Understanding the difference between the mind and the brain
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In 2020 the forced isolation of pandemic-related lockdowns led many of us to attend virtual fitness classes and undertake home baking projects. Chantel Prat wondered why she wasn\\u2019t interested in taking part. \\u201cI couldn\\u2019t help but notice and be frustrated by the fact that my brain was responding to the pandemic in a way that seemed very different from the people around me,\\u201d she says.
At the time Prat was writing her book The Neuroscience of You. Published in 2022, it explores how different brains make sense of the world. \\u201cI\'ve always been interested in the relationship between the mind and the brain, at the level of the individual, not how do brains work in general,\\u201d she says.
\\u201cRight now I feel like we\\u2019re living through a great social paradox,\\u201d she adds. \\u201cPeople are discussing the importance of having diverse minds and brains and decision-making spaces. But yet, we don\\u2019t seem to be getting any better at talking through our differences.\\u201d
To illustrate her point, Prat, who is based at the University of Washington in Seattle, uses the 2015 online image of a dress which went viral and generated heated debates about its colour. Was it white and gold, or blue and black? \\u201cThis is just a tiny example of how our experiences shape this world-building that we\'re doing, the way our brains create inferences and connect the dots, even for something as elementary as colour.\\u201d she says.
She also recalls how, as a single mother aged 19, she first recognised that her baby daughter Jasmine perceived the world in ways that surprised her, based on lab experiments that she participated in.
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