Name: The Neuroscience of You
Rating: 4.6 (682 reviews)
Author: Chantel Prat

What’s in it for me? Discover how every brain is wired differently, and what this means for our behavior.

What makes us who we are?

Everyone’s brain is structurally different– even the brains of identical twins conjoined at birth– and these structural differences matter. They shape how we see the world, and how we decide to operate in it. It affects whether we’re thrill seekers, how good we are at picking up languages, and even how we feel about karaoke.

Despite their importance, the biological differences in our brains are rarely discussed. The field of neuroscience has been dominated by a one-size-fits-all approach for over a century. What we know about brains is usually informed by scientists who focus on how brains work on average, glossing over our individual differences. But this is a missed opportunity to understand ourselves, other people, and the brain more deeply.

In this Blink, we’ll draw upon the cutting-edge insights of neuroscientist Chantel Prat, who researches how brains differ, and why small differences in our brains can cause big differences in our characters.

You’ll discover how our brain’s lopsidedness affects how we approach problems, that our neurochemical cocktail determines how extraverted we are, and why it is that brains see colors differently. Ready? Let’s zoom into the inner workings of your brain and discover what makes you you.

Brains that specialize in different functions interpret the world in varied ways.

Have you ever heard of The Knowledge?

It’s the test required to be a taxi driver in London, and it’s one of the most famously difficult exams in the world. The test demands that you memorize London’s 20,000 windy streets and every business or landmark on each street. The test weeds out over half the people who take it— even if they’ve studied for it for years. It’s a truly herculean task!

A landmark study in 2000 showed that drivers who successfully acquired The Knowledge of London’s streets have a larger-than-average tail of the hippocampus, the region of the brain that is associated with spatial memory. In other words, by repeatedly asking their brains to perform specific tasks– like memorizing London, a complex and disorganized system– the taxi drivers actually changed their brains’ physicality.

Studying the cabbies’ brains led to another important discovery: though the tail of the hippocampus grows as they study for The Knowledge, the top of the hippocampus was actually smaller than average. Researchers then compared the brains of the taxi drivers to those operating in a similar environment: London bus drivers. They found that the taxi drivers had superior spatial memory to the bus drivers, but they had worse short-term memory and visual memory.

What this head-to-head comparison shows us is that there’s a cost to specialization. Certain enhancements of one type of memory will crowd out brain regions that are performing other jobs. After all, there’s only so much room in any given brain! Now, it’s not just that specialization leads your brain to perform certain functions better at the expense of other functions. What ends up happening is that brains that specialize in different functions end up interpreting the world in different ways– which is what Dr. Prat’s book is all about.

To begin to break down why that is, it’s helpful to think of our brains as finite information-processing machines operating in an essentially infinite environment. And in order to do its job effectively of keeping you alive in the big bad universe, your brain has to process the infinite environment into manageable pieces. In other words, it’s constantly filtering, and filling in the missing blanks with what it thinks is probably happening. It’s a bit like being given a stack of blurry photographs and being asked to make a movie with them. You have to decide which images are important and how to connect the dots to make a coherent video when there is missing information.

And because brains are structurally different and shaped by different experiences, they’ll process information in varying ways. One brain will deal with its inherent limitations differently than another, by relying on the computations and functions at which it’s more adept in order to figure out what is happening. And this is a major factor in why we have so much variation in worldviews and behaviors!

Now let’s take a closer look at how specific features of our brains will lead us to operate in varied ways in the real world. We’ll start with how the degree of our brain’s lopsidedness affects how we solve problems.

Your brain’s lopsidedness affects how you process information.

Imagine the human brain for a moment. It’s about three pounds, and it looks something like a large walnut, with two largely independent hemispheres connected at the core.

Now, this isn’t a very unique brain design. We can find divided brains throughout the animal kingdom, within all vertebrate animals.

Your brain is a unique neural cocktail, and its ingredients shape your personality.

Ah, coffee. What would life be without it?

There’s a reason caffeine is the most popular drug in the world. In fact, a life without coffee would be a life with less pleasure! That’s because caffeine increases the availability of the neurotransmitter dopamine, the chemical that the pleasure circuits in your brain use to communicate.

Key ideas in The Neuroscience of You

What is The Neuroscience of You about?

The Neuroscience of You (2022) is an accessible primer to the human brain that explores how our individual quirks arise. Packed with practical tests and cutting-edge insights into why you think differently from others, it invites you to take a closer look at your brain and discover what makes it unique– and how to understand others and their quirks better.

About the Author

Chantel Prat, PhD is a professor of psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics at the University of Washington. She is a public speaker at events like The World Science Fair, and she is featured in the documentary I Am Human. Her publications have been profiled in Scientific American, Psychology Today, NPR, and more.