Unsatisfied with the 'cold and impersonal' accounts that make up the bulk of modern case studies, she reaches out to the humans they feature to get a fuller picture of their lives. She goes one step further than her idol Oliver Sacks: Instead of interviewing them in a clinical setting, she meets them on their own turf—in their homes, favorite restaurants and other haunts of regular life ... they take the reader on an engaging tour inside the head ... A great science writer knows what is interesting to the reader, and here Thomson shines. Her book is tailor-made for anyone who loves intellectual brain trivia ... you will recognize figures like Phineas Gage, but she elaborates on even the well-known cases, bringing much-needed context and depth. She also has a gift for metaphor ... One of the most fun features of Thomson’s book is that she addresses the reader directly, enthusiastically suggesting tips to try at home and do-it-yourself diagnostics for your brain ... Mostly, though, this book is a chef’s tasting menu of fascinating things about your brain—and a good one at that.

The mind does funny things, argues Thomson in Unthinkable. Odd things. Unnerving things. In this fluent, eye-opening book she explores what happens when the mind misbehaves: distance is distorted, memory plays tricks, people hear in colour and see in music. Thomsons’s style is wonderfully clear. She never talks down to the layman. If there is academic jargon, she carefully explains it, drawing useful analogies. She is the science teacher you wish you’d had at school.

...Bob, can recall a day from 40 years ago as easily as yesterday. Not just who he was with and what the weather was like, but his exact thoughts and sensations. Sometimes, as when the experience was unpleasant, these memories can be a source of pain. But replaying such memories also enables Bob to learn from his mistakes and, in the case of a lost loved one, his extraordinary memory allows him to travel back in time. Indeed, Bob makes a point of memorising relationships that are valuable to him, the better to be able to relive them later. According to Thomson, we can learn a lot from people like Bob ... Thomson makes a virtue of her limitations by travelling the world in search of 'strange brains' in an effort to understand them as a 'friend might'. It is, for the most part, a successful strategy and although I did not fully buy her claims to have entered her subjects’ peculiar sensory universes, by the end of her journey she had certainly persuaded me to see the world differently.

...Thomson’s Unthinkable features case studies of people who inhabit unimaginable realities, among them a man who believes he is a tiger, a woman who is continually lost and a man who feels the bodily sensations of others as he observes them ... Thomson travels thousands of miles to meet her contacts and visit their homes. She asks the kinds of personal questions scientists might avoid. For instance, she queries one subject, who strongly associates people with colors, what color he associates with his mother—and even with Thomson herself ... Yet Thomson’s aim, ultimately, is to shed light on what each case can tell us about our own life experiences, particularly as they are mediated by the three-pound lump of flesh in our heads. How do we find our way around, perceive our bodies and record our memories? ... Fans of Sacks will enjoy and quickly devour this insightful and very readable book.

Neuroscience may seem like a drab topic to read about, but there’s an unmistakable grandeur to the way Helen Thomson writes about it that makes Unthinkable the perfect exception ... Unthinkable tells nine true tales of unusual brain disorders that seem out of this world, making a complex and potentially tedious topic like the human brain vibrant and lively.

... Thomson is a journalist rather than a physician, and she met her subjects on their own turf rather than in a clinical setting, so she offers a different perspective on the individuals she profiles ... Thomson's writing style is less condensed than [Oliver] Sacks' and more reminiscent of magazine feature writing than clinical case studies. She includes some of her own experiences... within the profiles, which makes for a rather marmite style of writing. Some people love this approach because it personalizes each story and feels more honest than an impersonal narrative voice because it acknowledges the unique viewpoint and experiences of the person writing the story. Some, however, hate it because it can feel like padding and because it pulls the focus away from the people being profiled... and onto the writer herself. I'm more in the latter camp myself, but the author's stylistic choices did not prevent me from enjoying Unthinkable ... Unthinkable is an eminently readable book that includes a wealth of information about how the brain functions, made concrete through profiles of nine individuals whose brains function differently from what we consider to be the norm.

The brain is inseparable from the body, even if, writes New Scientist writer and consultant Thomson, 'all too often we think about our brains as being somehow separate from ourselves.' Of course, the concept of 'ourselves' is not uniform: We see broad variations in the capabilities and workings of the brain, from normal to abnormal and all points between. Some of the most extraordinary brains aren’t particularly interesting in the thoughts that they generate; one of Thomson’s case studies possesses what is called 'highly superior autobiographical memory,' by which a person can recall just about every detail of every moment he has lived ... Thomson introduces a lot of good neuroscience lightly, explaining how we perceive reality, such as it is, and check in with ourselves. A bonus, along the way, are the author’s notes on such things as improving memory skills through the construction of memory palaces and other event-fixing tricks and training the brain how not to get lost, a highly useful skill indeed ... Pleasing and accessible and of broader application than the title suggests, inasmuch as 'we all have an extraordinary brain.'

Thomson, spent two years interviewing people with unusual neurological disorders, and here shares nine of the most fascinating stories she heard ... Rather than focusing on the disorders, Thomson places the people at the forefront, exploring their varying responses to their conditions and intense struggles to live 'normal' lives ...Throughout, Thomson emphasizes 'we are our brains,' convincingly showing that these strange minds belong to people from whom much can be learned, in a book that will please fans of the late Oliver Sacks.