Customer Reviews

The Odd Brain: Mysteries of Our Weird and Wonderful Brains Explained

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As a neuroscience undergrad, I wanted a light but informative book about the brain, so I thought this would be a good pick. But after reading eleven chapters of it, I have learned little about the brain that I did not already know, and I'm discouraged from reading further for two main reasons:

First, the book is poorly written. The writing style itself is ambiguous and a bit corny, and the author fails to tie together concepts and stories within a chapter (e.g. chapter 4, why did he bring up Brownell's murder?). Other times the chapter titles end up being misnomers (e.g. the chapter "The Craving Brain" is really only about chocolate). I feel that the proposed mystery in each chapter is hardly resolved or explained well because the author relies heavily on historical accounts and anecdotes; whatever actual science he delves into is often based on single studies rather than multiple studies or reviews.

Second, and more important, the author uses questionable sources for some of his content, which causes me to doubt the veracity of anything in this book. He cites the tabloid "Weekly World News" multiple times; for example, in chapter 11 he recounts WWW's story about a woman with three brains, and upon reading the original article I do not understand how he could have believed it. He also gets information from "Psychology Today", hardly an academic source. While for the most part he cites articles from peer-reviewed journals, the blatantly false tale of the three-brained woman causes me to doubt anything I read in this book.

All in all, if you want to learn about weird psychology or the brain, find a different book or go to Wikipedia.