Customer Reviews

Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind (Third Edition)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I would recommend this textbook to anyone who is interested in learning cognitive neuroscience. This textbook was recommended to me by a professor. Since this course is not taught at my university, I decided to cover it on my own. And, by far, this is the best textbook I've had on the subject. Reasons:

1) Gazzaniga along with his colleagues is very well-known in cognitive psychology, and is actively pursuing further research in the field, so I was happy to see that the research is up-to-date featuring the frontiers of cognitive neuroscience.

2) The explanations are very clear and narrative-style. That means that the author includes the stories of origin of different ideas within neuroscience, competition between different researchers in a psychological debate, descriptions of where the researchers come from (the feature that I really liked and that no other textbook has), extended examples on the subjects. This is the first textbook I read like a novel.

3) Enormous amount of illustrations, which are also very clear. They include all aspects that are needed to support the text.

4) The textbook covers most of the material that can be covered by some textbooks on biopsychology when it comes to cognitive functions. However, it advances well beyond this level. There are separate chapters on attentions, on hemisphericality, etc. However, since the book contains almost everything you need to know, you don't even have to take biopsych in advance. In fact, it describes synapses in more detail than in both of my biopsych textbooks.

5) The book provides a perfect amount of both cognitive neuroscience and cognitive psychology. The authors assume that you have already taken cognitive psychology course. However, due to the nature of the topic, it is pretty much impossible to discuss neuroscience without the underlying behavior. Other books strive to achieve the balance between the two, while this textbook has just the right amount of both.

6) The cover picture of the brain makes you want to open the textbook and read.

As for the price - I wish I would buy this textbook earlier not to waste my money on anything else. This is definitely a worthy investment.

This book is thorough and comprehensive. It covers the basics that one needs to know to be familiar with the field as well as more in depth matters. The writing style is informal and a pleasure to read. I would highly recommend this book to students, teachers or experts in the field. Or for people like me who are interested laypersons.

This is a very good textbook that describes the field, which I haven't seen a definition for, but basically seems to be the connection between our biology and human thought, memory, speech and so on. The book is a full introduction and requires no specialized knowledge.

Neuroscience is probably the most interesting scientific field right now. Even the simplest thought processes of tiny things like worms are not yet understood but the recent giant leap in medical technology is allowing scientists to study smaller and smaller pieces of the puzzle. There are new discoveries coming out every year such as 'mirror neurons' and there will be a lot of big breakthroughs and nobel prizes here in the future. I'm especially interested in how this affects computer science, there a lot of billionaires out there plowing money into research such as at the Redwood Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience and Microsoft Research.

I bought this book for one of my BCS (brain and cognitive science)course. Although I kind of "have to" read this heavy book, the book itself is very well written and quite enjoyable to read.

Each chapters started with real patient cases and then gradually dive deep into the mechanisms. The narrative style makes reading this book more like reading a novel than dry text books. The author provided TONs of illustrated images to explain the experiments. And the explanations can be found right underneath each experimental illustrations(very helpful to understand the experiment procedures and key factors).

There are also questions for thought and chapter summaries for quick references/reviews at the end of each chapter. It's a great book even if you do not have much knowledge in biopsych or cognitive science. The topics include almost all materials you would encounter in introductory courses (I found many repeating materials with my 2 introductory cognitive science courses). The author did a good job in refreshing your memory of many terms (we often forgot what we learnt from class last year :P).

It would be hard though if you came to read this book as a Cognitive Science newbie. Yet you should feel no fear to try a few chapters interested you since you can always find explanations to terms on Google.

Overall, I'm glad my professor assigned this book for this course. The author explains every point better and more clear than my professor does.

The price is indeed ... high. You can always get a digitalized version or used book though. Don't let the price prevent you from an excellent book in cognitive science!

This is a nice book, written in a language that suits readers with a general scientific background. Richly illustrated with many colorful pictures and diagrams. A good introduction to the subject.

The research being discussed is often detailed and the selection of research articles presented is comprehensive. It is an excellent book, but you must have genuine interest in the topic, or at least be capable of reading (unnecessarily) complicated paragraphs.
Content: 5/5
Writing Style: 3/5

The goal of any good textbook, for the purposes of the layman who is unfamiliar in the field, should be to present the ideas in a clear and fluid manner, without becoming too wordy or cryptic.
This book does anything but that.

The book is incredibly dense, arcane, and unnecessarily verbose. Trying to read and understand the material is like trying to dissect a frozen, rotting carcass of a bull with a butter knife: it is arduous, squalid, and of course, without utility. It simply never gives. There were times that I would labor through a confusing paragraph, barely managing to get through without getting lost in the words, and by the time I was done, I would step back and feel completely clueless as to what I had just read. Then, after scanning the rest of the chapter and discovering that the torture went on for another 50 pages, I wanted to die. And it wasn't long--maybe about an hour and 3 pages later--that I realized I was, indeed, dying.

I love psychology, and I find neurophysiology fascinating, but I hate this textbook. Since I had to rely on it for my test, this textbook is the sole reason I suffered this semester. Having never taken a psychology course that wasn't satisfying, I was surprised that this could ever happen to me. But it did. And it sucked. It sucked like hell.

Call this review extreme, but I haven't talked to another student in my class that *doesn't* agree with me in this opinion, at least to some degree.

Tell your professors to never make their students read this book. And if your professor insists, drop the course as soon as possible, and make it out alive while you can.

I'm not even kidding.