What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite - Couverture souple

Disalvo, David

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1616144831 ISBN 13 : 9781616144838

Editeur : Prometheus Books, 2011

Synopsis

This book reveals a remarkable paradox: what your brain wants is frequently not what your brain needs. In fact, much of what makes our brains "happy" leads to errors, biases, and distortions, which make getting out of our own way extremely difficult.

Author David DiSalvo presents evidence from evolutionary and social psychology, cognitive science, neurology, and even marketing and economics. And he interviews many of the top thinkers in psychology and neuroscience today. From this research-based platform, DiSalvo draws out insights that we can use to identify our brains’ foibles and turn our awareness into edifying action. Ultimately, he argues, the research does not serve up ready-made answers, but provides us with actionable clues for overcoming the plight of our advanced brains and, consequently, living more fulfilled lives.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

David DiSalvo (Atlanta, GA) is a science, technology, and culture writer whose work appears in Scientific American Mind, Psychology Today, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, Mental Floss, and other publications. He is also the writer behind the well-regarded science blogs Neuronarrative and Neuropsyched.

Extrait. © Reproduit sur autorisation. Tous droits réservés.

Preface to the New Edition

When this book was first published in 2011, we had recently entered a new era of understanding the brain-behavior connection. The question, “Why do we think as we think and do as we do?” was taking on new meaning, particularly because neuroscience was increasingly offering ways of examining the question that weren’t available even a decade prior.

In the few years since, it’s difficult to quantify just how much new research has hit the scene that in one way or another touches on these questions, which are always gaining more attention in both scholarly and popular press. As someone who writes science and health articles for popular magazines, I’m shoulder-deep in new research much of the time, and, as a result, I have a decent perspective on the latest understandings emerging from labs around the world. Allowing for variability in research quality, certain trends are clear in the best of these results.

Viewing these trends over time leads to a few conclusions, and one is that the original thesis of this book is more strongly supported now than even when it was first published. The brain is a prediction and pattern-detection machine with a penchant for storytelling that craves certainty, stability, and predictability. Begin with that understanding, and a great deal starts making sense when we ask, “Why do we think as we think and do as we do?” Begin with that understanding, and you’ll also begin making sense of yourself.

That was, and continues to be, the main driver for why I started writing about these topics to begin with: making sense of, specifically, why I think as I think and do as I do. As I’ve mentioned in many interviews since the first edition was published, that was my starting point when I started writing about the subjects in these pages, and it’s with this same flavor of introspection that I’m happy to see this book going back into the world with a few new content adjustments and research findings. The thesis that the content orbits around feels more relevant and well-supported now than ever before.

And that’s heartening to know, not only because it makes the book in your hand worth reading, but because it shows that we’re getting somewhere—in the really big sense of that statement. The human brain, and by association human thought and behavior, is a tremendously complex thing to understand, but we’re getting closer to true understandings that yield clearer answers.

Having said that, what’s also true is that we’re always uncovering questions that aren’t close to being answered, no matter how much we’d like to claim otherwise. One of the perils of popular-media science treatments is jumping to answers that really don’t exist. We’d like them to exist. We’d like answers to guide us. We’d love to create how-to systems around these answers for others to follow. But when you break it down, this is little more than either well-intentioned wish fulfillment or, sometimes, manipulation of peoples’ need for answers and ways to change their lives. As a journalist, part of the challenge is to know which way is which, and to check myself continuously when approaching questions that are likely to remain open for a good long while, if not indefinitely.

With that, I leave you to read this edition, which I hope has judiciously followed a path that celebrates what we know while acknowledging what we don’t, always preserving the space between.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Prometheus Books
• Date d'édition: 2011
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1616144831
• ISBN 13: 9781616144838
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 309
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Pays-Bas