A Day in the Life of the Brain: The Neuroscience of Consciousness from Dawn Till Dusk

by Susan A. Greenfield

Each of us has a unique, subjective inner world, one that we can never share directly with anyone else. But how do our physical brains actually give rise to this rich and varied experience of consciousness? In this ground-breaking book, internationally acclaimed neuroscientist Susan Greenfield brings together a series of astonishing new, empirically based insights into consciousness as she traces a single day in the life of your brain. From waking to walking the dog, working to dreaming, Greenfield explores how our daily experiences are translated into a tangle of cells, molecules and chemical blips, thereby probing the enduring mystery of how our brains create our individual selves.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Psychology, Neuroscience, Brain, Philosophy, Social Science

ebook

First published January 1, 2016

About the author

Greenfield is Professor of Synaptic Pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford. On 1 February 2006, she was installed as Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. Until 8 January 2010, she was director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain

Reviews

[☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit too fragmented, for my taste. If the author was going for creating analogous examples with some hypothetical family, she should have done it consistently throughout the book. Or else she could have separated these passages into some separate blocks of text, graphically. Crossovers between the peptides functions and 'your wife's mom's Alzheimer's' were sort of disparate.

[Marcos Malumbres · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got really nervous reading this book.

I was terribly attracted by the title.. learning how the brain works in the daily activities seemed to me one of the most attractive topics for reading or even working on. I enjoyed the first pages (Preface) in which the author explained how she got into "neuroscience" from History or Greek philosophy. Then, the problems came…

The first pages in chapter 1 are kind of historical.. fine. Then, the definitions, essential for the book, come. Trying to define consciousness in a taught task but the reader finishes the chapter without a clear idea of that the author is really talking about. (As a general criticism to the book, the author uses very complicated sentences, long and with long words, to explain simple things…. It remembered me of politicians trying to hide the real data using complicated periphrasis. I rather like the authors that explain complicated things using simple ideas and sentences.)
Failing to define that is the book really about (consciousness rather than brain activities during the day), the rest of chapters are disappointing. To make this review short I will summarize the main problems into three topics.

For readers trying to learn what is “A day in the life of the brain”… forget it! The topic described in the title of the chapters (waking up, walking the dog, breakfast, etc..) is only discussed in the first paragraph of the chapter and then the rest of the section could be randomly presented in any other chapter.

For readers willing to read a book about neurobiology.. forget it! This is a book about psychology, very similar to many other similar (better) books describing that certain brain activities correlate with certain areas of the brain and that some chemicals such as dopamine are involved (this basically is the level of depth in the book). Brain research is a major area of development in the present and it is quite surprising that this book, first published in 2016 could have been written many decades ago. Although the author uses some experimental examples (including color plates) in the book, these are completely useless and only illustrate how poor are these techniques to investigate brain activity. In several instances I really wondered if the author really works in brain function. She says in the book that every time you think neurogenesis happens!!! What???? It is true that recent research has discovered that the adult brain produces new neurons (about 14,000 a day) but that neurons are produced as a response to thinking is really absurd. Perhaps the author meant new synapsis/connections?

Neuronal assemblies. Do you know the classical joke of a patient asking to the doctor why he/she is not feeling well. And the doctor says.. “I got it! You are sick!”. This is the answer of the book. The basis of brain acitivity is the presence of neuronal assemblies and the basis of consciousness is an specific definition/threshold/(many other long words typical of hiding lack of knowledge) of these assemblies. What is a neuronal assembly? Using classical technologies researchers can see that specific stimuli or actions are converted in changes in voltage (or other markers) in neurons and that these changes do not affect a single neuron but local groups. Ohh! What a surprise!! That means that when I hear music there is more than one neuron affected? Congratulations! Writing 300 pages around this idea without adding more information is simply ridiculous. Current research has classified more than 25 types of interneurons (defined by specific chemicals generated or to which neurons are sensitive or different genes) that connect most motor neurons in the brain. Describing all that new research, how the contacts between interneurons and neurons respond to daily stimuli, how they differentially respond to the different stimuli/senses, which is the genetic basis of differences between neurons and between persons, etc. would have been the expected content for this book.

For the author the problem with the schizophrenic is similar to being a child, the response of the neuronal assemblies is bigger or smaller (I really don't remember; my neuronal assemblies processing that information refused to fix it in my memory). Being happy or sad is also a matter of the size (strength, duration, etc) of the assemblies. Every disease has the same explanation. The difference between vision and hearing is that these assemblies change in spatial edges in the first case and change in time properties in the second. That’s it. That explains everything, the only difference between listening Mozart, discovering the law of gravity, being young, being terminally sick or commit murder is the differences in the size, edges and duration of neuronal assemblies. I am not saying this is wrong (is a matter of definition). But it is useless.

The author realize in the last chapter that explaining everything with neuronal assemblies is probably too simple so she speculates on the existence of meta-assemblies, in which several assemblies cooperate all together in regulating brain activities... no comments.

Finally….. the metaphor about the stone and the ripples generated in the water… (a visual metaphor on the neuronal assemblies)… what to say! If I had to mention this metaphor once in the book (for instance only once and forced by the editors) I would do it only once and after admitting that explaining brain activities with that metaphor is childish and can actually lead readers to get confused about how the brain really works. Well, surprisingly, the author is very happy with this metaphor and it is described several instances in every chapter. Try opening almost any random page in the book and you will find the word “stone” and “ripples! Again, the differences between sleeping, walking, having sex or killing people are simply the strength with which the stone has been thrown, the amplitude of the ripples, etc. etc.

Everytime I saw this metaphor I was tempted to abandon the book. Finally I decided to finish reading it so you can read this review and decide whether this was the “neuroscience” book you were looking for.

[Sophia Exintaris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disclaimer: Did not complete the book.

Skipped most of chapter one, as it sounded too much like a chapter by Descartes or Pascal and I wasn't in the mood for a philosophical diatribe on neurophysiology.

Chapter two lost me a quarter of the way through as well.

This reads like a painful PhD thesis, not a book. The author is more scientist / philosopher than human-loving author and I am clearly not the intended audience. Not what I expected in terms of content, and not a pleasant read linguisticaly, so I stopped reading it.

[Trym Stenkjær · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book's content is engaging, and the author does a great job explaining the research. However, a major drawback is the extensive use of numbered notes throughout the text. These notes often lead to references, not additional information, making it frustrating to constantly flip back and forth. To enhance the reading experience, distinguishing between references and actual notes within the text would be a significant improvement. Furthermore, placing the notes at the bottom of each page, rather than at the back of the book, would provide convenient and immediate access to the extra information. These changes would greatly enhance the reader's experience.

Content: 4.5
Use of notes/references: 2

[Вікторія Слінявчук · Rating 3 out of 5]

Название книги - "Один день из жизни мозга" - несколько вводит в заблуждение. Сьюзан Гринфилд не особо придерживается заявленной хронологии, привязка к событиям дня довольно условная, что, видимо, вызывает разочарование у некоторых читателей. Возможно, композиция книги не слишком удачно выбрана...
Тем не менее, вопросы, которые рассматриваются в книге Гринфилд, чрезвычайно интересны. Как возникает сознание? Каким образом биохимические и электрические процессы в мозге формируют этот феномен? Можно ли вообще объективно исследовать такую субъективную штуку, как сознание? Как возникает сознание в филогенезе и онтогенезе? Есть ли сознание у животных или у плода до рождения? Как употребление психоактивных веществ влияет на процессы в мозге и на сознание? Чем отличается сознание ребенка от сознания взрослого? Куда "девается" сознание во время сна или общего наркоза? В чем особенности сознания при деменции и шизофрении?

По мнению Гринфилд, за сознание отвечают так называемые "нейронные ансамбли", которые она определяет следующим образом: "вариабельные эфемерные (субсекундные) макромасштабные объединения клеток головного мозга (например, около 10 миллионов или более), которые не ограничены или не определены анатомическими областями или системами мозга". Их существование вполне достоверно, однако, одиночный нейронный ансамбль еще не определяет сознание, так что Гринфилд высказывает предположение о существовании "метаансамблей", а это уже новое поле для исследований. Так что окончательного ответа на вопрос о возникновении сознания пока всё ещё нет.
В общем, книга не из тех, в которых всё разложено по полочкам - вопросов больше, чем ответов...

[Susanne Doorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read full review at http://mindfunda.com/consciousness/

PRO

I have read the book with great pleasure. The concept is very attractive: consciousness throughout the day.
It is very informative. It contains a wealth of information about neurological research.
No scientific language, easy to read.
Susan Greenfield is very well informed on the subject of dreams.
The metaphor of the stone in the lake is a very easy and compelling one and it is used consistently throughout the book.

CONTRA

I missed a final shopping list for consciousness. It was a very funny idea that guided me trough the book and I would have liked it if it had a final conclusion. Even if it had been a grocery list with things crossed out, like my own lists always are.
You might not be taken seriously by science freaks if you admit that you have actually enjoyed a book of Susan Greenfield (but this can be added by the pro’s as well).
Why does the main person have to be a guy again?

[Sarah Hopkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

The temporal orientation of this book makes sense, though it is not quite "dawn to dusk" as the blurb on the cover suggests but begins in bed at night. Astoundingly it is not until chapter 3 that the brain actually decides about the process of getting out of bed - such is the detail of the nightly brain activity and the difference in the sleeping brain to that on waking, which tallies with other authors who analyse sleep data and dream sleep to study the mind.
The author presents information in a way that is inspiring about our human potential, explaining that we bring meaning to sensory experience through our own brain's take on matters and that this is what is lacking for those who experience types of dementia thereby giving them disconnected sensory experiences that they struggle to put into context and make sense of. An illustration she uses is how if you or I were to see an apparent ghost we would bring our own individual perspective to the experience and likely logic out that someone was fooling us on a Halloween theme whereas someone with a dementia diagnosis would be scared in the moment, taking the apparition at face value without the mental connections to reason the experience through to a satisfactory understanding of it.
She talks later about how valuable sensory experience is, describing the impact of neglect that was a wide scale problem with institutionalised orphans in the regime in Romania during the '70s and '80s. Orphans' fine motor skills, language ability and socio-emotional skills were delayed in development and all had limitations in mental processing. This was due to the environment and the impact was there even for those in it for a shorter while. Lack of stimulation resulted in deficiencies of abilities.
Conversely, discussing experiments with rats involving environmental alterations, she describes how those rats kept in an enriched environment with ladders and wheels had enhanced mood and less stress in contrast to those who lacked this.
Something she highlights is the connection between mind and body and how they cannot be considered as completely separate entities with the example that those who just imagine piano playing may begin to physically play the piano better. So mental rehearsal makes a difference as well as access to environmental resources.
Music is highly regarded with a quote from Cross that it is "a natural drive in socio-cultural learning that exists from infancy" and from Nietzsche that "we listen to music with our muscles." This suggests we seek to hear music and are motivated to move with it when we do - toe tapping or even dancing. It is therefore good for encouraging exercise.
As for creativity, she suggests eight helpful aspects. Firstly, associative orientation - being imaginative, playful and having ideas. Then a need for originality - wanting to do new things or find new ways to do things. Thirdly, motivation - a drive to perform, an innovative attitude and stamina to overcome problems. Fourthly, a desire to be influential to get attention and gain recognition. Fifthly, flexibility so there is an ability to see alternatives. Strangely, sixthly, a creative individual is more likely to have low emotional stability, poor mood at times and be lacking in self confidence and seventhly, they are more likely to be less sociable, find flaws in people and lack consideration of them. Finally, a more creative person is more likely to have experienced different cultures so possesses alternative perspectives especially if having lived or learned in another country, acquiring an intense cultural experience. This would suggest encouraging people to try something new is good for their creative self - like experimenting with new recipes.
Another interesting idea she presents is that the brain deals with information in discrete phases so that one sense may catch up another for a multi-sensory byte of information for the brain. So, whilst a message may go more readily from the nose to the brain than from a touch to the foot, if they happen simultaneously in experience the brain holds the one element until the other arrives so that they are felt together in combination. A hole drilling experiment in the brain has shown it can take half a second to experience touch, she explains. However the brain can spark information in a thousandth of a second. Earlier she says vision is 90% conscious, hearing 80% and touch less so at 50%. Maybe this means to enhance experience more effort needs to be made with tactile stimuli than visual then.
A theme that runs through her discussions is an analogy of how the brain works like the throwing of a stone in a pond, creating concentric ripples of activity as opposed to a simple linear process. There are, she says earlier, known to be 30 parts of the brain that contribute toward vision. What alters impact is the size of the stone, or stimulus, the velocity of how hard it is thrown, or its intensity and the viscosity of the water, be it muddied and thick or clean and clear, like the clarity of our ability to think, our mental potential to make connections, or neural plasticity and lack of cognitive deficit. This could be remembered as volume, velocity, viscosity. So, with vision a large blue light that is shone brightly directly at someone with good connectivity will have greater impact than a small yellow light, giving a slight glow in the dim distance to someone with diminished mental processing.
The idea that too much of something can be as bad as too little, is touched on regarding Schizophrenia when a person has too much dopamine, produced in association with pleasure. There as a fine line between pleasure and fear she explains, hence why Schizophrenia can be frightening to experience, just as a toddler plays hide-and-seek and goes from fun to fear during the game.
After many interesting insights, she ends on a note or acknowledgment that we will always struggle to conceive our own conceptualising - amusingly likening this to trying to attempt to cut butter with a knife made of butter. She is inclined to intend to study further and has the belief that neuroscience studies of how the brain works to decipher information can contribute on the same level as philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, maths and physics in order to shed light on first-hand experience in a constructive and complementary way.
This is a book that helps the reader to appreciate how amazing and unique we each are, some of what can go amiss with us in this sense and what can help to keep us well in terms of being mentally engaged. Quite an optimistic read with some helpful analogies which reads easier than might be anticipated considering the complexity of the subject of how the brain functions day to day yet, of course, is relevant to all who wish to understand themselves better and especially to help others who have cognitive struggles.

[Anibal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book from a highly popular neuroscientist. She tries hard to make her work accessible to non-scientific audiences, improving the connection between scientists and the general public regarding an issue that is truly complex.

Her analogy of a stone thrown to a pond is extremely clarifying to explain her theory of neural networks. The different aspects such as the strength of the throw, the size of the rock or the consistency of the water provides clear clues which helps us understand such diverse things as the difference between the brain of an adult and the brain of an adolescent, clarifies what is depression or dementia, how sports can generate grey brain matter, how the environment can affect the neural networks and brain cells, etc.

Drº Greenfield follows the day of a regular person and analysis different aspects: from a walk in the park with a dog, work at the office, hearing music, sleeping and dreaming, among many others. Using her analogy to better explain how the actions affect and are affected by consciousness.

This is a very good introduction to understand how conscience might be formed and influenced.

It includes very good notes and colored images of scans.

[Aikaros · Rating 5 out of 5]

ADITLOTB is all about neuronal assemblies and why the author believes they are The neural correlate of consciousness.

If you think about picking up this book, note that:
a) The hard problem of consciousness is mentioned, if I remember correctly, twice. Once in the beginning, once in the final chapter. If you are looking for something about the mysticism of the Hard problem, look elsewhere.
b) The title is a bit misleading as the actual content is more like a scientific paper with the "day of the brain" part is sprinkled through. (To a point where it feels forced at times)

I am not a neurologist, nor a psychologist. But to me, the theory of neuronal assemblies seems pretty plausible. Even if it doesn't address the Hard problem, the author convinced me that assemblies can be the next step in understanding consciousness.

Although I enjoyed reading this book, I can't recommend it to most people as it can be a bit tedious read. If you for whatever weird reason want to know more about how scientists try to solve the question of consciousness and like the mystery of it yourself, this book can be a very informative experience.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

First up: not gonna lie, a lot of the science was over my head. But the thing I like about the structure of this book is that the difficult sciencey bits are at the end of each more accessible description. And I was able to enjoy the book on a philosophical level, even though my understanding was limited.

However, I’m not sure about the whole thing of breaking it down into parts of the day... I can see how that would be useful from a marketing perspective, and I think the neuroscientific examples did fit in well with the structure, but it felt a bit gimmicky and somewhat selective to bundle different phenomena into times of the day. I think I personally would have found it more useful to have the chapters split by phenomena... which I suppose they were...

Also, I could never quite get my head around the analogy of the stone being thrown in the puddle. I think I would have struggled less without it.

On balance though, an interesting and informative book that made me want to find out more.

[Oleksandr Golovatyi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Лучшие цитаты книги:

"Идеальный дизайн, по-видимому, представляет собой среду, которая обеспечивает комфорт и безопасность и в то же время дает возможность переходить в общие пространства для свободных взаимодействий."

"виды деятельности, явным образом стимулирующие творческое мышление, — те, которые не требуют быстрых осознанных реакций, они скорее монотонны и позволяют разуму блуждать"

"Интересно, что еще одно недавнее исследование показало, что прогулки на свежем воздухе также способствуют увеличению творческого потенциала."

"Юность — время массовых психологических и физиологических трансформаций."

"немаловажный аспект восприятия боли — предвкушение боли усиливает ее."

"зрение обеспечивают порядка тридцати различных областей мозга, отвечающих за восприятия цвета, формы, движения и т.п.,"

"Выявленная закономерность такова: чем крупнее масштаб, тем более продолжительным кажется временной отрезок"

[Tutankhamun18 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic and immensly interesting!

A book that is very enjoyable without giving many answers. Using the passing of someones day as the link between all chapters (which is unusual in a science book that the author thinks about making the book so much like a story), this book explores what conciousness is in humans; in adults, teenagers, children and people with mental health problems. The metalhor throughout that conciousness is a surface of water into which a stone can be thrown that will then cause a smaller or larger ripple in the surface of conciousness. Read this book if you want to be fascinated, if you want to read someones musings based on data about conciousness...

[Jonathan Steffanoni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Impressive and accessible hypothesis on the nature of consciousness which is founded in both neuro-scientific research while aligning to everyday experience. This concise book takes journey through the typical daily experiences to lay out a model of a consciousness influenced by the function of assemblies in the brain. Very interesting and enjoyable to read.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this really quite tedious and dull. The books content is only tangentially relevant to its premise, it's difficult to understand to the apparent layperson it's aimed at. Not what I thought it would be at all.

[Kirsty Keddie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn’t finish this book although I did try to plough through it. Despite a strong interest I found the academic content too complex and feel that it was slightly misleading to market this on the ‘popular science ‘ shelf when it really is more of an academic work at its core.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot more unproven theoretical explorations than I had anticipated, and had I paid more attention to the title I would have realised the focus on the book is puzzle of consciousness, rather than a wider exploration of a 'day in the life of the brain' - but still interesting.

[Sambasivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in a simple style this book comes out with very good insights and therefore a pleasure to read.

[Shoog · Rating 3 out of 5]

I see it as too scientifically and not as she claimed for public, I expected it to be more daily related activity and more life examples.

[Leah Clarke · Rating 1 out of 5]

Only read this for my personal statement but then changed my mind on what i want to do, so i was beyond bored

[Cal Davie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Greenfield has a wonderful way of making neuroscience accessible to all!

The book sketches a way in which the brain generates consciousness about our daily lives. It's creatively written, breaking up the day into separate categories and reflecting on what's going on in our heads! The emphasis is on neuroassemblies, that is activity generated by neurons. The book develops such an interesting way of describing these which isn't often emphasised in other books about the brain. She is sensitive to other disciplines such as philosophy, and is humble in all of her claims. The book is extremely well-written, and an excellent resource for discussions on consciousness.

[Kasper Zaziemski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many interesting facts from the world of neuroscience, but can be quite overwhelmingly complicated at times though.

[Leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Day in the Life of the Brain takes the reader through a typical day: from waking up – that moment when we regain consciousness (and what is consciousness, anyway?) – to going back to sleep and dreaming. During the day, we visit the very many brain processes generated by our day-to-day experiences.

The main theme of the book seems to be the definition of consciousness and how to pinpoint what actually causes it, neurologically speaking. To do this, Greenfield considers a very wide range of subjects, including sensory input, environment, boredom, dreaming, the perception of time, depression, childhood/teenage years, dementia, music, and exercise.

Written by an academic, presumably with a popular readership in mind, Greenfield is clearly passionate (if not obsessive), and has done her best to make the subject accessible. That said, she loves long sentences: “The succession of different mental states you have been through can now be expressed bilingually – with the terminology of objective physiology and the simultaneous corresponding language of subjective phenomenology.” And this (never-ending) style made for a very dense read. Despite having some educational background in physiology, I was relieved to reach the end.

The narrative is written as though the reader is a male office worker, with a depressed wife, a grumpy teenage son, and a demented mother-in-law. I found this personification (not to mention the stereotyping) unnecessary and unhelpful.

I found it odd there was no mention of autism (other than in a brief endnote), which has massive implications for neurological assemblies, but I guess that’s just not within Greenfield’s remit.

For committed readers only. 3.5*

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a little bit deep but I had to read this for my introduction to neuroscience class in college. It talks about the subjective and objective sides of consciousness in the brain. It can not be found anywhere. Science has yet to define it.