Items related to Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives
A lively, surprising tour of our mental glitches and how they arise.
With its trillions of connections, the human brain is more beautiful and complex than anything we could ever build, but it's far from perfect: our memory is unreliable; we can't multiply large sums in our heads; advertising manipulates our judgment; we tend to distrust people who are different from us; supernatural beliefs and superstitions are hard to shake; we prefer instant gratification to long-term gain; and what we presume to be rational decisions are often anything but. Drawing on striking examples and fascinating studies, neuroscientist Dean Buonomano illuminates the causes and consequences of these ''bugs'' in terms of the brain's innermost workings and their evolutionary purposes. He then goes one step further, examining how our brains function--and malfunction--in the digital, predator-free, information-saturated, special-effects-addled world that we have built for ourselves. Along the way, Brain Bugs gives us the tools to hone our cognitive strengths while recognizing our inherent weaknesses.
With its trillions of connections, the human brain is more beautiful and complex than anything we could ever build, but it's far from perfect: our memory is unreliable; we can't multiply large sums in our heads; advertising manipulates our judgment; we tend to distrust people who are different from us; supernatural beliefs and superstitions are hard to shake; we prefer instant gratification to long-term gain; and what we presume to be rational decisions are often anything but. Drawing on striking examples and fascinating studies, neuroscientist Dean Buonomano illuminates the causes and consequences of these ''bugs'' in terms of the brain's innermost workings and their evolutionary purposes. He then goes one step further, examining how our brains function--and malfunction--in the digital, predator-free, information-saturated, special-effects-addled world that we have built for ourselves. Along the way, Brain Bugs gives us the tools to hone our cognitive strengths while recognizing our inherent weaknesses.
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About the Author:
DEAN BUONOMANO is a professor in the Departments of Neurobiology and Psychology and the Brain Research Institute at UCLA. He lives in Los Angeles.
Review:
“[An] intriguing take on behavioral economics, marketing and human foibles.” (Kirkus Reviews )
"Writing a book about the hardware and software flaws of the human brain is an ingenious idea, and Buonomano has fully delivered on its promise. To a degree that is difficult for most of us to imagine, much less understand, our successes and failures, joys and sufferings, are the product of protein interactions and electrical changes taking place inside our heads. Brain Bugs is a remarkably accessible and engaging introduction to the neuroscience of the human condition."
Sam Harris, author of the New York Times bestsellers The Moral Landscape, and The End of Faith
"Writing a book about the hardware and software flaws of the human brain is an ingenious idea, and Buonomano has fully delivered on its promise. To a degree that is difficult for most of us to imagine, much less understand, our successes and failures, joys and sufferings, are the product of protein interactions and electrical changes taking place inside our heads. Brain Bugs is a remarkably accessible and engaging introduction to the neuroscience of the human condition."
Sam Harris, author of the New York Times bestsellers The Moral Landscape, and The End of Faith
"In Brain Bugs, Dean Buonomano has brilliantly pulled off what few psychological scientists can do. In elegant and clear writing, he masterfully conveys the astonishing capability of the human mind, along with its flaws and limitations."
Elizabeth Loftus, Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Eyewitness Testimony
"He takes readers on a lively tour of systematic biases and errors in human thinking, citing examples that are staples of psychology courses and other popular books. What is new, however, is Buonomano’s focus on the mechanisms of memory, especially its "associative architecture," as the main causes of the brain’s bugs."
Christopher Chabris, New York Times
"What makes the book all the more compelling is the lucidity with which Buonomano recognizes, amidst its weaknesses, the brain's insurmountable strengths, feats artificial intelligence is ages from reaching--most notably, its remarkable penchant for pattern-recognition and what Buonomano calls "the inherent and irrepressible ability of the brain to build connections and make associations."
Maria Popova, The Atlantic
"One of the things I liked most about this book was the way it leaps from neuron to brain and then to person and on to society and back again, making useful comparisons all the way."
Susan Blackmore, Focus Magazine
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- PublisherBlackstone Audiobooks
- Publication date2011
- ISBN 10 1455111287
- ISBN 13 9781455111282
- BindingAudio CD
- Number of pages8
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Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives
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ISBN 13: 9781455111282
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Book Description Audio Book (CD). Condition: New. A lively, surprising tour of our mental glitches and how they arise With its trillions of connections, the human brain is more beautiful and complex than anything we could ever build, but it's far from perfect: our memory is unreliable; we can't multiply large sums in our heads; advertising manipulates our judgment; we tend to distrust people who are different from us; supernatural beliefs and superstitions are hard to shake; we prefer instant gratification to long-term gain; and what we presume to be rational decisions are often anything but. Drawing on striking examples and fascinating studies, neuroscientist Dean Buonomano illuminates the causes and consequences of these "bugs" in terms of the brain's innermost workings and their evolutionary purposes. He then goes one step further, examining how our brains function--and malfunction--in the digital, predator-free, information-saturated, special-effects-addled world that we have built for ourselves. Along the way, Brain Bugs gives us the tools to hone our cognitive strengths while recognizing our inherent weaknesses. Seller Inventory # DADAX1455111287
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