It started out with some posts he thought nobody would read. It’s fair to say he was wrong about that
Author and neuroscientist Dean Burnett author of The Idiot Brain(Image: Dan Coughtrey)
Dean Burnett is a neuroscientist, blogger, sometimes-comedian and author. Since his first book The Idiot Brain was published a decade ago his books have sold in 27 countries. It all started with a blog he thought no-one would read and a book that “went a lot better than expected”.
His work influences students, teachers, therapists, and scientists but also people just interested in their brains. He’s also featured in the Guardian, the BBC, and leading science outlets and he is frequently asked to advise major organisations. It’s led to six books, travels around the world, and a friendship with Whoopi Goldberg who, he says, loves a Welsh cake.
Somewhere around 2004 the Cardiff-based scientist started a blog which combined science and humour. It is something he set up to challenge himself more than anything else. He recalls: “It was apparently something most people hadn’t seen before but felt they wanted to see. And so I developed a respectable following as a science writer.”
He never expected that to happen. But then he joined the Guardian as a science blogger and writer and was soon pitching ideas to publishers. After a variety of pitches were declined Faber & Faber met him and asked why he wasn’t writing about his area of expertise – the brain. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here.
The widespread view is that the brain is brilliant but for him it wasn’t as straightforward. “When you do actual neuroscience you quickly realise that the human brain is anything but perfect,” he says. “It’s a terrifyingly complicated tangle of conflicting processes, illogical setups, needless redundancies, clashing networks, and so much more and I don’t think this reality-denying, wonderstruck praise of the brain really helps anyone.”
So they agreed that “because a lot of what it does is quite stupid – idiotic, even,” it was time to write that book – a book about how the brain is, in his words, an idiot.
“Much to my genuine surprise countless people around the world have found this book useful and important,” he says. He’s written plenty more since and to mark a decade since the first book was published it’s now been re-released because the world of 2016 and the one of 2026 are also pretty different.
Since it was originally published in early 2016 there has been Brexit, the rise (twice) to the White House of Donald Trump, the prevalence of fake news, a global pandemic, a surge in awareness about mental health, and the boom of social media for all ages.
He writes in the foreword: “I firmly believe that the fallout of all of these societal shocks could have been avoided, or at least handled better, if more people understood more about how the human brain actually works.”
What does that mean, I ask him. “The whole book’s all about how the human brain is riddled with all these quirks and eccentricities and logical processes and these biases and cognitive shortcuts – all that sort of thing. When you look around the wider world you can sort of see how so much is set up, I’m assuming by happy accident or just by trial and error, to take advantage of this.
“So things like misinformation or political disinformation, a lot of it is based on sort of reinforcing instinctive prejudices or emotional reactions. The way the brain works, for example, we have a tendency to do emotion faster. Emotion goes first. We have emotional reaction – then we think about it.
“When you want to convince someone of your argument you tend to appeal to the emotional side. When you see someone’s doing that – for example: ‘We should vote for this thing because scary people will do something bad’ – well that’s obviously a fear response but that’s not really logical. If you just see someone doing that you can resist it a lot better.”
Dean with Whoopi Goldberg who is a fan of The Idiot Brain book(Image: )
There are “in” and “out” groups on social media, he explains. “People are very tribal but we are very sociable creatures – we always look for communities we want to be part of. One thing helps to find to be part of is having a different group (the out group) which you can be opposed to.
“You can sort of see that happening in real time on social media – people just develop these tight-knit groups, like complete self-contained bubbles where they just reinforce their opinion and extremism arises from that.
“These are all things which are well-documented in the literature but you still see them happening around you and when you see it happening you can see it and say: ‘I know where this going’.
“If everyone could do that then there would be less chance of it coming to fruition.
“I do think that if we had a better understanding of our inner workings we’d be able to recognise when those are being exploited or amplified or exacerbated, we would be able to make more logical rational decisions, and as a result probably be in a slightly better place.”
It is, he says, about pausing, thinking about what you’re being told, where it is coming from, and trying to be a little more objective.
“If everyone keeps telling me: ‘These people are bad’ normally people go: ‘Well they must be then’.
“But then when you know – who’s telling you? Who am I getting my information from? Isn’t it weird how everything I’ve been told conforms to what I already think?
“If you’re recognising what’s happening it can help you just go: ‘Oh, is that right?’ It allows you to be a little bit more objective,” he says.
“The brain loves being told it’s right. The human brain. We are egotistical creatures because we can only see the world from our point of view. That’s the only information our brain has access to.
“We are logistically egotistic – we can’t perceive anyone else’s inner life, just our own, so everything has to go through our own system.
“We build up this understanding of the world and the brain doesn’t like it: ‘Oh wait so, hang on, if I’m wrong about that, what else am I wrong about? How much of my understanding of the world is flawed?’ It still causes psychological stress so we want to shut that down.”
So bearing all that in mind, and the changes, does he worry about where the world is going?
“I think there are big problems which are just constantly being shoved in our face,” he says.
“I do think there is going to be an exaggeration of problems because neurologically we gravitate towards the negative – we look for problems.
“Our brains have what we call a threat detection mechanism and so we all constantly look for threats and hazards in the world around us but because we are so smart compared to other creatures we can envisage and understand global threats or potential threats.
“We still have the same fear response whether it’s a tiger on the corner or job loss six months down the line – those fundamental parts of the brain still give you the same anxious stress response.
“That’s a problem in its own right but I think we will overamplify the negatives a bit.
“I think the problem is that there are solutions to the problems of the world – it’s just that nobody really seems want to put the work in to do them.”
Social media could be forced to limit what people are shown but that doesn’t happen because, he says, “it’s a challenging political stance to take”.
He adds: “I think once we start recognising the problems and the solutions we should hopefully get somewhere better.
“The world’s changed so much with all the technological advances everywhere and we are still in the flux point. I’m not panicked but I do sort of think: ‘Well these are problems that we could be fixing’ but nobody seems to want to and that’s the sort of concerning part.”
The re-release of his book, he hopes, will put it in front of a new audience given the boom in the health and wellbeing sector in recent years.
“People read it and have this overwhelming sense of: ‘Oh, that’s why that happens’. So when you have these intrusive thoughts or when you go into a different room and can’t remember why you went in there – understanding why your brain does these sort of things. I think that’s obviously just useful its own right and can be really reassuring but I do think these messy parts of the brain make us what we are, how we function, and why we do what we do.
“The brain is amazing and marvellous but it is put on sort of pedestal and something that is amazing, marvellous, wonderful means infallible and we mustn’t question it and when it does go wrong it feels more scary because there is a perfect thing and yours is broken.
“But it’s not. All these mental health things, anxiety, memory glitches – these are how it works.
“Knowing that is a really useful thing, especially in the wider world of: ‘You must be this, you must do that’ – all these expectations around body image and wellbeing claims and things like that.
“Understanding that we’re not perfect, we are messily flawed, and that’s fine.
“I think that’s a more helpful message for a lot of people, especially now, when we’re sort of presented with this alternative reality which is kind of hard to achieve.”
There is no doubt his first book opened a whole host of doors to him. Not just a writing and commentary career but in 2017 he got a call from his agent who asked if he was sitting down. They had been approached by a production company, headed by Whoopi Goldberg, to discuss TV rights. While that never came off what did was discovering she was a huge fan personally of his book.
After an online video call he happened to be in London when she was there for a gig so she invited Dean and a friend who took her a Welsh cake. “She was very fond of those,” he says.
And then when she came to Cardiff recently they were invited again – this time with his mam’s Welsh cakes – and spent half an hour or so with her.
The whole thing was, he said, both brilliant, and “really weird” – perhaps a little like the human brain.