Emotional Ignorance: Lost and found in the science of emotion

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It tackled the idea of emotions and cognition as being separate entities until, of course, we realize they are inextricably linked and dependent on each other.

Less than three months after his father's demise, Burnett encountered the more difficult aspects of being a caretaker. Burnett also experienced a range of emotions, including apathy, profound loss, wrath, and resentment. After losing his dad to Covid-19, Dean Burnett found himself wondering what life would be like without them.

The experience would have been more enjoyable for me personally, however, if it had been conveyed in a more orthodox style. I found the book is almost like a diary, a therapeutic chronicle: in very personal terms it maps a journey through bereavement. Understanding emotions and the broader role they play is crucial to an accurate and scientific understanding of how we think. As a neurologist, Burnett concluded that accepting the fact that we will continue to experience emotional upheaval throughout our entire lifetimes with the willingness to work with our emotions rather than controlling or suppressing them will give a more positive outlook on the quality of our life. Dean Burnett was born and raised in Pontycymer, a working-class former mining village in the South Wales valleys, which explains his strong Welsh accent.

But the internet also insulates us from dissenting opinions and allows us to find people that agree with us, no matter what it may be. The hook continues well into the questions that are posed as part of the blurb on the back, and albeit in a slightly roundabout way, these are well answered during the course of the book.Neuroscientist Dean Burnett's father died of Covid early in the UK pandemic, an event which, unsurprisingly, affected his son deeply. Interesting and well written, and a useful reminder to acknowledge and examine your emotions to see how they influence you.

As someone who reads a lot of scientific literature, my bar is high for public science - and there is a very particular sweet spot that I look for, a balance between technicality and readability - that this one hit quite well.

Through this book we explore emotions from a range of aspects that I found intriguing, illuminating and thought provoking. Burnett initially wrote on the topic of Emotional Intelligence (EQ), however, following his father’s demise, he decided to include his personal experiences alongside the science of emotions and their functions in our brain which results in the topic of Emotional Ignorance.

This comment made me more angry than anything else in this book and took my rating from a two-star to a one-star. Although employed as a tutor and lecturer by the Cardiff University Centre for Medical Education in his day job, Dean is best known for his satirical science column ‘Brain Flapping‘ at the Guardian, and his internationally acclaimed debut book ‘The Idiot Brain‘. Dean, your point is legitimate whether you're a scientist or not if it's accurate in itself, please stop mentioning your credentials. He believed that being surrounded by family or friends who were also in mourning would have aided in surviving the ordeal.

Emotions are an integral part of the human mind, identity, and capacity to exist as a thinking being. He has woven his experience of grieving into his trademark readable and entertaining scientific writing. The playing with psychology between the author and the reader starts from even the title of this one - swinging from the more typical "Emotional Intelligence" to "Emotional Ignorance", and I thought Burnett did a good job of narrating how and why humans are actually more of the latter than the former, despite emotions having evolved as an advanced trait.