Neuroscientist David J. Linden approached leading brain researchers and asked each the same question: "What idea about brain function would you most like to explain to the world?" Their responses make up this one-of-a-kind collection of popular science essays that seeks to expand our knowledge of the human mind and its possibilities. The contributors, whose areas of expertise include human behavior, molecular genetics, evolutionary biology, and comparative anatomy, address a host of fascinating topics ranging from personality to perception, to learning, to beauty, to love and sex. The manner in which individual experiences can dramatically change our brains' makeup is explored.

2018-10

Primer : our human brain was not designed all at once by a genius inventor on a blank sheet of paper /David J. Linden -- Science is an ongoing process, not a belief system / William B. Kristan Jr. and Kathleen A. French -- Developing, changing. -- Genetics provides a window on human individuality / Jeremy Nathans ; -- Though the brain has billions of neurons, wiring it all up may depend upon very simple rules / Alex L. Kolodkin ; -- From birth onward, our experience of the world is dominated by the brain's continual conversation with itself / Sam Wang ; -- Children's brains are different / Amy Bastian ; -- Your twelve-year-old isn't just sprouting new hair but is also forming (and being formed by) new neural connections / Linda Wilbrecht ; -- How you use your brain can change its basic structural organization / Melissa Lau and Hollis Cline ; -- Tool use can instantly rewire the brain / Alison L. Barth ; -- Life experiences and addictive drugs change your brain in similar ways / Julie Kauer -- Signaling. -- Like it or not, the brain grades on a curve / Indira M. Raman ; -- The brain achieves its computational power through a massively parallel architecture / Liqun Luo ; -- The brain harbors many neurotransmitters / Solomon H. Snyder -- Anticipating, sensing, moving. -- The eye knows what is good for us / Aniruddha Das ; -- You have a superpower -- it's called vision / Charles E. Connor ; -- The sense of taste encompasses two roles : conscious taste perception and subconscious metabolic responses / Paul A.S. Breslin ; -- It takes an ensemble of strangely shaped nerve endings to build a touch / David D. Ginty ; -- The bane of pain is plainly in the brain / Allan Basbaum ; -- Time's weird in the brain -- that's a good thing, and here's why / Marshall G. Hussain Shuler and Vijay M.K. Namboodiri ; -- Electrical signals in the brain are strangely comprehensible / David Foster ; -- A comparative approach is imperative for the understanding of brain function / Cynthia F. Moss ; -- The cerebellum learns to predict the physics of our movements / Scott T. Albert and Reza Shadmehr ; -- Neuroscience can show us a new way to rehabilitate brain injury : the case of stroke / John W. Krakauer ; -- Almost everything you do is a habit / Adrian M. Haith -- Relating. -- Interpreting information in voice requires brain circuits for emotional recognition and expression / Darcy B. Kelley ; -- Mind reading emerged at least twice in the course of evolution / Gül Dölen ; -- We are born to help others / Peggy Mason ; -- Intense romantic love uses subconscious survival circuits in the brain / Lucy L. Brown ; -- Human sexual orientation is strongly influenced by biological factors / David J. Linden -- Deciding. -- Deep down, you are a scientist / Yael Niv ; -- Studying monkey brains can teach us about advertising / Michael Platt ; -- Beauty matters in ways we know and in ways we don't / Anjan Chatterjee ; -- "Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wants" / Scott M. Sternson ; -- The brain is overrated / Asif A. Ghazanfar ; -- Dopamine made you do it / Terrence Sejnowski ; -- The human brain, the true creator of everything, cannot be simulated by any Turing machine / Miguel A.L. Nicolelis ; -- There is no principle that prevents us from eventually building machines that think / Michael D. Mauk -- Epilogue.