Lovely book with a really interesting take on the stories of people affected by brain issues, and how they managed to live with them and in some cases learn to utilise and enjoy them. The author is likable and you can tell she really enjoyed meeting the people contributing, and the complex nature of the issues is told in a really easy way

This book was so fascinating! The minds presented in this book are so unusual, and it is so eye-opening to understand a little bit about how the minds of others work, as well as my own mind. Clearly well researched and well written, there's a natural narrative style to the prose, making it easy for you to dip in and dip out, or devour in chunks.

A little gem of a brainy book. Helen Thomson follows in the footsteps of Oliver Sacks with a variety of case studies of people whose brain does things differently to most of us. These “anomalies” are an excellent tool to catch a glimpse of how the brain receives, puts together, analyses and reacts to the perfect storm of outside stimuli. Written entertainigly with a large amount of background knowledge.

The brain is a magnificent organ (huge understatement!)

We've all marvelled at the human brain, at one time or another, even when it has us do something insanely ridiculous. I'm reminded of the time I forgot that we had a new family car, and spent ten or so minutes looking for the one we had sold the month before. So distracted I had been in getting out of the rain, that the new car had slipped my mind completely. That, and I was drenched. Oh, how the mind works!

Lucky for us, Helen Thomson brings together far more intriguing stories of individuals and how their extraordinary brains work. We all hear people discuss how not everyone sees the world through the same lens as us, we learnt this with the blue and black or white and gold dress in 2015 which Thomson, herself, references. Though, we don't tend to think beyond this. The idea that we are all considerably different, some more than others, can be entirely inconceivable. Until now.

Thomson's recordings of the many real life stories, rather more personal case studies, can shift your perspective of the world. Individuals who can't forget anything, or have been fooled by their brains to believe they are an animal, people whose personality deserts them to the extent they may as well be a stranger, amongst many others. One of the more intriguing, for me, was the brain that fooled a man to believe he was dead simply because it was the most reasonable explanation for his new way of seeing the world. Of course, then there was the man who possessed a rare variant of synaesthesia called mirror-touch synaesthesia which was on a whole new level of 'astonishingly amazing'.

I suppose what I enjoyed the most about this book was how powerfully Thomson articulated the experiences of the individuals she had read about or had personally met. The interviews were remarkably natural. It was as though you were sharing a conversation with the author about all the extraordinary individuals she had met on her travels, venturing from the UK, across Europe, to America, to the Middle East.

Having gone into reading this book with some standard knowledge of psychology, I was familiar with some of the older cases mentioned. But absolutely blown away by the brains of these people, whose cases have not yet made into psychology textbooks. You may read this book and believe that those who possess such skilled minds are modern day superheroes. Thomson lets us entertain those ideas but also gradually disuades the reader of such notions. A mind that can remember every moment can be exhausting, debilitating, it can be a prison. That, and we have more in common than we might think.

Helen Thomson writes as a science journalist with a degree in neuroscience, with an understandable fondess for the old, more descriptively written cases of patients. She successfully makes the individuals behind the conditions, more human. They become more than whatever it's that makes them rather exceptional. I appreciated her enthusiasm for the subject which was clear in her writing, and I welcomed her delightful vision that all our brains are connected in some unfathomable way. As well as how all our brains possess the ability to be phenomenal. "Nothing is Unthinkable", as Thomson writes.

I received this book through Netgalley.

Without a doubt, this is one of the most persuasive and interesting non fiction titles I've ever read. And that's in some 60 years of voracious reading. I was totally captivated.

Unthinkable is Helen Thomson's insight into the human brain. She's uniquely positioned to give such an account; a neuroscientist and journalist/writer. Her academic background gives gravitas to the science behind the case studies. But this is a book for the lay reader and her journalistic background means she understands how to make a complex subject accessible to non academic readers, like myself.

The opening pages explain her interest in the human brain, with an overview of medical understanding as to how it 'works'. But that understanding is far from complete. Our perception of the world and reality is entirely individual. We take so much for granted and what I found truly fascinating is the differences in the people presented in these case studies. In many ways, they're entirely ordinary; but their brains are exceptional and extraordinary. People who can remember minute details about every day of their life, with immediate recall. Or who suddenly become gifted, if frenetic artists. I've read and enjoyed a few books by the late Oliver Sacks. In comparison, Unthinkable really focuses on the person, rather than the clinical detail. I loved the fact that the man with recall of almost every day of his life had forgotten the location of the hotel in which he was meeting the author. There's a real human touch to every one of the stories.

Helen Thomson is able to explain potentially complex material in an easy to assimilate way and I particularly enjoyed the trucks and techniques she explains to help improve retention of facts and how easy it is to create false memory. It's filled with thought provoking material and certainly demonstrates the transient nature of memory and challenges our perception of reality.

A rewarding and spellbinding read which I'll return to. My thanks to John Murray Press, publisher, for a review copy via Netgalley.

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for allowing me to read this book before it is officially published.

Firstly, I didn't know what to expect from this book and was worried it would be too serious and technical for me. So I was pleasantly surprised to find it is easy to read, with very good case studies that really take you on a journey and will make you feel differently about the works of our brains.

Read it, share it, discuss it. A great find of a book.