This book review was written by Eugene Kernes
“Every single life experience changes your brain. Some of the changes are inconsequential and others are incremental. But on rare occasions, for better or for worse, a single event can change the way we work, forever.” – Chantel Prat, Introductions, Page 30
“Whether your brain relies on the forest or the trees to figure out what’s going on, the part I find most remarkable about this is that we don’t walk around feeling confused all the time, despite the fact that we’re constantly faced with incomplete or ambiguous information. The reason for this is that your brain simply fills in the blanks, using different types of information and computations to figure out what’s happening. And as you’ll learn throughout this book, this creates ample opportunity for different ways of interpreting the same input. Using its different mechanisms for understand the world, your brain builds a more concrete and complete story than it actually has the data to support. And I’m not talking only about how your brain interprets the stories it reads. I’m talking about the stories it creates as it produces your experience of reality.” – Chantel Prat, Chapter 1: Lopsided, Page 66
“One problem with this brain design is that it creates a lot
of noise. And the more chemical messages
there are floating around in the background, the more difficult it is for any
listening neuron to detect a whispered signal from its neighbor. Additionally, in a perfect world, each
neuron’s chemical message should correspond to some time-locked event in either
your outer or inner world. But if that
message isn’t received immediately, it can continue to echo around in
your brain. And as the time increases
between when a message is sent and when it’s received, so does the chance that
the message is no longer relevant. As
you might imagine, this creates a completely different type of noise.” – Chantel
Prat, Chapter 2: Mixology, Page 76
Is This An Overview?
Thinking and behavioral responses
are shaped by a mixture of biology and experience, a mixture of nature and
nurture. Influenced by how the brain
works, the design of the brain. Each
brain can better handle problems that its more suited for. Each brain is different, which means that each
brain processes information differently.
Leading to different understandings.
Different ways that information is interpreted within the broader
context. Different interpretations of
the same information, creates difficulty in trying to understand other
people. Not only do different people
respond differently to the same external stimuli, but the same individual can
respond differently to the same external stimuli. It takes a lot of effort to understand other
individuals.
How Does The Brain Influence Thinking?
The brain was evolutionary designed to adapt. To learn and adapt to the changing environment. The brain reconfigures its operations to do different tasks. The brain constantly fills in incomplete and ambiguous information. Different brains, interpret information differently. Creating different experiences of reality. The individual is an active creator of reality.
The brain causes thinking, feeling, and behavior. Those response were not determined at birth, and are capable of change. Responses that are a combination of biology and experiences. Every experience changes the brain. Sometimes the changes are inconsequential or incremental. Sometimes a single event changes a person’s life forever.
There are many neurotransmitters that drive thinking, feeling, and behaving. The various chemical messages can create a lot of noise. Each can influence the individual, but their influence depends on the environment, and how other communication systems are working in the brain.
Different parts of the brain work together to understand
information. Brain parts specialize and
adept, allowing better performance.
What Is Normal?
As every brain is different, it is very difficult to identify what is considered normal or typical. One criteria of what is typical, can be described as the frequency a brain feature occurs. Another criteria is functionality, defined by how the design feature works for a person in an environment. What matters is what can be done with the brain.
No individual fits into an average representative. Failure to understand difference leads to
incomplete data and incorrect conclusions about brain design.
Caveats?
The book does not provide definite
answers. Rather, the book raises more
questions about the ideas. There are
various critiques of how phycological experiments were done before, and how
they changed and improved. Providing various
limitations about what is known about the brain. The
purpose of the book is to provide a background to understanding the brain, to provide
basic information needed for the reader to understand their own brain.
