Customer Reviews

Information in the Brain

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

 

 

Ira Barrie Black (1941-2006) was an American physician and neuroscientist who was an advocate of stem cell research and was the first director of the Stem Cell Institute of New Jersey at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School which was created to advance research in the field.

He states in the Preface to this 1991 book, "An early interest in philosophy, psychology, or behavior frequently evolves into a fascination with the organ of origin, the brain. However, the complexity of physical design, its multifarious functions from perception to motor control to memory, and its multilevel organization from gene to molecule, cell, systems, and behavior encourage an intensely focused approach. That focus is abundantly rewarded. Disorientation is held at bay, and much is learned about a narrow area of neural function. In fact, focus is so inordinately successful that original motivations and perspectives may be easily, and imperceptibly, abandoned. The impenetrable big picture is sacrified to the tractable experimental detail. This brief book represents one attempt to reconstruct the picture."

Here are some representative quotations from the book:

"It may be helpful to define a crisis in the brain and mind sciences to provide context and direction. Harshly stated, these fields have yet to fulfill the promise of forging a conceptual synthesis. The fields, and their component subfields, have failed to evolve a common framework indicating how brain state relates to mind state. No systematic mechanistic vocabulary, no general theory interrelates mind, brain, and behavior." (Pg. xi)
"How do we begin to understand such apparent brain states as alertness, attention, vigilance, and anxiety in terms of molecular function? That question seems to be all but unapproachable at present." (Pg 61)
"No network theory that does not consider the constraints imposed at the molecular and behavioral levels can be considered complete." (Pg.116)
"To summarize, whether we approach the problem of self and subjectivity from the perspective of normal or abnormal function, we are driven to specific brain areas, specific neural systems, and specific transmitters therein." (Pg. 178)