I don't know the authors who supposedly have a pretty popular YouTube channel, but the book intrigued me, especially with its modern/fun branding and I don't know the authors who supposedly have a pretty popular YouTube channel, but the book intrigued me, especially with its modern/fun branding and nice cover. The content is very beginner friendly, and it's very well designed - similar to DK books.
However, three major issues made me dislike the book. First, it's misleading in its content. I was expecting neuroscience, but a lot of it is actually psychology, which was disappointing. And very basic psychology at that. If you have read any psychology at all, most of it will very familiar already.
Second, this type of book, because of its graphic art and overall structure, is very well suited for children and teenagers that want to learn about the brain. And yet the book has several sexual references which were completely unnecessary. It's it was a very, very dumb decision. ~
Lastly, while overall, the content is solid, I noticed several errors or inaccuracies. As some examples: - It claims that creatine has no cognitive benefit (did they even bother to look at a single study about it?) - It states that intelligence is a worthless metric with no prediction power (again, did they even read any research about using intelligence as a predictor psychometric?) - It mentions the God helmet as if it was a legit and simple explanation to some religious experiences, failing to mention how controversial it is and the countless failed replications.
Overall it's an OK book, but these shortcomings bothered me. It's annoying that it could have been much better with just some extra care and oversight. ...more
I'm a huge fan of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, having read their classic book "Metaphors We Live By". I also wanted to learn more about embodied coI'm a huge fan of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, having read their classic book "Metaphors We Live By". I also wanted to learn more about embodied cognition, so this book couldn't be more perfect. Their book previous outlines how metaphor is at the core of thinking, which is already mindblowing. But when I was reading it, I couldn't help but think about the philosophical implications of this beyond language itself. Well, this is what this book is all about.
The impact of metaphor is really hard to properly describe in a short manner, it's deeper than anything you can think of. It shapes literally everything but everything that you can conceive is shaped by it.
The first part of the book is dedicated to exploring embodied cognition, especially in the context of superseding other views. For instance it is quite antithetical to most of logitical positivism and analytic philosophy, which is covered at depth. For instance in the Fregean branch of analyic philosophy, thought is separate from the body, meaning is objective in the external world. But this can't be correct because our conceptual systems come from our mind. And meaning can't be objective/literal because it's always metaphorical.
In my view this is the most significant part of the book and it explains most of the core arguments and evidence that is uses throughout the work. The second part explores the cognitive science of basic philosophical ideas. For example, typical philosophical subjects such as "time", "self" or "morality" can't help but use conceptual systems. Therefore, cognitive science that explores such systems is highly relevant. And this section explains how they are affected, almost always without being recognized.
The last part explores specific philosophies and how they relate to cognitive science. The general argument is that each "philosophy" is based on using a specific metaphor, and hence why it feels so natural and familiar. Yet, it's far from the only metaphor, and that's why there are several competing philosophies, each picking up on a different conceptual systems.
But as a whole, mainstream western philosophy is heavily critized, because despite the different philosophies, they very often have share assumptions such as the ones above, quoted directly from the book:
1. Reality comes divided up into categories that exist independent of the specific properties of human minds, brains, or bodies. 2. The world has a rational structure: The relationships among categories in the world are characterized by a transcendent or universal reason, which is independent of any peculiarities of human minds, brains, and bodies. 3. The concepts used by mind-, brain-, and body-free reason correctly characterize the mind-, brain-, and body-free categories of reality. 4. Human reason is the capacity of the human mind to use transcendent reason, or at least a portion of it. Human reason may be performed by the human brain, but the structure of human reason is defined by transcendent reason, independent of human bodies or brains. Thus, the structure of human reason is disembodied. 5. Human concepts are the concepts of transcendent reason. They are therefore defined independent of human brains or bodies, and so they too are disembodied. 6. Human concepts therefore characterize the objective categories of mind-, brain, and body-free reality. That is, the world has a unique, fixed category structure, and we all know it and use it when we are reasoning correctly. 7. What makes us essentially human is our capacity for disembodied reason. 8. Since transcendent reason is culture-free, what makes us essentially human is not our capacity for culture or for interpersonal relations. 9. Since reason is disembodied, what makes us essentially human is not our relation to the material world. Our essential humanness has nothing to do with our connection to nature or to art or to music or to anything of the senses.
There is a couple of really useful insights that resonated with me. The first is the fact that metaphors are neurally instantiated. While perhaps a little obvious, it's nevertheless bizarre how deep these get. Different domains that are activated simulaneously during childhood create neutral connections, making metaphors biological. For example the fact that we consider "more" as "up" is a metaphor, but one is that is neurological wired. A weird aspect about this fact is regarding the debate of human nature. One one hand, this highly points to our experience being structured and pre-determined. But on the other hand, it also points the opposite. Such neural connections are often made from experience, meaning that by shaping experience, these can be potentially be changed. Even though some are hard to change because they are basic facts of reality of being an embodied human being (eg if you stack books they visually go up), nevertheless there is likely significant changes that can be achieved. Especially once we start thinking in terms of future virtual reality. It's a very scary direction.
The other insight was about the dichotomy between object and subject, and what the authors call embodied realism. Both scientific realism in its disembodied form and relativism fail short, as objectivity is not in the things themselves ("external reality") because we never interact or conceptualize said things without prior conceptual structures. But likewise, not everything is subjective because we are indeed interacting with an external world. And furthermore, a lot of conceptualization is shared among human beings because we share the same neurological wiring, so it can't be subjective. And the implications of this are very wide, making the idea of absolute scientific truths untenable. This will strike many by surprise since so may associate embodied cognitive science as a reaction to some sort of mind dualism. While it does involve it, it's not quite what is being talked about. It's not about consciousness per se, but thought and reality itself arising from the connection of how we understand the world through our bodies.
It's truly a mindblowing book with very important applications. If you're interested in either philosophy or cognitive science, this topic is a must. And I mean the book rather than the book because the book despite being so good, at times it was also very tedious. This is because the work is very long, and everything is covered very extensively. There is also a lot of repetition and overlap between chapters.
The biggest problem is that I believe they are trying to convince colleagues in the field of cognitive science and philosophy, and thus the arguments and evidence are laid out quite carefully. While of course academically this is ideal, for "casual" reading this makes it hard to digest.
If you're going to read it, the first chapter is the most important by far. Afterwards, you have countless examples of specific philosophies and thinkers and where they went wrong. I'm not saying this doesn't have novel and worthwhile information, but I felt it was very disproportional to the time and effort required. The last chapter is also very important and worth reading, which covers their proposed solution to all the problems that have been covered. They argue for an "embodied philosophy", the subject-object dichotomy is dealt with, and it allows for several types of truth and a compatibility between scientific and phenomenological descriptions.
Overall, it's a very dense but very meaningful book. And especially if you're not familiar with their work at all, unlike me, I think the impact of the book will be significantly magnified. ...more
I attended a talk from David Nutt in London some years ago and I was deeply impressed. It was about endogenous DMT in humans, and it was incredibly weI attended a talk from David Nutt in London some years ago and I was deeply impressed. It was about endogenous DMT in humans, and it was incredibly well-researched and presented. While I didn't know who he was, it was obvious that he was famous since I had to listen to the talk standing, like many others, given that the room was well beyond capacity.
I later learned David Nutt is fairly famous in the UK, she's a neuropsychopharmacologist who was involved in some controversy in 2009. He published a paper showing that the risks associated with horse-riding (1 serious adverse event every ~350 exposures) were compared to those of taking ecstasy (1 serious adverse event every ~10,000 exposures).
This started a debate about drug policy, in which Nutt claimed that it's solely based on politics and not science. He claimed that drug classification should be done according to the evidence for harm, which they aren't. He was at the time the chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), and following this controversy he was dismissed. He now runs Drug Science, a non-profit organization drug advisory committee, which I have written for.
This is how I came to know the book. It is an unnecessarily long background, but I felt it was a good opportunity to share the story. Not only because it is worth knowing and an important topic, but also because this book was published by Drug Science in order to raise money, so the book's existence is directly tied to the topic.
About the content itself, as stated by the title, it's meant as an introduction to the brain. I liked the format and the fact that it's pretty short, although the cover is unfortunately horrendous.
Like almost all books of its kind, it starts with the very basics of the brain by explaining neurotransmitters and their receptors. Not the most exciting, but it was well done. And trying to link specific neurotransmitters when a phenomenon that people understand (eg mental illness) is helpful.
A lot of the book is very similar to almost any other book of its kind. Although a surprising difference I found was some relatively insignificant and yet interesting gold nuggets about the evolution of how the brain works. I've read a lot about neuroscience and a lot about evolution, but somehow I have never seen the two being talked about very often. At best the evolution of the brain compared to other animals, but from time to time he mentioned the evolution of the actual architecture of the brain for example how a certain neurotransmitter came to be. Both where it comes from and how we know its origin.
Then the book gets into a more macro perspective, such as thinking, feeling, emotions, etc. All of it is somewhat standard stuff that you have been exposed to if you read anything on psychology. Generally speaking, it was well written, although I found that in some cases the basics weren't explained well enough, which is fairly problematic for a supposed introduction. However, this was a minority of the content.
While I was familiar with most of the content covered, there were tiny aspects which I never knew about. Not only were they interesting, but I was surprised that I didn't know it. For example it is commonly reported in near-death experiences of seeing nothing but pure light. He explains that is likely because when most of the functions of the brain have collapsed, there is nothing but light for it to process. It is in some sense raw sensory data that the brain no longer has the functionality to make sense of.
The first half of the book was how the brain works in general, and in the second half it focused on when the brain goes "wrong". It covers mental illnesses, such as PTSD, depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, OCD, and addiction.
Throughout the book, psychedelics are mentioned often, which is not surprising given the background of the book and the author that I mentioned. I was afraid that this would feel too forced and biased, but fortunately, that wasn't the case. While it's certainly a heavy theme, it was properly placed into explaining how the brain works and how psychedelics are relevant as treatments for various mental illnesses.
Overall it is a solid book for anyone interested in learning about the brain and the mind. It takes a very typical approach in what it covers and in what order, and as a whole it is fairly easy to read. The chapters are fairly short which makes the book not intimidating, which is often a problem for people trying to learn the topic....more
I've always wanted a book about the sociality of human beings but wasn't sure which to get. I didn't know the author at all but given that he is the fI've always wanted a book about the sociality of human beings but wasn't sure which to get. I didn't know the author at all but given that he is the founder of social neuroscience, I figured it can't get any better than that.
There are a few key ideas that are emphasized throughout the book. One is that social thinking, while it feels to us like everyday thinking, it is in fact a completely separate cognitive process. Thinking about your friend compared to thinking about your phone are distinct cognitive processes with different underlying brain areas.
While social and non-social thinking is thought to be similar but in reality differ, regarding pain it is the opposite. We think that physical pain, like cutting your finger, is completely different than psychological or emotional pain - like arguing with your partner. In fact, they are the same. They active the exact same brain areas.
This is likely because social interaction requires a sort of reward/punishment system, and evolution used the one we already have for physical pain. This goes deeper than you might assume. Social animals including humans suffer from separation distress. Yet, that separation distress can be reduced with morphine.
This idea of social pain being equated with physical pain was one of the main aspects of the book and what gave a big kick-start to the field of social neuroscience, somewhat pioneered by Matthew himself. This was first shown in his study where people were playing a video game where each avatar was throwing balls at each other, but the "other people" were in fact just programmed bots, which stopped throwing the ball back after a while.
Participants that were the most distressed about the situation were also the ones that had greater right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (dACC) activity recorded by fMRI. This matched a previous study they did about physical pain, which activated the same area. Furthermore, also in both studies, the dACC activity was inversely correlated with prefrontal activity.
The dACC seems to act as an alarm system. If you're experiencing physical pain, something is wrong that you should attend to. Social pain works exactly in the same way. Because we are social by nature, if you experience social pain it's because something is wrong with your social interactions or social environment.
Something that surprised me was the role of the default mode network (DMN) in social cognition. I was familiar with the DMN from simply being the "ego" network when one is not actively engaging with anything, and often associated with depression since people tend to ruminate on their own thoughts. A lot of evidence was presented that is highly associated with social cognition, even in 2-week old babies.
The end of the book is less technical, and some more practical lessons that he takes from the field. I really enjoyed this and I think almost anyone would find it very insightful. I was particularly impressed by his take on education, which constantly tries to shut down children's and teenager's innate social drive. Most people can tell that this is an uphill battle, and he suggests some witty ways to change the system in order to be more productive. I don't know if it will actually work in practice, but it's certainly worth trying.
At times the book wasn't easy to follow. Not in the sense of having technical jargon, but it does require some effort to follow the trail of thought. Especially given that the experiments were described in detail. In my opinion, this is how a perfect non-fiction book should be, and many books often don't describe the evidence leading to their claims. However, I listened to it on Audible and this aspect backfired on me. I expected it to be an easier book and there were many parts where I wasn't as focused as I should. I don't want to give the impression it's a hard book, it isn't, but it's much better in physical format.
The only thing I disliked was that the book is rather long and it seemed it would never end. While the main topic is social neuroscience, he is not afraid to go on tangents, as long as there is something relating it back to human sociality. In one sense this makes the book more comprehensive, but to me that made it tedious at times.
However, I still think it's an incredible book and certainly worth getting if you're interested in psychology. Especially if you have never read anything on the topic. All the core ideas I described here weren't new for me, but the knowledge was rather superficial. I know have a much better understanding of it which shouldn't be underestimated. Just make sure to go with a physical copy and not Audible like me!...more
I've known Gabor Maté for a long time, always seeing him referenced as an expert on addiction. I was fairly surprised to discover that he had a book oI've known Gabor Maté for a long time, always seeing him referenced as an expert on addiction. I was fairly surprised to discover that he had a book on ADHD, one I had never heard of and that he had ADHD himself. Given that this year I've dived a lot into ADHD, I figured I would be a good extra read on the topic.
His view on the topic is not mainstream. For two reasons that are deeply connected. First, he does not think ADHD is a matter of genetics. Rather, he thinks that some people simply have genetics that make them more predisposed to ADHD, but not in a deterministic fashion. It's worth noting that his claim is quite strong. He's not just saying that there is more to genes, but literally that genes by themselves cannot cause ADHD.
Secondly, what truly causes ADHD is poor brain development resulting from infancy. What causes that abnormal brain development is not having a healthy and safe family environment that allows some brain circuits in the pre-frontal cortex to wire normally.
Regarding heredity, ADHD has been shown highly genetic, but still, no one claims it's entirely deterministic. Maté's claim too is way too strong and he provides nothing to support it. Furthermore he does not really understand its genetic basis and he gives the typical arguments that have been put forward since ever.
First if genetics are so strong why is the concordance (likelihood of a twin pair having ADHD) not 100%? Second, you can't truly prove a genetic influence because there is always the cofounder of the environment. While twin studies are typically done to account for this, they still share a placenta environment and also he argues that the environment always differs because the world and parent dynamics will always have variation.
About the concordance it's because there is a gene-environment interaction, that does not mean that it's not highly genetic, even in a much stronger way than Maté suggests. There is also an element of randomness that is not accounted for by either genes or the environment (in any meaningfully casual way) that's normal of brain wiring. Regarding twin studies, that's a valid point. Particularly regarding that some crucial environmental factors seem more common in ADHD, particularly adoption. This was something I was unfamiliar with, and of course biases adoption studies.
However, this is accounted for when comparing identical (monozygotic) and fraternal (dizygotic) twins. The difference between them can't possibly be explained by anything else than genetic similarity. Regarding family dynamics, to me that just sounds like a desperate attempt to grab into anything that isn't genetic as a last resort, and hard to trust given how little impact parenting has shown outside extreme conditions (abuse/neglect).
Something that surprised me about the book is that it's old, being published in 1999, and perhaps why I never heard of it before. On one hand a lot of work has been done on ADHD since, so some of Maté's shortcomings can be forgiven. But on the other hand, the book has recently (2019) been published in a 2nd edition. This would have been a perfect opportunity to reflect on current developments and research, but either he is ignorant about them or decided to ignore them. Even if he's aware of them and thinks they are weak, nevertheless they should be mentioned which they are not.
This criticism is perhaps a bit unfair given that I focused so much on the heredity of ADHD. That's not particularly the main point that Maté is trying to prove in the book. And I'm not particularly inclined or interested in proving a genetic basis of ADHD. The reason for the focus is simply that 1) it shows poor understanding of the topic, and 2) while not the main topic of the book, it serves as foundation of views of ADHD.
The way he views ADHD is a disorder of sensitivity. This is what he considers the genetic vulnerability. Then the environment, such as a stress, causes abnormal brain wiring. What he considers stress can a fairly wide concept, and what he means is anything that disrupts the natural emotional security and warmth between the primary caregivers and the baby.
This is particularly well shown by describing his own ADHD and how he thinks it developed. He was born in Austria in a Jewish family when WW2 was happening. At the time where his mother was extremely stressed for obvious reasons, and at one point he and his mother were even separated for a few weeks, out of fear that the baby wasn't safe with the family with Nazi occupation. I liked this autobiographical element. It is both interesting and touching in its own right but also a very clear illustrating of how he thinks ADHD develops.
His view of very deep parent to child attunement, which may be disrupted, is certainly worth paying attention to. And there is so much going on without us really understanding that much of it. He shared some interesting research of how babies can easily tell when their mothers are distressed and how in turn that affects their own affect and behavior.
What I disliked the most about the book is how it often doesn't reference any research. This is baffling to me and went against all my expectations and the idea I had of Gabor Maté. Sometimes he mentions the research descriptively without citation, and sometimes it doesn't have any mention at all. Other times, he does mention and cite it, but the conclusions he makes from it are a fair bit of extrapolation.
For instance, he mentions that in 4-year old monkeys, a 6-day separation from their mothers causes the dopamine system to become dysfunctional. He cites this to highlight how crucial infant to parent attachment is and how it fits his theory of causing abnormal brain wiring, especially given dopamine's role in ADHD. However, 6 days of separation is very different from more realistic parenting scenarios of how he argues ADHD typically develops, such as the parents being anxious. The monkey separation would classify not as under-optimal attachment but as severe neglect. It's a long jump and he gives no reason to justify it.
The book does not only try to explain the origins and development of ADHD but also some ways to midigate it. A big portion of it was dedicated to parenting mistakes in ADHD households. From everything I covered, I am fairly skeptical of its significance, but nevertheless, I think the message as a whole is positive. In particular, I think he is spot on about short-term vs long-term approaches to dealing when conflict. Short-term are more about behavioural problem-solving in the here and now, but often at the cost of being overly rude or aggressive towards the child. However this is often counter-productive in the long-term, hurting the parent-child relationship. I experienced this a lot as a child with my father, and I can see how this can get amplified with ADHD.
As a whole, the book was disappointing for me. Even though I am fairly friendly towards humanistic therapy, Maté's psychoanalytic influences are unjustifiedly strong and the book is lacking in scientific rigour. While he often talks about neuroanatomy and neurobiology, and often appeals to research, little is direct evidence, and his overall theory of ADHD is little more than opinion, not to mention resting on a scientific dubious stance about ADHD and heredity.
Nevertheless, there were interesting parts to the book, both in his autobiography, description and problems of ADHD, and parenting dynamics. If you want a counter-stance towards the mainstream ADHD view that pays little attention to environmental factors, this book offers food for thought. But if you want an overall investigation of ADHD that is up-to-date with the latest findings, this is certainly not the book for it....more
I've read a lot of books on cognitive biases, so many that I'm sort of fed up with the topic. I imagined that it would be a long time for me to read aI've read a lot of books on cognitive biases, so many that I'm sort of fed up with the topic. I imagined that it would be a long time for me to read another one, if ever. Yet, a good friend of mine recommended it to me and I trusted his judgement.
In some ways, the book explains many ways that we err, having some overlap with many books I've read previously - what I feared. Yet, this wasn't the main point of the book. While it's helpful to describe and explain how are wrong, the approach she takes is more holistic. She is not only concerned about how we make errors but the idea of error itself, which I highly appreciated and it contained many fresh and interesting ideas.
A couple of them stood out to me. The first is that Schulz spends a considerable amount of time in the phenomenology of being wrong. Not just analyzing errors from a detached "objective" perspective, but a deeply personal one, which is of course the one we experience. Although depending on how you look at it, actually being wrong at the moment is not something you experience. Because while it is happening, you don't know that you're "in the wrong". Afterwards, you recognize your mistake, but you're no longer "inside" of it so to speak.
Another interesting aspect is how we feel about wrongness. We always see it as... well, wrong. As something fundamentally bad, and this pops out in how we view the world and ourselves in unexpected ways. Error is generally thought of as a gap. She gives the example that Plato thought existence was filled with error because we took a physical form (instead of being pure soul being, John Locke thought that error arose from the gap between how we describe the world through language and how the world actually is, and Heidegger from the fact that are embodied and cognitively bound creatures trapped in time and space, always limited to a single perspective without seeing the whole.
All of them have a "gap", and that gap is from a difference between our mind and the rest of the world. I don't remember if she gave this example in the book, but perhaps the best illustration is the word sin which simply meant missing the target. Meaning the gap between what you should do and what you actually do.
The other powerful idea is that being wrong is deeply tied to being right. We almost exclusively think of error as a bad thing to be eliminated at all costs, but she goes through great depth at why that's not the best way to view it. And this isn't simply a cliche self-help yin-yang type idea, it is at the core of how we arrive at the truth.
One way she describes this, although certainly not the only one, is how historically error has been associated with truth. For example, dreams have long been considered gateways to truths otherwise not accessible. So has a variety of psychedelic plants, and even madness itself. What they all in common is that they change reality. In some sense, we get outside reality. That's almost the definition of error, and yet humanity has long considered them sacred as a way to fight error and guides towards rightness.
The book also has sections that are surprisingly detailed and guide you through a particular example. Sometimes I felt this was overkill, but it certainly had a benefit. Some of these were quite personal and the objective was to have a more rich understanding of event, especially from a subjective perspective. For example, someone who stopped believing in God and how that turned her life upside down, or identifying the wrong person in a case of rape and decades later finding out it was the wrong person, causing an innocent man to be behind bars for years.
I have read a lot of books, but given this book's length, I think it's the one I saved content the most. It totals over 40 pages... an absurd impractical amount which I wanted to shorten but too much of it was too interesting to delete.
The only thing I disliked was that the book seemed to be deceptively long, and at the times it felt I was making little progress and it was a never-ending journey, one at that time I was impatient to complete. Not sure what made happen, perhaps the book's narrator (I listened on Audible), but nevertheless I consider it as a small inconvenience for the overall fantastic value it provides.
If you care about truth, you should care about error. And this book is by far the most comprehensible work on the topic, analyzing error not just as a psychological phenomenon but also much more that will certainly deepen your understanding of what error is, why it happens, and its importance. ...more
I was very excited about this book as I always loved cognitive science. I've read a few books about it, but I wanted to refresh the topic and get a neI was very excited about this book as I always loved cognitive science. I've read a few books about it, but I wanted to refresh the topic and get a new perspective. This also seemed to have a more philosophical and historical bent which made me more intrigued.
It indeed has a historical perspective. Many cognitive science textbooks simply present different areas of cognitive science from their respective fields without a unifying narrative. This is precisely what Dawson tries to offer here. It is less worried about specific details than the bigger picture of the field.
A large portion of the book is dedicated to the 3 approaches of cognitive science: classical, connectionist cognitive and embodied. Each has its own chapter and goes over the history of how those ideas arose and what they were trying to achieve.
Classical cognitive science, also called computational cognitive science, was inspired by symbolic logic and assumes that cognition is nothing but information processing. It's basically the view that the brain is like a computer, or at least something digital that works in a similar way to a computer. The finding that action potentials were all-or-none strengthened this view as if each state was like a truth value in Boolean logic. This view emerged in the 1950s and it's still the mainstream view today.
The second view is connectionism. While the first tried to understand the brain as a computer, this was more so the other way around. The brain was the starting point. This is where artificial neural networks came to be. Information is processed in a parallel manner like neurons in a brain and there are weighted connections that resemble synapses. It worked with networks in a decentralized manner.
Lastly, we have embodied cognitive science. While connectionism criticized the computer model for not taking into account how the actual brain works, embodied cognitive science criticized connectionism for being too concentrated on the brain itself. It emphasized that cognition is dependent not only on the brain but on our nervous system as a whole. And also that we have to take into account that we are embodied beings interacting with an environment and we can't think of the brain in isolation.
Each view presents itself as the correct way to think about the mind and tries to fix the shortcomings of the other approaches. Learning about these in-depth was fascinating, and the fact that such a historical approach is taken really gives you a unique perspective of how the field developed. Not only in terms of new developments, but the surrounding context of such developments which was influenced by the current cultural beliefs, technology, and philosophy.
The philosophical background is particularly interesting to me. For instance, the classical model was deeply inspired by Descartes. Oddly enough, in two major ways that opposite each other. One is that the mind is like a machine, which the model supports. On the other, it fights against thinking of the mind as something immaterial (that is a soul inhabiting the machine).
The connectionist model in turn is more in line with Locke and Hume since it's mostly empiricist in nature. There isn't an innate system for symbol manipulation. Rather, networks are dependent almost entirely on the environment to calibrate themselves, they learn by experience.
Lastly, embodied cognitive science has its philosophical roots in Heidegger and Merleau Ponty, and it assumes a type of processing based on action, not on symbolic manipulation or pattern recognition.
These topics are fascinated, but yet the book wasn't as enjoyable as I expected. First of all, there is a large amount of detail. While the philosophical and historical background does indeed provide an unusual and help bigger picture, there is often so much detail into that context that I felt the bigger picture fading.
Not only was the content often overly detailed, but sometimes overly hard as well. Some aspects that related to computation went fairly deep into logic and math, which for someone like me with very little knowledge in either made me completely lost.
Furthermore, while the different approaches to cognitive science took a lot of time, so other aspects were also covered. In particular, the cognitive science of music was a big topic, which to me was utterly incomprehensible and I had to skip it. Both its musical aspects and its cognitive science aspects were way too technical.
It's a book that gives me a lot of mixed feelings. In one way I felt that it didn't deliver a lot of what it promised and it brings to mind a lot of frustration trying to understand some of the content, most of which I eventually gave up. Yet, the parts I did enjoy, most of the ones I described here, were utterly fascinating.
Furthermore, I'm always sceptical of my own judgement about labelling a book bad when I make a lot of notes. My notes for this book were almost twice as long as normal, and I skipped close to half of the entire book.
I also found the book very helpful for references, which perhaps for the layman reader is completely useless, but for people that are more seriously into the topic and may want to reference certain ideas and when they developed, this was a fantastic resource for that purpose. ...more
Neuroscience is a difficult field and it is very visual. I've been struggling to learn it so finding a book "Neuroscience at a Glance" seemed a good rNeuroscience is a difficult field and it is very visual. I've been struggling to learn it so finding a book "Neuroscience at a Glance" seemed a good resource.
The organization of the book is superb. It is organized by themed parts which generally follow up on each other and they go from the micro to the macro in terms of the level of analysis in the brain. There are 8 parts in total, covering everything from anatomy, sensory systems, cognition, etc.
Within each chapter, there are several subchapters that deal with a particular subject. For example in the chapter on cells and neurophysiology, there is a subchapter on ion channels. These subchapters are always only 2 pages long. On the left page you have a big diagram, usually including most if not the entire page. And on the right page you have text which explains that subchapter.
This two-page organization makes it very intuitive and significantly less intimidating than most neuroscience textbooks. It scales it down a size that seems manageable.
Despite the organization and big graphics, it wasn't as useful as I initially thought. Some were pretty complex, and I found that it often added little to the text. And while the text supposedly builds on the graph, sometimes they didn't feel that connection.
For instance, I would have expected different parts of the graph to be referenced in the text. However, that never happened. Therefore if there is a gigantic graphic of a synapse where there are 20 different things happening, it would have been helpful if these are broken down into different visual sections and explained by text.
However, I understand that would be difficult to do and make the book longer. I think in part some aspects of neuroscience just don't translate well for book learning. While I said that neuroscience is very visual and a graphic book like this helps, I think how neuroscience truly shines is what animation, where the graphic can be broken down temporally, and each "micro-event" can be covered in isolation, slowly building one on top of the other. Obviously, such animation is impossible in a book so it's not something I can expect.
The text itself was generally good and I was surprised by my general lack of boredom despite the topic. They are typically divided into several sections, each being quite small with only a few paragraphs.
The only part I truly disliked was the sensory systems, which I ended up skipping. The best parts I think are the very beginning and the very end.
The beginning gives you the foundations of neuroscience which you need regardless of what topic you're interested in. For instance, you need to understand what an action potential is, or how neurotransmitters work.
But such knowledge is very theoretical. The latter parts of the book get a more macro perspective, dealing more with cognition and applied neurobiology. My favourite part was when concrete disorders were covered, either neurological like epilepsy, or neuropsychiatric like schizophrenia.
It is a fairly medical book and part of the reason why it wasn't as useful as I thought. In fact, I believe the audience for it is medical students. Nevertheless studying the brain has the same foundations regardless of the angle taken.
Overall it's a solid resource, although a bit disappointing at least for my end. Perhaps the most problematic aspect I found is that sometimes it didn't care to give background to specific terms or concepts. It just assumes you know what they are talking about, and many times I didn't. The book is more of a resource for revision than actual learning.
I was just casually reading the book and trying to get the overall picture, so this often wasn't a deal-breaker. But for example, if you're trying to actually know these topics in-depth you will have to constantly refer to other books or the internet to understand what specific content was mentioned.
If you're hoping that having more graphs will finally make neuroscience easy, then you're wrong and don't bother with the book. But if you just want an extra way to try to understand the brain a little better, it might be worth it. I think the fact that it's so well organized might be a good incentive for someone who is very intimidated by it. Just make sure you have at least some background dealing with the brain beforehand though....more
I wanted to learn more about the brain and have a better foundation for neuroscience. This book was originally published in 1998, but it has been receI wanted to learn more about the brain and have a better foundation for neuroscience. This book was originally published in 1998, but it has been recently updated.
I liked the progression of starting the most basic and the smallest unit that neuroscience deals with and then progressing in complexity. It starts with electrophysiology, synapses, neuromodulation, etc.
Then it moves on to actual behaviour, first from more simple invertebrate organisms, but then to more animals higher on the phylogenetic tree. It ends with cognitive science and higher brain function unique to human beings.
While the beginning of the book was fairly difficult at times, it was also very useful. I ended understanding the complexities of neuro excitation and inhibition much better, for instance. The basic mechanics of the brain as a whole.
However, the book as a whole was a bit disappointing. Many parts seemed overly technical to a pointless degree, at least in how the author approached the subject and how fast it dived into details. Some of it I don't think I can possibly get any value from when it got fairly deep into chemistry or electrophysiology. Even if I managed to understand it fully, which I certainly did not, I would likely just forget a few days later, if not some hours later.
The book also seemed very biased towards vision. Not only having a massive chapter on it, but it pops up in other areas a well. It was no surprise to find out that Dowling's research is primary with vision, which, unfortunately, also tends to be one of the areas that I find most boring.
The later chapters were a bit more interesting since they dealt with cognition a bit more directly, and some were even the typical material you would find in any psychology introduction. This was fairly odd to me given how technical some other chapters were.
I'm sure that many will find that part much more interesting, but I am afraid that many will never get there because they will have quit in the meantime with some more technical chapters. I think it would have been better to weave throughout so that the more basic but technical aspects of neuroscience can still have a connection to a real-life perspective.
The last chapter was consciousness which was fairly disappointing. It's fairly common for such books to avoid any philosophy about consciousness, which is unfortunate but somewhat acceptable, but this one was especially bad. It could have at least explored some neuro correlates of consciousness or some kind of evolutionary explanation, but what it offered was very bland and superficial.
It's a solid resource to learn about neuroscience but I think it could have been done better. It's not so bad if you aren't afraid of skipping sections, unlike me. I think the first and the last parts were the best. The first will give you a general outline of the basics you need to know, and then the final chapters will cover more interesting stuff like neuroplasticity, memory, language, etc....more
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