The book is set up to answer questions, rather than just anatomically define the brain. Big chapter headings such as What is a memory? Include subheadings such as How are memories made? And Do I need to pay attention? And so on.

The second chapter is about feelings, fear and so on, the third covers the influence of food and drugs on the brain, fourth is sleep, fifth is about ageing, six is about the development of the brain for the things it is designed to do, and then a glossary. Simple. Some of it is a bit odd, such as within the last heading there is a discussion about multiple sclerosis in a chapter asking how the brain accomplishes so much, and also daydreams, but I guess that doesn’t matter to the audience for this book.

In answering the question about memory, which is of course the most complex neuropsychological accomplishment of the brain, both in terms of the time it takes to process, as well as the processes of encoding, processing, storage and recall, the author is wise. Interestingly he points out that the brain is in the head to be close to the part that seeks, sees, smells and shovels in the food, rather than being elsewhere, at the anterior end of the feeding mechanisms rather than somewhere else. By its very purpose, which is clearly for the layman as you’ll understand from the above, the writing is simple and clear, so the ideas that memory is both recallable information and also emotional valancing or saliencing is right up front, followed by the need to pay attention if you want to recall stuff well, and then intentional forgetting of to-be-forgotten meaningless information owing to the limitations of cortical and subcortical systems. Later on in the chapter, it starts to become more geeky, going into the role of acetylcholine and its muscarinic and nicotinic receptors for instance, and then glutamate’s role in making and breaking communication chains, and the synchrony of Gamma wavelengths. Here, the laypeople may yawn and skip, but its nicely described and written. Logic prevails here, as it does elsewhere, and while we are talking acetylcholine and glutamate, the way glutamate turns on acetylcholine in Alzheimer’s dementia is briefly discussed, and how we try to get around it. How the brain responds to demands of the environment in building connectivity and creating resource, for instance in London cabbies, as well as how we might treat Alzheimer’s is also touched on. Of course nicotine is an interesting substance in the acetylcholine market place, and now it works in low doses on the left hemisphere and high doses on the right is going to interest most of us, even if we smoketh not.

You by now get a sense of how this noted researcher teaches and writes, and hence you are in the presence of a seasoned educator, and he does this for each brain topic, moving from one topic or sub-topic to another, fluidly matching elements of what he is illuminating with the next logical piece that comes to his mind. You could see him at his desk writing these chapters without looking up, as a narrative more than standalone elements. So it is with the next chapter on feelings.  From the hippocampi he moves on to other elements of the limbic system, namely two of them, the cingulate and the insula, my personal favorite. Actually in daydreaming, he points out, we activate both. Levels of pleasantness are evaluated by the former, levels of disgust by the latter, and so he moves on to the big emotion, fear, and the amygdala. I like that he did the cingulate and the insula first, and didn’t just rush in to the fear cycle first, the man has insight, clearly.  In terms of sight for instance, the aforementioned organelle in the brain is hard wired to seek out and evaluate negative events, on the assumption that all new events are potentially negative, and in particular to the eyes of others upon us, as a particular fear. The over-signalling of fear in everything is of course harmful, which is why most authors would have started there rather than the more interesting cingulate and insula, the more self-referential side to us.  As he does, an interesting result of damage to the amygdalae is the person who talks too close to you for comfort, and he drops that in here. Given that overstressing is part of depression, he moves on to this here, and to the treatment of it, as well as the role of sleep.  Other elements, such as inflammation and gut biome health are also introduced, letting us know Wenk is up to date on his research.  I also note in passing that he mentions how poorly antidepressant leads to recovery, and how 80% of patients have to get better without medication as it is so ineffective. He does this without the discomfort most authors in the field experience when considering the STAR-D and other relevant studies, which is comforting to those of us who are not fanatically enthusiastic about medication approaches.  The need for effective intervention however is pointed out given the health risks of prolonged depression.  Bipolar disorder and schizophrenia get similar treatment here. Interestingly, he notes that about 90% of kids with oppositional defiant disorder will go on to develop schizophrenia, which I can’t find a reference for, and which appears rather odd.

The effect of food and drugs on the brain is next, including the effects of obesity, carbohydrates, oils, fats and so on, and of course the influence of the biome on the brain and mood.

Sleep is next. The need is well known, for the establishment of to be remembered information as well as the removal of toxic waste built up during the day. Questions are answered around dreaming, sleep paralysis, and a host of issues related to the subject of sleep.

A major angst for all of us is the effect of ageing on the brain, both normal and pathological, and chapter five addresses these issues. The earliest true sign of ageing is a decline in sleep quality and consequent decline in learning and memory, attentional capacity during the day. Ageing is most influenced he says by obesity and smoking for instance, and the impaired rinsing out of adenosine during sleep is to blame for decline in attentional and learning capacity. The other marker he says is the reduced ability to experience very strong emotions. Even dying is connected to the brain, which does not regulate your body temperature during the latter hours of sleep, and so the cooling process can place strain on the ageing cardiovascular system during REM sleep, and result in death during sleep in the early morning hours: poikilothermia be damned. His discussion around eating, the transport of oxygen, the expulsion of the carbon waste products of food and free radicals escaping from toxic oxygen, means that exposing yourself to a third lower calories from animal protein means less exposure to dangerous oxygen, means a longer life. He goes on further to discuss why caloric reduction works, especially in males. He goes on to discuss the facts of dementia and the protective nature of education, being male, being free of diabetes and depression, and alcohol in younger persons, but not in those over 75. He discusses further the decline in each of the brain’s related sensory systems as well as how we fool ourselves about the value of touted remedies for brain conditions such as ageing.

One of his choices was not to begin the brain story in the traditional way, namely by embarking on a discussion of the brain’s anatomy and physiology from the get-go. Instead, chapter six begins this evocation.

A great skill in those like Gary Wenk is to appeal to both the neophyte student as well as those that know their way around the cortex, and he certainly manages to do this well. His conversational tone certainly disguises his very comprehensive knowledge of the field in ways that therefore don’t feel like challenge, but some will need to read a few lines a few times to get the knowledge into the information processing systems he so clearly describes. He has tried to be as up to date as one can be in writing a book which will have a publishing time lag, but I am sure he will update this great little book as he goes along.

Certainly anyone who is curious about the brain should buy this, one, read it in a few sittings, and re-read it to make sure one has got all the considerable knowledge uploaded. I can sincerely say that having read this, everyone will actually understand a huge amount about the brain’s secret life, and he had done an awesome job in the service of getting science out to the masses. Good job.

© 2017 Roy Sugarman

Roy Sugarman, PhD, Director: Applied Neuroscience, Performance Innovation Team, Team EXOS. Arizona USA