unexpectedly turns into a self-help book part way through. ( )

I found the book to have useful and interesting information. The author is articulate and well researched. I found the information on the results of studies and cases fascinating. The book has changed my perspective on knowledge and creativity. I highly recommend this book. ( )

In Elastic: Flexible Thinking in a Time of Change Leonard Mlodinow takes his audience into a neurology refresher crash course. While for a long time rational, analytical, top-down driven thought ruled, latest insights favor the potential of our elastic thinking. Humans follow scripts, preprogrammed behavior e.g. fight or flight responses or navigating home. The way our brains have to accommodate the changed circumstances, the information overload, and new challenges ahead. Conclusions are reached from the bottom up through the minute interactions of billions of networked neurons in a process too complex to be detailed step by step. Neuroplasticity is no longer a new field such as when the late Oliver Sacks penned down his case studies in popular books. Progression in medical science, development of brain scanning technologies, and a better understanding of the effects of certain drugs, substances, and food. Psychologists and neuroscientists are only now working out the science of elastic thinking, although we humans have turned our powers of elastic thinking toward improving or enhancing our everyday existence.

Part 1 of the book explores the reasons for adapting our thinking to change, and why our brains are good at it. How humans (and other creatures) take in information and process it, so that they can innovate to meet the challenges of novelty and change is addressed in part 2. Part 3 is about how the brain attacks problems and generates new ideas and solutions. Leonard Mlodinow uses many examples from daily life, neurological disorders, and explains how abilities such as neophilia, pattern recognition, idea generation, divergent thinking, imagination, balance, and reconcile work. Research on the brain's role in these traits constitutes one of the hottest new directions in both psychology and neuroscience. I really enjoyed Elastic as a recent update from these fields. ( )