Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

This book was quite an eye-opener.
There were so many conclusions that I had drawn from my previous forays into the world of neuroscience. But this book busted quite a few of those myths and helped to refine my understanding in a very structured way.
The language is very easy to understand and you don't really need any background reading to pick this one up. The short, structured chapters make it perfect to dip your toes into the world of neuroscience!
I would definitely recommend this book. Thank you Netgalley and the publishers for giving me a chance to read this.

It was an ok book but got ruined by all the confusing worldbuilding and magic system. I know there are things like Nefari , gollum and Van Gogh but I barely know what their powers are or why they existed.

The author is going for a snarky heroine but she only comes across as annoying. Even the mystery wasn't that interesting. I do am interested in how Ashira and Levi's romance develop but I wouldn't want to read the next book

Great book, shows a plethora of great lessons that teach you more about the meat inside your head, would highly recommend, Can't wait for more books from this author.

This brief book by a neuroscientist offers eight easy-to-read essays (the first of which is a short introductory one, hence the “half” of the title) about the brain.
What may catch many people’s attention in the text is Barrett’s denunciation of the “fact” about the human brain everyone seems to know: that it is made up of three layers, with the “lizard brain” wired for basic urges at the core, covered by a layer that evolved for emotions and a final rational layer that evolved “to regulate our inner beasts.” Barrett says “the triune brain story is one of the most successful and widespread errors in all of science,” but then goes on to tell readers that “human brains don’t work that way,” which has been proven by the analysis of neurons with sophisticated tools that were not available when the hypothesis was put forth in the mid-20th century.
One of the eight lessons is that the brain is a network, and it’s always on. The astonishing fact in this essay (well, I found it astonishing, at least): “A brain doesn’t store memories like files in a computer — it reconstructs them on demand from bits of electrochemical activity. … Each time you have the same memory, your brain may have assembled it with a different collection of neurons.”
Lesson four: “Your brain predicts (almost) everything you do.” Based on what your brain has learned and experienced in the past, it makes predictions that lead to your actions. Most of the time, those actions and predictions make sense, but occasionally they don’t (at least to us; they do to your brain). Barrett says that while it’s impossible to go back and change your past to make your brain initiate different actions, you still can change now how your brain will predict in the future.
“With practice, you can make some automatic behaviors more likely than others and have more control over your future actions and experiences than you think.” In essence, even though you may not be to blame for tragedies or hardships you have experienced that have “wired” your brain to predict/act in certain ways, you are responsible now for changing the patterns. “If you embrace this responsibility, think about the possibilities. What might your life be like? What kind of person might you become?”
Lesson five: “Your brain secretly works with other brains…. Ultimately, your family, friends, neighbors and even strangers contribute to your brain’s structure and function and help your brain keep your body humming along.” It sounds a little outrageous, but when Barrett explains the details, it becomes clear how true it is. We all affect each other in so many ways, and that happens just by our tone of voice, our facial expressions, our multitudinous interactions. And that all affects the brain. When it comes down to it, this fact should remind us to treat each other in positive ways.
If your curiosity has been piqued by these highlights, I recommend taking the short dive into this fascinating and accessible book. Some of it may “blow your mind.”

I don't really know what I expected from this book, probably something quite hard to understand. It was not: it was accessible, educational and super interesting!

I learnt many things I didn't know at all - never heard of some of the concepts present in this book actually -; I was amazed at some lessons, for instance, the one about the triune brain, because I was convinced that it was true! I understood more about our species, and I absolutely adored the fact that the author acknowledges the fact that humans are not "better" than other species. She explains that our brain is just different, and that other species have, for us, super-powers that we'll never get. She brings humans closer to animals thanks to examples portraying, for instance, bees, rats or apes.

I also loved the author's tone and her humour. I read the notes at the end of the book: they were more technical than the rest, but they were still great - I got some more reading to do now thanks to them! The main body of the text is quite simple to understand thanks to images, metaphors, examples and thanks to the way Lisa Feldman Barrett explains things. It's simple but effective: perfect.
The book is also quite short, which can be surprising with such a subject. Even if it can feel like an introduction to people who already know these things about the brain, to me, it was a really great one, one that made me want to read more about it - and the first book of the author, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, which is in my radar since it came out! These seven lessons were taken by a fascinated student!


So, to conclude: a great book to learn more about the brain in an effective and simple way!

In her Author’s Note for Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain Lisa Feldman Barrett describes her book as “short, informal essays to intrigue and entertain you” A perfect description!
This is one of those books that make you want to stop very frequently to share some tidbit with your long-suffering spouse (Of course, he found them as much fun as I did.). For example, there was a very insightful discussion of the impact of “body budgeting” on empathy, explaining why at the brain level it is harder to empathize with people who are less familiar to you. I especially enjoyed hearing about a study that found that if you are exposed to social stress within two hours of a meal, your body metabolizes the food in a way that adds 104 calories to the meal, which could add up to 11 pounds gained in a year if it happens daily!
Each essay covers a different subject, such as “Your Brain Predicts (Almost) Everything You Do”, and I enjoyed them all. My favorite, though, was “Your Brain Secretly Works with Other Brains”, which showed how we affect each other pervasively at the most basic levels.
As the author also says, this is NOT a full tutorial on the brain, but there is a fair amount of discussion of brain structure and similar subject in the first lesson or two, so be prepared. In order to express complex concepts, she uses a lot of metaphors, like when she compares the brain’s wiring arrangement to the global air-travel system. The metaphors were clever and apt, but I sometimes had trouble imagining them. This was the only flaw I found in an otherwise fascinating book that I will be recommending to all my friends.
My thanks to Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

An awesome, quick read from Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett that summarizes seven and a half major lessons we can all learn about the brain. The nature of these lessons is perfect for a new learner eager for a brief, well-written, and interesting synthesis of what we are learning about the brain. I'm eager to assign chapters of this book for a jigsaw classroom activity.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing an ARC of this book. Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain is a quick, easily digestible introduction to common myths about the brain and how we know they aren’t true. Dr. Barrett has written this book to be accessible to non-scientist readers, avoiding jargon as much as possible, while still including acknowledgements - in the form of endnotes - of areas where the science isn’t settled. Definitely worth a read if you, like me, are fascinated by the brain and want to understand more about how it actually works.

4/5 stars

Professor Lisa Feldman Barrett's books about the brain blow my mind. 7 1/2 Lessons is her most approachable popular work to date, and it is easy to read. And entertaining. And relatively short; the details are in an appendix.
The 7 1/2 lessons are meant to update the popular understanding of the brain with neuroscience research. What the brain evolved for and still does is keep our bodies alive, monitoring the budget of our metabolic needs outside of our conscious awareness. It does this by learning from experience to make predictions about what our bodies are about to do. It's weird but true that the brain knows you're about to raise your hand (or do anything) before you're aware of it.

In addition, our brains are not unique in the animal kingdom, nor are they composed of part as we have been taught. We are all used to hearing about the different parts of the brain, like the "lizard brain," supposedly evolutionarily-older structures that govern the fight-or-flight response to saber tooth tigers. Barrett wants to set the record straight: there is no lizard brain or other dedicated part of the brain, nor is the human brain is not unique in size or structure.

The truth is the human brain is a series of networks that wire flexibly to create varied human minds and social realities. In fact, our ability to create social realities appears to be the truly unique thing about us and the superpower that has allowed us to dominate the planet.

This is all fascinating stuff with implications for how we interact with each other and govern ourselves. Barrett alludes to this at the end of each chapter, but again leaves out details.

I hope that people will be curious enough to read this book and start thinking a little differently about what it means to be human. I'm not sure it will be very persuasive, however. The whole approach depends upon the acceptance of evolution. In 2020, that should be a no-brainer (pardon the pun), but there are still large swaths of humanity that doubt it.

The other thing that makes me sad is the title: if you're not already a brain nerd, why would you pick up a book of lessons on it? I took a highly non-scientific pole of one colleague who said the title was boring. Barrett is good at coming up for understandable metaphors for brain functions, but she is not telling a compelling story with this book. True popularization of these ideas will have to wait.

Think Neil de grass Tyson astrophysics but a book of the brain. So many details smashed into such a quick and easy to read book. So insightful and packed with information. A must read for everyone. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Simply fascinating! I loved every page of this, especially the connection between thoughts and our emotions.

I enjoyed this.

What's nice is that the scientific explanations to be found in these pages are not overwhelming. They're not bogged down by unpronounceable neuro-terminology or exhaustive detail that's liable to give its layperson-reader a migraine, either. The author makes sure to attach relatable analogies and metaphors to the principles she's describing instead, making them easy for anyone without a science background to comprehend.

Everything she presents is divulged in simple, bite-sized morsels. Most of the lessons only begin to scratch the surface of the brain's many facets and complexities, especially in humans, but that's kind of the whole point, isn't it? This is supposed to be a starting place. A summary. It's a minimalist introduction to all things Brain, so don't go into it thinking it will ascend you into starry-eyed Enlightenment or Information Density, because it won't. The brevity prohibits it, and do you know what? That's perfectly fine. It's just right, exactly what you need.

I like books about science that entice me to think. To think beyond the pages before me. And this one did. I'd recommend it for that alone. 3.5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the ARC!

3 STARS ★★★✩✩
This book is for you if… you’re not the kind of science reader that wants his texts to be overly sensational. You will still notice that the author tries to excite her readers with some magnificent facts.

⤐ Overall.
Disclaimer: I really want to be blown away by science books. I don't expect to be enlightened to the point of ascension, I just thoroughly enjoy having fun facts to randomly mention when I'm socialising. This book was not quite what I was looking for but still good enough for a couple of hours of scientific input.

Lisa mainly drew my attention to me how absolutely "pathetic" human infants are. While other species can walk within minutes of their birth and have fully developed brains, we cannot even control our own limbs. Even fully grown we are less capable of certain tasks than even simple bacteria.

I also learned that all creatures share the same basic construction plan for our brain but each with different components and individual proportions.

⤐ The structure is as follows.
THE HALF LESSON - Your Brain Is Not for Thinking
LESSON NO 1 - You Have One Brain (Not Three)
LESSON NO 2 - Your Brain Is a Network
LESSON NO 3 - Little Brains Wire Themselves to Their World
LESSON NO 4 - Your Brain Predicts (Almost) Everything You Do
LESSON NO 5 - Your Brain Secretly Works With Other Brains
LESSON NO 6 - Brains Make More than One Kind of Mind
LESSON NO 7 - Our Brains Can Create Reality

Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Appendix: The Science Behind the Science
Index
Author's Note
_____________________
3 STARS. Decent read that I have neither strongly positive nor negative feelings about. Some thinks irked me and thus it does not qualify as exceptional.

Love this book- the subject matter, the writing style and the author's points. The writing is excellent, the author makes complex structures and processes clear and accessible. The book is well organized, building on previous information so understanding the more complicated concepts is straightforward.

Many of the things we think we understand about the brain and how it works are based on misinformation and is just plain wrong. The author takes us through the basis for the incorrect information and how it needs to be corrected.

Its short, sweet and to the point. thanks this was a great book to read.

Hi everyone!
This book is amazing! (I think it's the best book I've read on netgalley)
In seven and a half lessons the author explains how our brain works and how it's different from other animals.
She talks about the complexity our brain, unveiling myths that are still in our society, how the brain develops in children, its plasticity and the fact that sometimes we mistake our metaphors for knowledge...
All in a simple and sometimes funny way, that keeps you entertained.
In fact she uses a lot of metaphors that make complex concepts very easy to understand and very light, like when she said: "in short, your brain's most important job is not thinking. It's running a little warm body that has become very, very complicated"

If the brain intrigues you (even if you don't know anything about it) I definitely recommend this book!
I also can't wait to read more books by this author.

I thought this book was fun to read. It's short, and Feldman Barrett is good at dispelling myths in the science while still keeping things relatively simple. I enjoyed reading the whole thing, even if I don't have a background in any of this information.

A pop science intro to the brain. A timely and accessible intro to a rapidly developing science which has implications for a wide range of activities and relationships.

Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain goes over a brief overview on the basic function of the brain, both on an interpersonal level but also on a social level.

I found this book fairly intriguing to go through as it provided a lot of information and clarified common misconceptions about the human brain. I did happen to know a lot of this information already, but the writing was enjoyable and the author made interesting commentary on how the brain is multifaceted. I think this is a good book for people who are interested in reading about the brain but have not done a lot of reading about it already.

I wish the notes in the back were integrated better into the text rather than put in the back. I also wish that there was discussion about atypical brains such as autism or schizophrenia but this book focuses on the general populace instead.

4/5

There are so many books about brain and neuroscience. But most of them are bulky and lose track somewhere in the middle. When they enter into exhaustive details, interest of the reader wanes.
This one is different. It is concise. It tells so much, but uses so little space. It is very interesting read. It starts with most prehistoric brain in small sea animals.
It describes events and principles with easily understandable metaphors.
It focuses in long term myths and wrong representative terms in neurosciences and concept of plasticity.
A very good highly readable book.
Somewhere at end it slips into ethics and politics which could have been best avoided.
Still a very good book for busy science enthusiastic readers.