The Neuroscience of You – by Dr. Chantel Prat

The insides of people are rarely so standardized as one finds in a medical textbook, and that’s just as true of the brain as it is of any other organ—and often more so.

Our brains all look quite different from each other’s. Of course there are similarities; a wobbly mass of white and grey matter with tiny blood vessels running through. The constituent parts are (usually!) all present and correct. But… what is “correct”?

Dr. Chantel Prat takes us on a tour of the anatomical features that we may have grown or shrunken over the course of our life, according to how we’ve used them, or not. She also looks at what’s going on when it comes to the smaller scale—from the neuronal to the neurochemical.

We learn the truth (and myth) when it comes to left- and right-brainedness, and we learn how whether we saw that dress as black and blue or white and gold, depends on our circadian rhythm (and thus whether we have wired ourselves for perceiving colors more or less often under daylight or artificial light). And lots more.

The style throughout is very accessible, for a book that goes beyond most “how the brain works” books.

Bottom line: if you’re interested in the workings of your brain (as opposed to: a standardized Platonic ideal of what a brain might be), then this book will set you on the right track.

Click here to check out The Neuroscience of You, and learn more about what makes you you!