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    Scatterbrain: How the Mind's Mistakes Make Humans Creative, Innovative, and Successful
    Scatterbrain: How the Mind's Mistakes Make Humans Creative, Innovative, and Successful
    Scatterbrain: How the Mind's Mistakes Make Humans Creative, Innovative, and Successful
    Audiobook8 hours

    Scatterbrain: How the Mind's Mistakes Make Humans Creative, Innovative, and Successful

    Written by Henning Beck

    Narrated by Matthew Waterson

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    In this mind-bending book, an esteemed neuroscientist explains why perfectionism is pointless-and argues that mistakes, missteps, and flaws are the keys to success.

    Remember that time you screwed up simple math or forgot the name of your favorite song? What if someone told you that such embarrassing "brain farts" are actually secret weapons, proof of your superiority to computers and AI?

    In Scatterbrain, we learn that boredom awakens the muse, distractions spark creativity, and misjudging time creates valuable memories, among other benefits of our faulty minds. Throughout, award-winning neuroscientist Henning Beck's hilarious asides and brain-boosting advice make for a delightful account of the most cutting-edge neuroscience our brains will (maybe never) remember.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateOct 8, 2019
    ISBN9781515944355

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    Reviews for Scatterbrain

    3.5/5

    22 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Excellent! It is like a user manual for your brain.
    • 4/5
      Marketed as an exploration of brain functioning, I expected a narrative that more consistently tied social and behavioral phenomena to the morphology of the human brain. Instead, the primary focus is on discoveries from the cognitive and social-cognitive laboratories of psychology. The efforts to link these behaviors to brain morphology are informative but less frequent than I would have preferred. The chapter list reads like the table of contents from an introductory psychology textbook. Examples include learning, memory, forgetting, motivation, decision-making, and creativity. There is an element of “name-dropping” as Beck “names” psychological phenomena without providing an overview of the associated body of psychological work. He relies on single studies and interesting anecdotes to illustrate phenomena and support his conclusions. Readers are not given the technical details they need to form an independent conclusion. Nevertheless, readers interested in social and social cognitive behavior will find this book to be worthwhile. Beck’s informal, lucid writing style and interesting anecdotes and metaphors make the material easy to understand. Readers will appreciate his use of multiple examples and explanations from varied points of view. They slow the pace but increases the likelihood that readers will grasp his point before moving on to the next topic. Beck’s carefully selected exemplars, metaphors, and similes illustrate aspects of everyday life in a way that will appeal to a wide audience.
    • 3/5
      This book contains a ton of interesting information about how our brains work. Fourteen chapters each cover a separate topic ranging from memory to motivation. Everything was described in an easy to understand way. That said, even though I was excited to read this and enjoyed the content, something about the writing just did not click for me. I usually read a book a week, and this one took me two months to finish with some skimming. Was the writing repetitive? Were some things over explained? I’m not sure. I don’t feel compelled to recommend the book to friends, but I wouldn’t discourage someone from reading it because they might find it’s a better fit for them.Note: I received a free copy of this bookin exchange for an honest review.
    • 3/5
      It's not clear if Henning Beck is a neurologist but it said in his profile he had a Phd in neuroscience. In any event he certainly has studied the many facets of the function and idiosyncrasies that come out of our noggin.In this book Beck takes us down many of these path to explain through fairly intensive research how and why the brain does things that are not only incredibly complex but also seems to defy what we would think as logical. Instead we are shown that a brain has a mind of its own so to speak and will deliver innovation and discovery from a normal condition of chaos that it resides in most of the time.Though there are many ideas that spring from all of this one I found rather interesting was that try as we might to duplicate the neuro-complexity with artificial intelligence the more we find, it ain't so easy. Over and over again he demonstrates how the computer a master in pure logic and function is no match for our gray matter that runs circles around it in creativity that frankly cannot be duplicated.The book bogged down for me in an number of areas where it gets pretty nerdy and technical and I found my rebellious brain wandering afar to get past the pages. However this was balanced by some rather fascinating ideas and ponderings that not only made me glad I finished but put me on notice that I will need to re-read it to let the endless ponderables "sink in."