Customer Reviews

The Human Mind

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A journey of exploration means maps must be made - they aren't provided. Exploring the mind, which philosophers once claimed to do, requires maps of the brain. These are only now being created. And the mappers aren't philosophers, but cognitive scientists and medical scholars. Many maps have been made available to us in recent years. Enough maps that Robert Winston could produce a guidebook on the human mind. In this highly entertaining and informative book, Winston describes what has been learned about the brain and what it means for the mind. If anybody still thought those two elements were separate, this book should dispel that misconception.

Winston is candid about the relationship of this book to a BBC-TV series, but a media link doesn't render the information less useful. He spends the first chapters outlining the way in which measurement of brain activity has improved in recent years. This must be one of the few accounts that doesn't open with Phineas Gage and the tamping iron that pierced his skull yet left him alive, if changed in personality. Instead, Winston credits Paul Broca with finding the first "module" of brain activity [speech]. The author builds from that mid-19th Century revelation with explanations of where processing areas are located and how they operate. Brain functions were located by identifying damaged areas of afflicted patients through autopsy. Building an image of which areas of the brain performed or controlled which tasks was a painfully slow process. Not until new, non-intrusive technologies were developed did the pace of research quicken.

Winston covers a number of topics with this book, citing the work of many scholars and medical professionals. They all contributed something of interest, even if their ideas proved false. The segment on lobotomies isn't for the squeamish, and it's chastening to learn how long that procedure was sustained and how widely accepted. On a more positive note, Winston is able to show how various brain-damaging illnesses and mishaps have demonstrated the brain's power of recovery. With the billions of neurons exchanging singles around the brain, damage there or to body organs may lead to the brain shifting signal paths. While the brain can't "heal" itself, it can move emphasis from one area to another. This is part of the reason why someone blinded can achieve enhanced hearing capacity. The neuronal areas processing visual information are shifted in duties to deal with sound.

This isn't only a guidebook to what is going on in the brain. It's also a user's manual in maintenance and upkeep. He explains the evolutionary roots of many of our habits. Why, for example, do we sleep? Our helpless condition during sleeping made us vulnerable to predators. Did sleep make us more alert when awake? Winston spends a good deal of time in explaining how necessary sleep and rest are to the brain. He notes the importance of dreams as a means of rearranging and prioritising our memory cargo. The recovery enabled by sleep makes us more receptive to new information.

However, some new practices overturn the benefits of sleep. There are impairments to the regular operations of the brain resulting from the use of various chemicals. Winston's long list and analysis of what damages brain cells and their processes would make a Puritan smile. From nicotine to alcohol, he presents a gloomy picture of how easy it is to reduce your brain's capacity to process information or retrieve memories needed. The processing and use of information is what the brain does to establish what we call the "mind". Even though surgeons can probe the brain without your feeling anything, this "lump of porridge" inside your skull is vulnerable.

Winston has a great store of information to provide us in this topic. The amount of research that's gone into how the brain works is vast, and growing. He describes clearly the various instruments that now measure brain activity while we're talking, reading, or even answering the investigator's questions. We can be shown pleasant scenes, horrifying events or simply add a column of figures while our brains tell the machine which areas are active in each circumstance. With diagrams, some photographs and a working bibliography, this is a fine book to use as a starting point for understanding what is going on in there. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

This is the clearest, most interesting and most complete popular science book I have read about the way the human brain works. I had already seen Robert Winston's BBC documentaries, but the book goes much further. Highly recommended.

I found this to be both an entertaining and informative read. The writing style is immensely easy to read and the knowledge contained within the book is truly eye opening. It covers all aspects of the brain from addiction to emotion, and memory to relationships, and more besides. I agree that Winston strays from the narrative at times, but it generally seems to be done to make a point, and I found it added to the overall entertainment of the book (after all, it's good to enjoy a book whilst you learn as well!). This is a good first book to read if you're interested in the human brain and how it works and if the interest grabs you there's plenty more out there to explore. Well worth a go, you shouldn't be disappointed.

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Dr. Winston is a surgeon, a member of the House of Lords and a performer on BBC, which produced this book. In addition to describing the structure and functions of the human brain, the most complex structure structure in the universe and those of other species. Dr.Winston discusses relevant aspects of opera, Hamlet and daily activities. It is hard to see how he fits cocktail parties, also mentioned, in with his other activities. Actions that help or hurt the brain are also discussed. The book refers to many sources from Ader to Zeki. More readable than many other brain books.

We all have a brain and it is interesting to learn more about it. I found a lot in this book that was worth reading - a few new things, and many opportunities to consolidate or challenge already existing understanding. I also liked the personal stories the author could add from his own professional practice.

On the other hand, I think our knowledge of our brain is still largely enigmatic, perhaps even misunderstood. The whole practice of psychiatry and psychology I treat with some disdain - calling it 'astrology of the brain'. That's not to say these professionals cannot help people - manifestly they often do. But it seems to me that our limited knowledge of how the brain truly functions must compromise our ability to provide reliable relief to sufferers - unlike the ability of medical doctors. Mr Winston's book strengthens my doubts about our understanding. Perhaps the brain is not something that a scientific approach - such as the researches referred to by Mr Winston - can resolve alone. The final part of this book, which strays into areas such as out-of-body experience, near-death experience, ESP and the like, adds further to a sense of our lack of understanding of the brain.

Other recommendations:
'Why is Sex Fun?' Jared Diamond
'Male Infertility - Men Talking' M. Mason
'Upheavals of Thought
- The Intelligence of Emotions' Martha Nussbaum
'How the Mind Works' Steven Pinker

About three quarters of what I read in this book seems to have been taken directly from much better books like "The Selfish Gene", "Survival of the Prettiest", Steven J. Gould books and "Stone Age Mind". It's just a rehash of prisoner's dilemnas, hawk and dove experiments, and stories about the Yanomono. The author appears not to have done any original research or thinking whatsoever, and the books he copied from did a much better job of presenting the information.
But that's not the worst of it. Throughout this boring book, I held out hope that it might be interesting because on the back cover, it says, "And how is it that so many people still hold religious views when the notion of an all-powerful being is irrational?" That's a question I've never heard answered well, and thought it alone would make the book worth reading.
Turns out, however, that he believes in God, despite admitting that it is irrational, saying "I may well be a poor scientist, but for me, personally, the universe is a most remakable and beautiful design, one of physical rationality and populated with human creatures possessing insight and a divine intelligence." He doesn't offer much if any evidence to support his intelligent design idea, either.
He then goes on to make silly, speculative arguments about free will and the nature of good and evil that might get accepted in a first year philosophy seminar, but certainly do not belong in a book that purports to be about science.
The editor who wrote the blurb on the back jacket should be shot.