Brain Bugs

How the Brain’s Flaws Shape Our Lives

By: Dean Buonomano

Narrated by: William Hughes

Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2011 Dean Buonomano (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Intriguing take on behavioral economics, marketing, and human foibles.” ( Kirkus Reviews)

Superficial, but mostly correct

If you have no scientific background and are unfamiliar with the quirks of cognitive biases, then this book can give you a good introduction to the topic. The author gives a brief, superficial tour of many areas of cognitive study, but doesn't explore any of them enough to satisfy a reader who has any familiarity with the subject. If you are familiar with the terms "neuron", "bias" and "conditioning" you will probably want a different book.

He discusses our fear bias, various heuristics and some basic evolutionary biology. His style is scatter shot and he seems to wander from topic to topic without much structure. More annoyingly, he gets halfway through certain chapters and says "maybe this isn't really a bug because it mostly works OK."

Other books do a better job discussing the topics touched on in this book. For an evolutionary biology perspective try "The Accidental Mind," for a cognitive psychology point of view read "How We Decide" or "The Blank Slate", for a behavioral perspective "Mistakes Were Made", for an in depth discussion of fear "The Science of Fear."

I would recommend this to someone looking for a brief introduction to our brain's quirks, but the book will likely leave even the casual reader wanting more.

A somewhat baffling analogy...

There are a about a bazillion books that explain cognitive errors. This book's method is using an analogy, explaining the extraordinarily complicated ideas of thought processes by comparing them to the much more widely understood concepts of... Computer Science.

I mean, the book was fine, but I just don't know many people who wouldn't be able to understand 'brain be dumb sometimes' without hearing an explanation based on the continual doubling of transistors on a microchip.

If you've read one or two books about psychology/cognition, you're probably not going to learn anything new about those topics. You might, however, learn a few things about computers.

Not a review, just a detail I enjoyed.

Buonomano quoted all Four Horsemen: Hitch, Rich, Sam and Dan.

Nice!

PS: oh, and the book is great.

what about procreation bugs?

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

The book reviews the thought of many contemporary researchers and does so in an engaging way.

What do you think your next listen will be?

A book which outlines the road ahead with crisper gene splicing or a book on the implications of frigate bird flight into high energy clouds.

Have you listened to any of William Hughes’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No, but he is a great reader. His voice carries just the right amount of excitement and happiness. He seems to enjoy what he is reading ... but not in a fanatical way. His voice carries the story along in a very positive direction.

Did Brain Bugs inspire you to do anything?

Ask myself why highly intelligent, scientific people tend to avoid the sacrifices necessary to have their genes multiplying in the human gene pool? Why be so down on the value of their own genetic inheritance and leave the field open to the "religious" fundamentalists?

Any additional comments?

He follows Dawkins and others in treating religion and philosophy with a condescending attitude that downplays the horror unleashed by the powerful nations of the last century who had no use for any kind of a god, other than one of their own imagining.

interesting information, easy reading style

"Brain Bugs" is an excellent combination of interesting information and an easy and enjoyable reading style.

It is rare to find authors with such clear-headed ideas and with the ability to explain the ideas to the reader in a simultaneously efficient and understandable manner.

The narration perfectly suited the material.

John Christmas, author of "Democracy Society"

kept this average Joe entertained

good stuff! most books like this lose me with technical jargon that I can barley understand. this book has some words that I didn't know but they were easy to figure out in context. or were defined in the book...I enjoyed it.. very accessible

obligatory 4 stars. I didn't give it 5 becuase I feel that rating should be reserved for things that are perfect. like missing work just for a little more time on it. I probably sound like people who 1star a restaurant becuase their car died in their own driveway. whats cool about this book is after listening you'll understand wtf is going on upstairs with me and those 1star jackwads

very unbiased as well (some won't see it that way when they hear the part about politicians and their AD's taking advantage some "brain bugs" and the one[s] used as examples)

it's like 15hours long I listened to about 10hours put it down for 3weeks. jumped right back in. again very accessible

Brain bugs

Some good information mixed in with a lot of the authors personal opinions, I like the first three quarters more than the last quarter of the book.

A very worthwhile book

If you could sum up Brain Bugs in three words, what would they be?

Stimulating, illuminating, enriching

What did you like best about this story?

As some reviews have pointed out, this book presents a lot of research that are by now fairly well-known, without adding much that is new. However, I disagree with the view that one would do better to read certain other books, which though good (or better in some ways) yet do not make this one superfluous (unless you have an exceptional memory that retains most of what you read, AND are able to synthesize it). Brain Bugs is indeed what one might call an introductory level book, but I (who had read quite a few books on the subject so that much of the material was not "new") found that it presents things in its own light and thereby gave additional meaning to them. Because of some of the negative comments here, I hesitated a long time before buying the book (finally did only because it was on a BOGO sale), but having listened to it, I would be more than willing to pay full price. What brain research has uncovered is germane to so many essential aspects of life that I am happy to go over it more than once and to try to find as many pertinent angles as possible.

I was particularly stimulated by the author's reflections on religion and politics, and on our real-life relationship to these.

What does William Hughes bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

William Hughes has a pleasant voice and an energetic, interested way of reading. I hardly noticed the mispronunciation of words that bothered another reviewer, and was on the whole entirely satisfied. I won't give him five stars, but four and a half if that were an option.

Any additional comments?

I strongly disagree with those who object to the book because of its political bias. I can find nothing that anybody looking at things from an objective, scientific viewpoint would contest. You may not follow the author all the way in some of what he suggests (always on the basis of scientific discoveries and not in a purely speculative way), but the topics he broaches and sheds considerable light on are those of the greatest importance: political behaviour, spiritual experience, religious tradition. And I found the author's reflections extremely stimulating.

A terrific book that I almost missed because of a few negative reviewers. I urge you not to be misled as I almost was!

Understanding the world through the human brain

Buonomano shows us how the human brain, evolved in a world very different from the present, is maladapted in many ways to deal with modernity. It offers both a collective excuse -- normal human brains are all poor at remembering names -- and a call to educate ourselves on the internal sources of our irrational fears, foibles, and beliefs. He doesn't shrink from the big issues, politics and religion, and explains how our brains' shortcomings have shaped our society. I found the book fascinating -- one of those books that gives one a new and clearer lens on the world, and you really can't ask for more than that.

Fantastic book. Good reader and material

Incredible number of facts about brain. After it you start to at least be aware and try to overcome them.