Book review: Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?: A Neuroscientific View of the Zombie Brain by Dr. Timothy Verstynen and Dr. Bradley Voytek

Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?: A Neuroscientific View of the Zombie Brain
Hardcover–September 22, 2014
by Dr. Timothy Verstynen and Dr. Bradley Voytek
Princeton University Press
I loved this book, but be aware that it is not about what most people expect. It is in fact a book that uses Zombie lore as a vehicle to explain neuroscience, particularly principles of neuroanatomy as it correlates with human behavior. The writing style is very clear and quite funny too! And you absolutely need to like the neurosciences to fully enjoy it. That being said, if you did not like neuroscience before or even gave any thought about it, it is a pretty safe bet that you will after reading the book. A very big plus is that it included very useful general references for further reading. I admit that I am somewhat biased, so full disclosure: I am a scientist who loves neuroscience and as of lately, zombies. Also, any book that manages to include and integrate neuroscience history, tetrodotoxin, Cordyceps and T. gondii certainly gets my attention!
My second favorite line of the book: “The brain is a pretty complicated piece of goop” (p203). My very favorite lines? The last two sentences of the book. I’ll let you read them yourself.
You probably know that I like “The Walking Dead”, and that I blame my wife for it… (:-). I have written a little bit about TWD before. I have had Drs. Verstynen and Voytek’s book in “my list”, but I had an unexpected treat at the 2014 Society for Neuroscience Meeting. Princeton University Press was there and the authors of “Do zombies dream…” were also there! They even signed the copy I purchased and graciously let me take a picture with them!


I love neuroscientists; they are second best only to planarian scientists… (;-)

Credit: Princeton University Press
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Want to see more of the things I write? Go here for some other posts. By the way, I wrote a book!

TFB is available as an ebook (Kindle, Nook, as well as in iTunes). The price of the Kindle version was just reduced by Amazon… (:-)
The hardcover is available at Amazon and at the Oxford University Press’ website.  There’s even a 20% discount code from OUP.
This is a popular science book, which I hope to be enjoyed by laypeople and biologists alike.
I also wrote a science fiction story with an autism theme. I published it in two languages, check them out!

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