Pleasing and accessible and of broader application than the title suggests, inasmuch as “we all have an extraordinary brain.”
A user-friendly tour of the brain and the curious things that go on inside of it, from splendidly practical visions to debilitating hallucinations.
The brain is inseparable from the body, even if, writes New Scientist writer and consultant Thomson, “all too often we think about our brains as being somehow separate from ourselves.” Of course, the concept of “ourselves” is not uniform: We see broad variations in the capabilities and workings of the brain, from normal to abnormal and all points between. Some of the most extraordinary brains aren’t particularly interesting in the thoughts that they generate; one of Thomson’s case studies possesses what is called “highly superior autobiographical memory,” by which a person can recall just about every detail of every moment he has lived. There’s a reason we forget, of course: It’s an evolutionary adaptation that enhances survival so that we pay attention to the oncoming lion or truck rather than being constantly enthralled by lingering memories. “The brain doesn’t tolerate inactivity,” the late Oliver Sacks told Thomson in an interview. Indeed, the brain makes inventive use of its resources; thus it is that some people associate particular colors, musical notes, or even tastes with particular words, which is sometimes a blessing and sometimes a curse. Thomson introduces a lot of good neuroscience lightly, explaining how we perceive reality, such as it is (one of her informants calls reality “a controlled hallucination, reined in by our senses”), and check in with ourselves (“our ability to sense the physical condition of our body is called interoception”). A bonus, along the way, are the author’s notes on such things as improving memory skills through the construction of memory palaces and other event-fixing tricks and training the brain how not to get lost, a highly useful skill indeed.
Pleasing and accessible and of broader application than the title suggests, inasmuch as “we all have an extraordinary brain.”Pub Date: June 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-239116-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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