Have you ever wondered exactly how we learn? How we remember? Remembering, of course, is a crucial part of learning. This book takes us deeply into the realm of neuroscience, into the brain itself, and particularly into those synapses that fire (or don't) from time to time.

As yet, the exact mechanism for remembering has not been found, but various disciplines have been merging toward a common conclusion. The persons studying the science of memory have come from neuroscience, biology, physics, and even philosophy and computer science. The different researchers headed in different directions for years, until finally in the 1990s they started to pull in the same direction.

Honestly, a lot of the specific explanations for how the synapses fire and what the neurotransmitters do did not stick firmly in my head. I can't really blame Johnson for that, however, because he has done an amazing job of explaining without dumbing down. I found the stories of the individuals involved sometimes more interesting and absorbing. We may think scientists are devoid of envy and ambition but of course that is not true. There are many different ways to go astray, even for a scientist.

The general ideas I did take away from this book serve me well. It makes good sense to me, for example, that we can retrain certain paths that we have developed over time, to go in different directions. This was not the focus of the book but one of the side effects.

If you are interested in how it all really works, this is the book to start with. I am guessing that there are others written more recently that might build on it. ( )