What’s the best way to get rid of jet lag? What are the similarities between prairie voles and people in love? Does listening to Mozart really make babies smarter?

And what do all of these topics have to do with your brain?

Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang tackle these seemingly unrelated questions in Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys But Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life. Aamodt and Wang are both neuroscientists, so they know what they’re talking about, but don’t think this is some dreary textbook. The authors go to great lengths to make Welcome to Your Brain easy-to-understand and fun to read.

Aamodt and Wang are both neuroscientists, so they know what they’re talking about, but don’t think this is some dreary textbook.

However accessible it is, though, this is a book about the body’s most complex and misunderstood organ, and every page is bursting with new knowledge and revelations. The book starts out with a quiz aimed at showing how little the average reader really knows about how the brain works (I confess to getting a 9 out of 20). The very first chapter is intended to prove the amount of “behind-the-scenes” work your brain does by showing the many ways it can’t be trusted to tell you the truth. Then an initial section devoted to explaining the brain physically and chemically gives readers the basics and clarifies some crucial terms for understanding how our minds work, such as neurons, neurotransmitters, axons, dendrites, and so forth. Most useful to the modern reader, though, is the last chapter in the section, devoted to that oh-so-common bane of our existence -- weight loss -- and why it’s so hard.

The second section is about the senses in order of their importance in relaying information to the brain. Because we get 33% of sensory information from our eyes, that means vision is first on the list. Then, hearing, smell and taste, and finally touch. The next section is a parent’s godsend: What’s really going on in your teenager’s mind. Actually, this section is about the changes in the brain as your body begins to age, and includes not only the changes in a teen’s brain, but also the brain of an old person. This section also includes a few ways to keep your mind sound and healthy in your later years. Surprisingly, one of the best ways is exercise. Who knew?

The fourth section is about the emotional brain and contains some of the topics that concern us most, including the role of free will in a person’s life, how to find happiness, and the benefits of anxiety (in moderation) on people’s lives. The fifth section, a complement to the fourth section titled “Your Rational Brain,” contains information on the origins of decision-making, intelligence, memory and gender differences. This section also contains an interesting chapter about autism, what goes wrong in that scenario and how an autistic person’s missing skills are crucial for a proper role in society. The last section is about “Your Brain in Altered States” – meaning sleep, spirituality, or under the influence of drugs. The chapter on stroke victims is all the more poignant because of one of the author’s personal stories regarding his mother’s stroke.

The book starts out with a quiz aimed at showing how little the average reader really knows about how the brain works (I confess to getting a 9 out of 20).

The book is interspersed with humorous anecdotes, myth-busting brain factoids, and an entire chapter detailing portrayals of neurological disorders in popular movies. Along with movies, though, the authors reveal the brain’s role in everything from the senses, religion, autism, monogamous relationships, happiness, and gender differences. And augmenting the authors’ light, easy style in addressing these topics, are the illustrations, definitely one of my favorite things about the book, which add a very cartoonish, wacky sort of humor to the issues at hand.

While the book overall was excellent at getting people interested in how their minds work, it is most definitely not the final word on any topic and never proposes to be so. For this reason, I thought a bibliography or a “Further Reading” sort of section would have been nice. And though the little blurbs were interesting and useful, they distracted from the main narrative, and made it hard to regain the thread of the book. But other than these small drawbacks, the book was excellent and I recommend to all the brain aficionados.

Editor's Note: A paperback edition of Welcome to Your Brain is due out in late December 2008. It will contain new material, including information about brain training and also a complete reference list, downloadable from the website.