We often get asked which authors and books inspired us to study neuroscience, and we’ve put together a list of recommended titles below. This is only a start! We’ll keep adding more 🙂
OLIVER SACKS
A compassionate, accessible author, and always a joy to read. We highly recommend his book Hallucinations for our Perception course at Portland State University. We also love and reference Musicophilia, The Island of the Colorblind, An Anthropologist on Mars, Seeing Voices, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Migraine (and there are many more!).
V.S. RAMACHANDRAN
Ramachandran is a memorable storyteller! For years we explored his book Phantoms in the Brain in our Advanced Neurophysiological Psychology course at Portland State. We use it as a jumping off point for exploring more current approaches to the fascinating neurological conditions he describes. He’s updated many of his ideas in The Tell-Tale Brain, but we love Phantoms because students get to discover how initial hypotheses get tested and refined through further research.
MARY ROACH
Everything she writes is gripping, engaging, well-researched and often laugh out loud amazing! Gulp is a mind-expanding tour of our gut, Bonk covers sex, brain and behavior, and Stiff explains a lot about how we are able to obtain specimens for community outreach.
RICHARD WINGATE
Highly recommend The Story of the Brain in 10 1/2 Cells, a unique, lyrical, informative, interdisciplinary exploration of the remarkable cellular denizens of our noggins! The book is a fascinating survey of the rich cast of characters populating our nervous system, from the dendritically endowed Purkinje to the strikingly large (and fused!) axon of the squid. Discover the artists, poets and neuroscientists who applied their own biases and narratives to build our current and evolving story of the brain.
DAVID EAGLEMAN
Wonderful writer, with a host of compelling titles, including Incognito and Livewired.
JILL BOLTE-TAYLOR
My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey. Powerful and hard to put down.
SEMIR ZEKI
A Professor of Neuroaesthetics at University College London. Splendors and Miseries of the Brain explores aesthetic experiences, and how we might learn more about our noggins through art.
BEN BARRES
The Autobiography of a Transgender Scientist dives deep into his celebrated research on glial cells, and his personal experience and advocacy for gender equality in science.
ERIC KANDEL
His comprehensive Principles of Neural Science is found in every undergraduate and graduate library, but this Nobel Prize winning author has more universally accessible books, including the captivating In Search of Memory, detailing the work that won him the prize, and Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures, which explores the intriguing relationship between neuroscience research and modern art.
MATTHEW COBB
Really enjoyed The Idea of the Brain, and its call for new metaphors (and examination of their value and limitations) to help us better understand our noggins.
SUSANNAH CAHALAN
Wrote a gripping memoir, Brain on Fire, about her struggle with anti-glutamate NMDA receptor encephalitis. We were honored to welcome her to a PSU Neuroscience Club event in 2021.
LEARN MORE: PSU Neuro Club: Exploring the Brain w/Susannah Cahalan!
HENRY MARSH
Do No Harm. Could not put this book down! Powerful, moving recollections of an extraordinary, thoughtful and compassionate neurosurgeon about the patients he saved and lost. This was a required text in a Neuroanatomy course I taught for several years in Washington.
THEANNE GRIFFITH
Magnificent Makers series – these books are so much fun! You can inspire the next generation of neuroscientists with exciting adventures (and experiments!) dreamed up by a celebrated neuroscientist and author for children (and adults) on science, including the science of brains. We were honored to welcome Dr. Griffith (virtually!) on outreach visits to Oregon classrooms in 2020, and NogginFest in 2021.
LEARN MORE: Hosford, Hippocampi & Hope
LEARN MORE: A crayon in Homer’s brain
LEARN MORE: NogginFest 2021: Threshold Potential!
GINA RIPPON
The Gendered Brain: The New Neuroscience That Shatters The Myth Of The Female Brain. Fascinating and timely, and a terrific exploration of the pitfalls inherent in communicating research findings.
ANN FADIMAN
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is an extraordinary story of a child with epilepsy, and the complex cultural factors that can influence the accessibility, delivery and effectiveness of medical care.
ANTONIO DAMASIO
Compelling ideas combined fascinating and relevant history. We are inspired by Looking for Spinoza, Descartes Error and The Strange Order of Things.
NICK LANE
If you want to geek out and delve deeply into the flow and flux of matter and energy at the heart of all organisms, then Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death is the book for you! The author illuminates not only the machinery of life, including membranes, gated channels, and Krebs Cycle constituents, but also, fundamentally, what life may actually be. Highly recommend!
ANIL SETH
Incredibly compelling writer describes consciousness convincingly and in-depth in his accessible and engaging book, Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. Are you hallucinating all the time? You can also explore Dr. Seth’s review of theories of consciousness in this paper: Theories of Consciousness (Nature Neuroscience).