The book "The brain is material" - Asya Kazantseva

It has happened! The third book of Asi Kazantseva, the author of the "little yellow book", " Who would have thought! How the brain makes us do stupid things" and "a pink little book" "Someone is wrong on the Internet! Scientific research of controversial issues". I follow Asya's Facebook, so I knew for a long time what would happen in the third book and how it would differ from the previous two, but there was still an intrigue: will Asya cope with the "transition to a new level"? And will its readers cope with this?

Before us, Asya is an enthusiastic young cognitive scientist who admires everything that is shown and told to her in the master's program of the Higher School of Economics, where she is currently studying. Now Kazantseva speaks not only about what she once read in scientific journals, but also about what she saw with her own eyes.

And this, of course, to some extent went to the benefit of the book, because every page in it is literally saturated with Asya's delight and desire for the reader to understand everything, comprehend and also begin to admire the brain, science, and scientists. But on the other hand, "The Brain is material" is already a little less popular and a little more scientific literature, in which the emphasis is not on the interpretation of research and the work of a system or organ, but rather on the description of the process and the structure of systems.

The main postulate of the book: the brain is material, changeable and heterogeneous. Actually, this is exactly what is proved with the help of various examples all 350 pages. So if you have always wanted to find out what kind of organ it is and what it actually does, how it is studied, and what changes there during a human life, then right now run for a new work by Kazantseva.

Those who have been reading me for a long time are aware that books about the brain are my love, and since there are not two or three of them already read, those that give something new are less and less common.

Despite the fact that science does not stand still, mostly in popular science books, articles and lectures, the same studies conducted in the last century are retold, and therefore I did not count on an avalanche of new information this time, rather I wanted to refresh something, and sort something out on the shelves.

But no, "The Brain is material" is significantly different from other popular science books on neuroscience! Firstly, it has a couple of chapters about the history of the birth/origin of this science, very fascinating, by the way. Secondly, as I have already said, Asya herself is now studying at the HSE and observes with her own eyes how this or that research is conducted or deciphered, and therefore shares the latest information with readers.

Thirdly, some of the old experiments have already been repeated, and not all the results coincided, so we had to make some adjustments.

I met the lobotomobile, Jennifer Aniston's neuron, transcranial magnetic stimulation, Williams syndrome, declarative and implicit memory, cargo cult in science for the first time on the pages of the book. And not only them, just not everything was remembered with the exact name. So, according to the amount of new information, the book and its author are definitely credited.

In general, I liked the book, in many respects, thanks to the author's narrative style, which I like very much, but of the three children of Kazantseva, "The Brain is material" is in the last place for me.

Perhaps it's all because of my laziness: I read in the evening before going to bed, my axons and dendrites are already asleep, synapses grow slowly, and therefore I prefer that everything is clear and understandable without rereading the same fragments. I hope you are not such a sleepy-lazy reader as I am, and you will be able to appreciate the book!