart, funny, irreverent reading this book is like downloading a PhD in neuroscience in one exuberant sitting. It s a must read for any budding neuroscientists out there, and anyone else who wants to know how our brains work and why it matters.
Anna Lembke, author of New York Times bestseller Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
We re all the same: human beings. At the same time, we re all different individuals. In her marvelous, accessible, often funny and always informative book, Chantel Prat reconciles this seeming paradox. Read this book; you ll understand and admire your species and your brain as never before. And you ll have a hell of a lot of fun getting there!
David P. Barash author most recently of Threats: Intimidation and its Discontents
Neuroscientists emphasize how most brains work, but finally here s a book that emphasizes how your brain works! Chantel Prat artfully describes why and how our brains differ skillfully interweaving accessible facts about genetics, environment, and brain science to help explain what makes you uniquely YOU! The book is a joy, the footnotes are hilarious, and the topic is of central importance to all those interested in human uniqueness, cognitive science, and how much we share and differ from the rest of humanity.
Patricia K Kuhl, cognitive neuroscientist, Member of the National Academy of Sciences, and author of The Scientist in the Crib
Anna Lembke, author of New York Times bestseller Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
We re all the same: human beings. At the same time, we re all different individuals. In her marvelous, accessible, often funny and always informative book, Chantel Prat reconciles this seeming paradox. Read this book; you ll understand and admire your species and your brain as never before. And you ll have a hell of a lot of fun getting there!
David P. Barash author most recently of Threats: Intimidation and its Discontents
Neuroscientists emphasize how most brains work, but finally here s a book that emphasizes how your brain works! Chantel Prat artfully describes why and how our brains differ skillfully interweaving accessible facts about genetics, environment, and brain science to help explain what makes you uniquely YOU! The book is a joy, the footnotes are hilarious, and the topic is of central importance to all those interested in human uniqueness, cognitive science, and how much we share and differ from the rest of humanity.
Patricia K Kuhl, cognitive neuroscientist, Member of the National Academy of Sciences, and author of The Scientist in the Crib
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