We don’t generally include author bios in these reviews, but it’s worth mentioning that Dr. Kandel won the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine, for studies related to the topics in this book.
The premise in this book is as per the subtitle: what unusual brains tell us about ourselves. He assumes that the reader has a “usual” brain, but if you don’t, then all is not lost, and in fact he probably talks about your brain in the book too.
Examining the brains of people with conditions ranging from autism to Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia to Parkinson’s, or even such common things as depression and anxiety and addiction, tells us a lot about what in our brain (anatomically and physiologically) is responsible for what, and how those things can be thrown out of balance.
By inference, that also tells us how to keep things from being thrown out of balance. Even if the genetic deck is stacked against you, there are still things that can be done to avoid actual disease. After all, famously, “genes load the gun, but lifestyle pulls the trigger”.
Dr. Kandel writes in a clear and lucid fashion, such that even the lay reader can quite comfortably learn about such things as prion-folding and inhibitory neurons and repressed transcription factors and more.
Bottom line: if you’d like to understand more about what goes wrong and how and why and what it means for your so-far-so-good healthy brain, this is the book for that.
Click here to check out The Disordered Mind, and understand more!
