It turns out that our brain fully explains the essence of a person. Neurophysiologist Alexander Kaplan read Dick Swaaba and told why it should read it too.
“Dick Swaab turned out to be a very interesting interlocutor.
His book is not a lecture and not a popular presentation of scientists of truths, it is a leisurely conversation with the reader, without the slightest attempt to impose his opinion. The subtitle of the book (literally) “From the womb of Mother to Alzheimer” reveals the author’s plan: to tell that our brain – from the first glimpses of consciousness in a person and to his departure into oblivion – fully explains the essence of man, and as a biological being and as an individual!
The brain forms a person in all his intellectual ups and degradation, in changes in the psyche during schizophrenia and transformation of gender during homosexuality, in delusional hallucinations for drug addiction and ecstatic religious experience, finally, in the formation of moral and ethical values and ideas about
free will. SWAB excitingly explains how the conditions for the development of the fetus affect the life prospects of a growing person;tells about the sacrament of embryonic memories (like Salvador Dali), about the maps of human brain activity, which differ in the stages of early and late love, about the problems of heart transplantation and preservation at the same time mental affection and, finally, about the secret of near -death states. The most remarkable in these descriptions is that Dick Swaab, with all the lightness of his pen and not without humor, never retreats from a strictly scientific approach to the very choice of facts and their interpretations.
“We are our brain,” the professor consistently proves his credo in each chapter, for which he once received the ironic remark of the local bishop: “After all, Professor Swaab’s wife will not love exclusively – or first of all – his gear brain?”Swaab answered in the same style:“ My wife says that if you make a transplantation of my brain into the body of Steve McQueen (actor from the Hollywood “Magnificent Seven”. – approx. author), she will not mind “! By the way, discussing the issues of the relations of the sexes, the SWAB considers the monogamous choice of the partner an undoubted advantage for protecting the family, but immediately notes that this is the evolutionary acquisition of a person remains a considerable load for his brain.
The book, of course, will be interesting to those who are interested in the nature of their character, habits, behaviors, inclinations to certain actions, and most importantly, the ability to improve this nature in order to fully realize the resources of their brain, that is, ourselves – ourselves.
About the author of the book
Dick France Swaab (Dick Swaab) – The world famous Dutch doctor and neurobiologist, professor of the University of Amsterdam. For more than 30 years, he headed the Netherlands Institute of Brain Research and is still one of the leaders in European neurobiological science. Dick Swaab “We are our brain”. Translated from Dutch Dmitry Silvestrov. Publishing House Ivan Lumbach, 544 from.
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