Book Review of 'How Your Brain Works'
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Book review of 'How Your Brain Works', published by New Scientist
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Book Review of 'How Your Brain Works'
- 1. HOW YOUR BRAIN WORKS NEW SCIENTIST REVIEWED BY JOEY YIP (6/19/2017)
- 2. CONTENTS 1. Welcome to your brain 2. Memory 3. Intelligence 4. Emotions 5. Sensation and perception 6. Ages of the brain 7. Sleep 8. Make the most of it
- 3. Welcome to Your Brain Birth of neuroscience – 2500 years ago with Hippocrates Brain – divided into 3 parts Figure 1: Structure of a neuron Figure 2: Synapses (controlled by neuromodulators)Figure 3: Human brain Figure 4: Areas of brain
- 4. Small World Big Connections Human brain weighs 1,400 grams 1,200 cubic centimetres 86 billion neurons 10^14 synapses 170,000 kilometres of nerve fibres Figure 5: Left and right hemi-spheres of the brain What Makes Human Brain Special? Cerebral hemispheres – bigger and better developed Frontal and prefrontal lobes The way neurons are connected
- 5. Memory The capacity to remember the past - integral part of human existence Three subtypes of memory storage – 1. Sensory, 2. Short-term and 3. Long-term Short-term memory – holding roughly 7 items of information for approx. 15 to 20 seconds, ie: Phone number: 9371239876 To retain longer, rehearse by repeating several times or get around by “chunking” larger pieces into meaningful units, ie: (937)-123 9876 Figure 6: Memory and brain
- 6. Long-term Memory Short-term memory stored as acoustic representations Long-term memory stored by meaning 4 main forms: 1. Semantic memories – knowledge of facts, ie: Paris, capital of France 2. Episodic memories – particular events from your life, ie: Graduation day, birthday 3. Explicit memories – consciously recalled events 4. Implicit memories – experiences that influence your behavior, feelings or thoughts w/o active recollection You may not recall the exact wording, but its meaning or gist should come back fairly easily.
- 7. How memories are formed? Formed by strengthened connections between neurons 1. Sniffing a rose -> creates sensory memory 2. Memory of it that lasted more than half a minute -> short-term 3. Hippocampi combine different aspects into a single memory -> long-term To store memory properly, the brain needs to: 1. Encode information in a storable form 2. Retain that information, and 3. Enable it to be accessed at a later point Failure in any of these leads us to forget.
- 8. Why we forget? Efficient forgetting – important for fully functioning memory. Forget = brain adaptively weeding out irrelevant/ out-dated information Actively retrieve and using information solidifies it in memory 6 tips to master memory: 1. Hit the sweet spot 2. Limber up 3. Make a gesture 4. Engage your nose (Trick from Andy Warhol – Well-organized library of perfumes) 5. Oil the cogs 6. Learn to forget
- 9. Intelligence IQ British psychologist, Charles Spearman observed individuals who do well on one mental test tend to do well on all of them Makes sense of differences in ability between individuals Figure 7: The “three stratum theory” of intelligence
- 10. What does a smart brain look like? At Einstein’s autopsy (1955), brain was something of a disappointment (smaller) Minimal link between brain size and IQ Smarter brain -> more efficient networks 1. Learning and experience can increase size of specific brain areas 2. High IQ <-> faster mental processing speed 3. Volume of tissue linking hemispheres correlates with IQ 4. Volume of cortex correlates with IQ
- 11. The Flynn Effect Steady rise in IQ over the years Improved nutrition and education Effects starting to wear-off (average IQ declining), possibly due to family planning Tip to increase intelligence level: Education Figure 8: The pattern of IQ scores among military conscripts in Norway
- 12. Emotions Emotional hardwiring – common evolutionary origin Psychologist David Matsumoto found that people who are blind form birth produced the same emotional faces, ie: smile when happy
- 13. Can we feels emotions without words? Hot debate: Feelings come first, or labels come first? Are our emotions limited by labels and languages? Brain imaging studies show a strong link between language and emotions Putting a name to a feeling brings coherence It goes both ways!
- 14. Sensation and Perception Brain receive information at an enormous rate: 200 million sensory receptor cells, 3 million sensory fibres, 16 billion cortical cells How the brain combines all senses into one seamless experience? Cope by throwing away most of the information it receives unconsciously. You don’t know what you don’t know, so it doesn’t feel like anything is missing.
- 15. Figure 9: Troxler’s fading
- 16. Ages of the brain Brain starts to develop within 4 weeks of conception Childhood amnesia – dentate gyrus (small area of hippocampus does not fully mature until age 4 or 5) Bridge between surrounding structures and hippocampus (memory) The peak of brain’s powers comes at around age 22 and lasts till 27 Slow decline begins at age 27 and runs throughout adulthood Fluid Intelligence down, but Crystallized Intelligence (Wisdom) goes up!
- 17. Figure 10: Changes in crystallized and fluid intelligence
- 18. Sleep – Why we sleep? Why we sleep is one of life’s great enigmas Theories of brain housekeeping and repair Tononi suggested that sleep is to stop brains becoming overloaded with new memories - makes room for next day Explains why we find it harder to concentrate and learn the next day when we miss a night’s sleep 7 – 9 hours average sleep, too much sleep may do harm than good (Inactivity) Long sleep is associated with inflammation (depression to heart disease)
- 19. Make the most of it Control your attention – 2 attention systems, bottom-up and top-down Bottom-up: awareness to potentially important new information Top-down: deliberate, focused attention, concentration (prone to being interrupted by bottom-up system) Tip to stay focused: cut down on bottom-up distractions, ie: notifications
- 20. Make the most of it Learn like a child Learning process carries on for life, why is it so much harder to learn when we reach adulthood? Fact: The idea that we use only 10 percent of our brains is a myth. We use all of it, but not all at once.
- 21. Overall Review Comprehensive yet reader friendly context Not overly technical Good for basic knowledge of the subject
- 22. Thank you!
Editor's Notes
- Dopamine – Compulsive behavior and addiction
- Prefrontal cortex – responsible for short-term and working memory Hippocampus – turning short-term memories into long-term
- then connections <-> relevant cortex areas <-> hippocampi strengthened.
- Each associated with a specific period of his life, sniffing – brought back a flood of memories – useful reminders (Pace and test yourself repeatedly) (Exercise encourage release of neurotransmitters) (Map an idea with relevant hand gestures) (Avoid high-sugar fast foods)
- G, composed by a different additive
- ie: fewer steps to relay message between regions of brain rather how well our neurons can talk to each other.
- ie: displaying fear and reading it on another face helps both to respond to danger
- Some language are more expressive.
- , ie: moving objects, sudden noises, and touch
- Good news is that, no physiological reason for the slow down Instead, we simply spend less time learning new stuff, and when we do, we don’t do it with the same potent mix of enthusiasm and attention as an average child.