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    We Are Our Brains: A Neurobiography of the Brain, from the Womb to Alzheimer's
    Unavailable
    We Are Our Brains: A Neurobiography of the Brain, from the Womb to Alzheimer's
    Unavailable
    We Are Our Brains: A Neurobiography of the Brain, from the Womb to Alzheimer's
    Ebook574 pages7 hours

    We Are Our Brains: A Neurobiography of the Brain, from the Womb to Alzheimer's

    By D. F. Swaab

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A vivid account of what makes us human.
     
    Based groundbreaking new research, We Are Our Brains is a sweeping biography of the human brain, from infancy to adulthood to old age. Renowned neuroscientist D. F. Swaab takes us on a guided tour of the intricate inner workings that determine our potential, our limitations, and our desires, with each chapter serving as an eye-opening window on a different stage of brain development: the gender differences that develop in the embryonic brain, what goes on in the heads of adolescents, how parenthood permanently changes the brain.
     
    Moving beyond pure biological understanding, Swaab presents a controversial and multilayered ethical argument surrounding the brain. Far from possessing true free will, Swaab argues, we have very little control over our everyday decisions, or who we will become, because our brains predetermine everything about us, long before we are born, from our moral character to our religious leanings to whom we fall in love with. And he challenges many of our prevailing assumptions about what makes us human, decoding the intricate “moral networks” that allow us to experience emotion, revealing maternal instinct to be the result of hormonal changes in the pregnant brain, and exploring the way that religious “imprinting” shapes the brain during childhood. Rife with memorable case studies, We Are Our Brains is already a bestselling international phenomenon. It aims to demystify the chemical and genetic workings of our most mysterious organ, in the process helping us to see who we are through an entirely new lens.
     
    Did you know?
     
    • The father’s brain is affected in pregnancy as well as the mother’s.
    • The withdrawal symptoms we experience at the end of a love affair mirror chemical addiction.
    • Growing up bilingual reduces the likelihood of Alzheimer’s.
    • Parental religion is imprinted on our brains during early development, much as our native language is.

    Praise for We Are Our Brains
     
    “Swaab’s ‘neurobiography’ is witty, opinionated, passionate, and, above all, cerebral.”—Booklist (starred review)
     
    “A fascinating survey . . . Swaab employs both personal and scientific observation in near-equal measure.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
     
    “A cogent, provocative account of how twenty-first-century ‘neuroculture’ has the potential to effect profound medical and social change.”—Kirkus Reviews
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateJan 7, 2014
    ISBN9780679644378
    Unavailable
    We Are Our Brains: A Neurobiography of the Brain, from the Womb to Alzheimer's

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    Reviews for We Are Our Brains

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Despite being a translation from the Dutch original, this was a lively and informative read. The book is a collection of extended essays based on the author's Dutch-language newspaper columns. For the book, the material has been arranged roughly chronologically, so as the subtitle implies, we start with the development of the foetal brain and work towards dementia and death. Each of the chapters could probably be read on its own, so reading it sequentially I did notice some repetition. The best bits describe his own research. Very strong message about how our character, sex preferences, social abilities etc, are formed by the way that our brains are wired up during gestation; I was disappointed that there was not more about how learning and experience affect our brains in later life.
    • 4/5
      Not my favourite interpretation of sex and gender determinism. Difficult to tell without more info whether all his claims are accurate, specifically which parts of brain structure are fixed and which change over time.
    • 4/5
      We Are Our Brains: A Neurobiography of the Brain, from the Womb to Alzheimer's is an encyclopedic work that deals with virtually all aspects of the brain. The book is structured to follow the development of the brain from the time before birth, in the womb, till its final degeneration in the final stages of Alzheimer's disease. The book was first published in 2010 and dealts with state-of-the-art insight up until that date. This means that most well-educated readers will already be familiar with a large part of the content, while receiving some new insights. Many of the subsections of the book are surprisingly short, giving just the most basic knowledge of that type of brain disorder or developmental stage.Sections that receive more attention are (former) specializations of their author. One of the most intriguing observations is that birth is initiated by the childThroughout his career, the author was swept up in some emotional controversies. The sections of the book dealing with that show that Swaab still understands little of why people were so upset. In the mid-1980s Swaab postulated that causes for homosexuality could be found in the brain, and more recently that religious fanaticism is based of a brain disorder. While obviously from a scientific point of view this is very interesting, it seems Swaab is unable to oversee the consequences of such statements.A funny side of reading the book was the idea that so much of our development was predetermined by brain development in the womb
    • 4/5
      The author uses his extensive knowledge of neuroscience, his sense of humor and his strong opinions, which range from why sports are not good for you (á la the famous quote attributed to Henry Ford, "Exercise is bunk, if you are well you don't need it, if you are sick you should not take it") to the asserted but hardly explained, why we do not have free will. I learned much.
    • 5/5
      DF Swaab’s book on the brain is a revelation. He uses this lifelong passion for neurology to strip away the falsehoods. The details of the state of our knowledge is up to the minute, right from the front lines of research. It’s a breeze to read, but it’s still a tough slog. It’s not filled with overwhelming five dollar words, but there is so much to absorb in every paragraph, I found myself constantly going back to make sure I got it all and got it right. Its importance to everyday understanding of ourselves is towering. The book is structured along the lines of life, from conception to death and all the different ways the brain performs at the various stages. And it is demonstrably different at every age. The description of the unborn’s connection to the mother’s brain is alone worth the price of admission. I particularly appreciated Swaab’s debunking of “pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo” such as homosexuality being a chosen, learned, environmental condition (including overbearing, dominant mothers), or any number of other diseases and conditions that are also entirely programmed before birth and develop later. Environment can make absolutely no difference, he says.The brain is not fully formed at birth and doesn’t reach its full size, shape and structure until our mid 20s. It does continue to grow, it can repair itself and it does compensate for damage, despite our being taught that we peak at age 16 and brain cells just die off from that point and are never replaced. Another “fact” we have backwards is that difficult births cause brain development problems. Swaab shows it is precisely the other way around: difficult labor/births are consequences of brain development problems. This frank, direct information is sadly lacking in general circulation. Some other tidbits along the way:-It was not until 1940s that scientists discovered the brain produced hormones, and doctors castigated and vilified Ernst and Berta Scharrer for making such an absurd claim. -Eye contact between two women leads to more creative outcomes. Eye contact by men prevents them coming to terms. -Given dolls and toy cars, baby monkeys always choose according to gender – dolls for females, cars for males.-The brains of rabbits raised in hutches are 15-30% smaller than in wild rabbits that develop their wits and skills – Charles Darwin, 1871 -Segregating children in belief-based schools is “pernicious”. It not only prevents them from learning how to think critically, but it also fosters an intolerant attitude towards other beliefs. -Boxing is “neuropornography”. Watching it is like taking an entire course in neurology. You see impaired speech, unsteady gait, wandering eyes, epileptic fits, semi-consciousness, unconsciousness, and occasionally, brain death. Right on TV, for the whole family. 400 boxers have been killed in the past 70 years. “Civilized” nations have banned it.After describing the incredibly destructive effects of Ecstasy and the new, extraordinarily potent cannabis, Swaab lists a string of US presidents (among others) and asks why we don’t subject these world leaders to the same substance abuse standards we have for ordinary say, drivers? When Kennedy (cocaine), Nixon (alcohol), Clinton (cannabis), and Bush (cocaine, alcohol) all abused to offensive extents, you have to wonder if the world could have been a better place.Swaab says 90% of Dutch prisoners have mental disorders and that criminal law should only be applied to people with healthy brains. The justice system should be evidence-based. While we do try new approaches, it’s never done scientifically (with a control group), so the results will always be suspect. Lawyers, not researchers, get to experiment. Most criminals need treatment. Imprisonment, probation, halfway houses and community service do nothing to treat them, cure them or prevent them from acting out again.There is an unexpected section on the mental illnesses of religious figures, who all (self) describe the classic symptoms of frontal lobe epilepsy. The 18 symptoms include voices, hallucinations, temporary blindness, and more. The figures include Paul, Mohammed, Van Gogh, Dostoyevsky and Joan of Arc, who extensively documented their (almost identical) experiences for the ages. They all received their directions directly from Jesus and/or God, and became deeply religious. Non-Christian epileptics do not have the same sources.He also debunks various paranormal and spiritual explanations for things like out-of-body experiences, by showing exactly where in the brain that pressure or stimulation will cause these phenomena.Having read Swaab’s sobering analysis of dementia and Alzheimer’s, I became concerned when he began repeating himself: the same stories about the same patients. But late in the book he reveals that this all came from a series of columns a newspaper asked him to write, which neatly provides a non-demented alibi. Still, a little more editing would help.I would have liked chapters in two more areas: how character forms, develops and maintains or changes, and the effects of pollutants in air, water, and food. Swaab totally ignores the up and coming field of environmental medicine, which posits that the dose is not what makes the poison, another “fact” we have wrong. Chemical compounds our bodies can never encounter in nature latch on to receptors meant for messengers from our brains. They wreak havoc, as the body not only doesn’t know what to do with them, but must accept them. And they block the intended messengers. The result is a large number of “new” chronic diseases that are changing the face of medicine – and life.We Are Our Brains is technically, pure dry medical science. But it elicits feelings and emotions far stronger than works of fiction. The drama of people entering eras of illness they take years to even understand, let alone cope with and work around, is moving, disconcerting and frightening. The things that can go wrong and the atomic level sources of them is intimidating. The immense body of knowledge we have amassed just in the last hundred years is so insignificant it is awesome.