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A review by kimball_hansen
The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery by Sam Kean
4.0
What a great book! The science is explained very well. I love all the stories of what happens when something is off in our minds, like those people that have face-blindness. It's like becoming a superhero. In fact, things that make up superheroes simply just have a quality that is just off the charts. Our minds are just the most complex thing in the universe. Reading books like this that show how we are so flawed, unique, and the potential of what we can become make me have a stronger belief in God.
Perhaps even more important than the science, these stories enrich our understanding of the human condition, which is the point of stories. Whenever we read about people's lives, fictional or not, we have to put ourselves into the minds of characters. The power of stories reaches across the divide.
Notes:
That would be so wild: have sleep paralysis, but awake while having dream still playing.
The human brain remembers information best through stories.
The story of Isabelle Dinoire's face transplant is nasty. Why would her dog just do that. He was a Labrador Retriever after all.
Our brains are bias in seeing action and movement. In order to see still things the eyes have to scribble over it. That's all neat.
The brain pays more attention to the fine motor neurons and that is why people feel phantom fingers more than hands and hands more than arms.
Wars advance the field of medicine more than it could ever do on its own.
Temporal lobe lesions can flip people's orientation from gay to straight. Don't let the Left hear that one, though.
People lie to look good, gain an edge, or conceal something.
Reading requires higher neurological dexterity than speaking does.
If just the right spot gets damaged in our brain we can lose just about anything in our mental repertoire no matter how sacred.
Perhaps even more important than the science, these stories enrich our understanding of the human condition, which is the point of stories. Whenever we read about people's lives, fictional or not, we have to put ourselves into the minds of characters. The power of stories reaches across the divide.
Notes:
That would be so wild: have sleep paralysis, but awake while having dream still playing.
The human brain remembers information best through stories.
The story of Isabelle Dinoire's face transplant is nasty. Why would her dog just do that. He was a Labrador Retriever after all.
Our brains are bias in seeing action and movement. In order to see still things the eyes have to scribble over it. That's all neat.
The brain pays more attention to the fine motor neurons and that is why people feel phantom fingers more than hands and hands more than arms.
Wars advance the field of medicine more than it could ever do on its own.
Temporal lobe lesions can flip people's orientation from gay to straight. Don't let the Left hear that one, though.
People lie to look good, gain an edge, or conceal something.
Reading requires higher neurological dexterity than speaking does.
If just the right spot gets damaged in our brain we can lose just about anything in our mental repertoire no matter how sacred.