Review of A Million Things To Ask A Neuroscientist

I finished reading A Million Things To Ask A Neuroscientist: The brain made easy by Mike Tranter PhD.📚 How does our brain work? How do we remember, how can we learn new ideas? Does depression change your brain? Are just some of the questions the author answers in this book.

I’m not sold on this book, although I now understand better how the brain works and was also able to revalidate some of my knowledge about the brain and update some of my knowledge with more accurate information. But on the other hand, the book was not easy to read. It used a lot of acronyms which made it hard to understand the text.

One example of knowledge I could update was the idea that we have three different brains. We have three different brain types, but these types are not independent of each other. It is more like every kind of brain is building on top of each other. The brain evolved to form a new whole.

Another interesting fact – which relieves me a lot, is that you can still learn new things when you are an adult. The learning will be slower, but this is not directly a limitation of the brain but also caused by no longer being in a learning environment. The adult brain is fully capable of learning new things, be it languages or other items, and it looks like learning in the adult years helps against Alzheimer’s.

The book also discussed the topic of memories storage. A topic I’m inquisitive about. The short answer is: Memories are not stored like a movie. Instead, we save the needed information to recreate the film when we want to access a memory.

The chapters about brain phenomena are fascinating, like the Capgras syndrome – familiar persons suddenly appear as strangers or the High places phenomenon. The urge to jump when you are in high places or at a cliff and don’t have suicidal tendencies.

So the book does contain interesting information, but it is pretty hard to read due to using a lot of acronyms.

• /review
• /brain