OUT OF YOUR MIND

Unlocking the mysteries of the brain.

The authors of this book would seem to be an odd couple. Godwin is a neuroscientist and Cham draws funny little cartoons. Yet together they make brain science—an extremely complicated subject—accessible to the general reader. Moving through history, they examine how the brain’s secrets have been slowly revealed. Sophisticated scanning equipment has provided crucial clues in understanding how the brain is compartmentalized. Some researchers approached the brain through psychoanalysis and experiments about thinking processes. Godwin and Cham look at why people love and hate, which is connected to reward mechanisms in the brain. Similar patterns show up in addiction, whether to substances or social media. They also study the role that chemicals in the brain play in happiness and whether free will is real—or just a convenient fiction. But even as they accept the importance of brain mechanics, they veer away from the idea that all human decisions are preordained by chemistry. There are too many environmental and genetic variables, they say, and there is too much that we don’t know about the intricacies of neuron behavior. In fact, science has only scratched the surface of the subject. Cham’s drawings turn complexity into amusing simplicity. “The mind remains a great frontier,” the authors write. “We need thinkers and artists to join us in exploring the perplexing cosmos within our heads.”

An entertaining examination of fundamental questions about what makes us human.