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How Your Brain Works - Greg Gage and Tim Marzullo ***

As soon as you see the cover of this book, it feels like it's going to be light hearted and super fun (or at least it seems the authors want it to be this). In practice, it's not. It might have big, Joy of Sex style line drawings and an odd shape with cheap feeling paper, but the content is fairly straightforwardly serious. 

In the introduction Greg Gage and Tim Marzullo tells us that 'There are many examples of how amateur scientists add to our collective understanding of nature.' This feels a dubious statement at best - it's obviously true historically when professional scientists didn't exist, but these days amateur contributions are distinctly niche. If you think of any of the really big scientific breakthroughs of the last 100 years, there isn't a lot of amateur input. And using this book certainly won't add anything.

Once we get into the book proper, it delivers on at least part of the subtitle 'neuroscience experiments for everyone' - the whole book is driven by home neuroscience. The very first item is an introduction to neurons. After a little text we are told to immerse a (live) cockroach from 'your container' in ice water to anaesthetise it before pulling off one of its legs. (I'm already feeling a touch queasy.) We then put pins through the leg with wires attached, then 'connect the wires to the SpikerBox.' Hang on, the what? It turns out we need a complex bit of electronic gubbins to do these experiments. To be fair to the authors, they provide circuit diagrams to build your own, which could be used by anyone who could build a basic computer from components - i.e. hardly anybody. Or you can buy one from their online store - as indeed you can a box of cockroaches.

We go on to be taken through a range of cockroach-based neuronal experiments, from exploring different senses to the speed of neurons and the impact on them of drugs. We then move on to the human brain with another set of equipment used as a basic EEG. Finally we take on the human nervous system, employing more tech: both EEG and EMG equipment. There's no doubt that there's a lot to explore here, and the reader will find out a lot about the basics of neurons, human brains and the human nervous system - though it is arguable how much benefit is gained from doing the experiments.

We do have a bit of a problem with that claim of neuroscience experiments 'for everyone'. If you don't live in the US you probably won't be able to obtain live cockroaches from Gage and Marzullo's store (though a quick internet search will probably bring up a local supplier). But their SpikerBoxes are not cheap - we're talking a minimum of around $200 to get a mid-range bundled neutron kit sent to the UK, while the human SpikerBox will set you back $350. This isn't DIY experiments with stuff you find in the kitchen drawer.

There's also a slight concern that doing these experiments truly benefits anyone. Of course it's useful for would-be scientists to learn how to do experiments - that's one of the reasons they go to university. But pulling legs of cockroaches at home, for example, to perform an experiment that could easily be described and that adds nothing to scientific knowledge seems an unnecessary step. The human parts are less of an issue - you don't have to pull off any human limbs, for example.

This is an interesting idea, and I'm sure it will appeal to some, just as doing chemistry experiments at home appealed to me in my teens. But as a book, this isn't one I enjoyed reading or would give to an enthusiastic teen.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here
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