Rating: 6.3/10. A fairly short book (200 pages) by a team of neuroscientists that covers various aspects of neuroscience like memory, intelligence, emotion, perception. The subject should be very interesting but the book was a dull read, it basically gave a bunch of facts and lacked character, with no attempt to string them together in…
Category: Medicine / Health
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
Rating: 7.7/10. This book gives a comprehensive scientific overview of sleep. Although there are still many unanswered questions, there’s been a lot of research lately and this book sums it up. Sleep is a very necessary function of life. Every living organism requires it, although in different amounts, and total lack of sleep very quickly…
Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan
Rating: 8.5/10. This is a memoir by a 24 year old girl who developed a rare neurological disease, called “Anti-NMDA Receptor Encephalitis”. It’s rare enough that initially, all the doctors were unable to correctly diagnose the disease, instead thinking she had bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. Her condition worsened and she became psychotic, until they identified…
The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Rating: 5.5/10. This book describes the complete history of genetics, from Darwin and Mendel to DNA to modern gene therapy and the Human Genome Project. The book is 500 pages, which is way too long in my opinion. Most of the stuff I already kind of knew from high school biology, the book goes a…