The Brain, a User's Guide

by Robert G. Brown Duke University Physics Department Durham, NC 27708-0305 Copyright Robert G. Brown, 2024

Your Brain, a User's Guide is a web-book on the brain and learning. It may seem strange to have to learn to learn, but the very definition of a good student is one who acknowledges the difficulty of learning and actively works to improve their learning skills.

This web book is being written to show students who want to learn more effectively how to do just that. It will also be of use to teachers who wish to improve their teaching. The first part deals with the physical apparatus of learning: the brain and how the brain's structures affect the way we perceive, think, and learn. The second part is more philosophical and discusses the paradigms of learning. The third provides concrete learning strategies (informed by the information communicated in the first two sections) that have proven highly effective to my students over the many years I have been teaching physics at Duke.