my mind on books

Brain Culture: Neuroscience and Popular Media by Davi Johnson Thornton (Rutgers University Press, 2011)

(amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

Brain Culture investigates the American obsession with the health of the brain. The brain has become more than a bodily organ, acquiring a near-mystical status. The message that this organ is the key to everything is everywhere–in self-help books that tell us to work on our brains to achieve happiness and enlightenment, in drug advertisements that promise a few tweaks to our brain chemistry will cure us of our discontents, and in politicians’ speeches that tell us that our brains are national resources essential to our economic prosperity.

Davi Johnson Thornton looks at these familiar messages, tracing the ways that brain science and colorful brain images produced by novel scientific technologies are taken up and distributed in popular media. She tracks the impact of the message that, “you are your brain” across multiple contemporary contexts, analyzing its influence on child development, family life, education, and public policy. Brain Culture shows that our fixation on the brain is not simply a reaction to scientific progress, but a cultural phenomenon deeply tied to social and political values of individualism and limitless achievement.

The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good by David J. Linden (Viking, 2011)

(Kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

A leading brain scientist’s look at the neurobiology of pleasure-and how pleasures can become addictions.

Whether eating, taking drugs, engaging in sex, or doing good deeds, the pursuit of pleasure is a central drive of the human animal. In The Compass of Pleasure Johns Hopkins neuroscientist David J. Linden explains how pleasure affects us at the most fundamental level: in our brain.

As he did in his award-winning book, The Accidental Mind, Linden combines cutting-edge science with entertaining anecdotes to illuminate the source of the behaviors that can lead us to ecstasy but that can easily become compulsive. Why are drugs like nicotine and heroin addictive while LSD is not? Why has the search for safe appetite suppressants been such a disappointment? The Compass of Pleasure concludes with a provocative consideration of pleasure in the future, when it may be possible to activate our pleasure circuits at will and in entirely novel patterns.

See also: Author interview at Salon.com
Book website & blog

A new book that’s gotten a number of 5-star reviews at Amazon: Out of Character: Surprising Truths About the Liar, Cheat, Sinner (and Saint) Lurking in All of Us by David DeSteno and Piercarlo Valdesolo (Crown Archetype, 2011)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

Have you ever wondered why a trumpeter of family values would suddenly turn around and cheat on his wife? Why jealousy would send an otherwise level-headed person into a violent rage? What could drive a person to blow a family fortune at the blackjack tables?

Or have you ever pondered what might make Mr. Right leave his beloved at the altar, why hypocrisy seems to be rampant, or even why, every once in awhile, even you are secretly tempted, to lie, cheat, or steal (or, conversely, help someone you never even met)?

This book answers these questions and more, and in doing so, turns the prevailing wisdom about who we are upside down. Our character, argue psychologists DeSteno and Valdesolo, isn’t a stable set of traits, but rather a shifting state that is subject to the constant push and pull of hidden mechanisms in our mind. And it’s the battle between these dueling psychological forces that determine how we act at any given point in time.

Drawing on the surprising results of the clever experiments concocted in their own laboratory, DeSteno and Valdesolo shed new scientific light on so many of the puzzling behaviors that regularly grace the headlines. For example, you’ll learn:

• Why Tiger Woods just couldn’t resist the allure of his mistresses even though he had a picture-perfect family at home. And why no one, including those who knew him best, ever saw it coming.

• Why even the shrewdest of investors can be tempted to gamble their fortunes away (and why risky financial behavior is driven by the same mechanisms that compel us to root for the underdog in sports).

• Why Eliot Spitzer, who made a career of crusading against prostitution, turned out to be one of the most famous johns of all time.

• Why Mel Gibson, a noted philanthropist and devout Catholic, has been repeatedly caught spewing racist rants, even though close friends say he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body.

• And why any of us is capable of doing the same, whether we believe it or not!

A surprising look at the hidden forces driving the saint and sinner lurking in us all, Out of Character reveals why human behavior is so much more unpredictable than we ever realized.

See also: Book website & blog

The Formation of Reason by David Bakhurst (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011)

(amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

In The Formation of Reason, philosophy professor David Bakhurst utilizes ideas from philosopher John McDowell to develop and defend a socio-historical account of the human mind.

* Provides the first detailed examination of the relevance of John McDowell’s work to the Philosophy of Education
* Draws on a wide-range of philosophical sources, including the work of ‘analytic’ philosophers Donald Davidson, Ian Hacking, Peter Strawson, David Wiggins, and Ludwig Wittgenstein
* Considers non-traditional ideas from Russian philosophy and psychology, represented by Ilyenkov and Vygotsky
* Discusses foundational philosophical ideas in a way that reveals their relevance to educational theory and practice

See also: Life in the Space of Reasons: Mood, Music, Education, and the Philosophy of John McDowell (pdf) by David Bakhurst

The Organisation of Mind by Tim Shallice and Richard P. Cooper (Oxford University Press, 2011)

(amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

Brain imaging has been immensely valuable in showing us how the mind works. However, many of our ideas about how the mind works come from disciplines like experimental psychology, artificial intelligence and linguistics, which in their modern form date back to the computer revolution of the 1940s, and are not strongly linked to the subdisciplines of biomedicine. Cognitive science and neuroscience thus have very separate intellectual roots, and very different styles. Unfortunately, these two areas of knowledge have not been well integrated as far as higher mental processes are concerned. So how can these two be reconciled in order to develop a full understanding of the mind and brain?

This is the focus of this landmark book from leaders in the field. Coming more than two decades after Shallice’s classic ‘From neuropsychology to mental structure’, ‘The Organisation of Mind’ establishes a strong historical, empirical, and theoretical basis for cognitive neuroscience.

The book starts by reviewing the history and intellectual roots of the field, looking at some of the researchers who guided and influenced it. The basic principles – theoretical and empirical and the inferential relation between them – are then considered with particular emphasis being placed on inferences to the organisation of the cognitive system from two empirical methodologies – neuropsychology and functional imaging. The core skeleton of the cognitive system is then analysed for the areas most critical for understanding rational thought. In the third section the components of simple cognitive acts are described, namely semantic processing, working memory, and cognitive operations. In the final section, more complex higher-level modulating processes are considered, including, supervisory processing, episodic memory, consciousness and problem-solving.

This will be a seminal publication in the brain sciences – one that all students and researchers will have to read.