Review by Choice Review
Gazzaniga (Univ. of California, Santa Barbara) focuses on what it means to be human from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience, and what differentiates human brains and minds from those of other species. In his earlier work The Ethical Brain (CH, Oct'05, 43-0920), Gazzaniga examined what brain science can tell us about questions of morality; this new volume covers a more expansive array of topics. The book skillfully weaves together contemporary research findings in psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence to explore social organization, artistic expression, consciousness, and other topics. Are abilities such as language unique to humans? What is the nature of self-awareness? Is there a distinction between mind and body? These are clearly "big questions," and the book communicates the complexity involved in tackling them without overwhelming the reader. Gazzaniga provides a masterful overview of relevant scientific findings, and includes a multitude of references to original research. His style is engaging and personal, making the work a remarkably entertaining, informative, and mind-expanding read. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All undergraduate students and general readers. S. C. Baker James Madison University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
MY dog, Shadow, does not have an intact disgust module. Neither did the succession of best friends who preceded him. Dogs will eat or roll in practically anything, without any trace of an emotion that seems to be uniquely human. Human infants don't show disgust until they're 5 to 7 years old. Disgust, Michael S. Gazzaniga argues in his new book, "Human," is one of the five emotional modules that distinguish us from other species. Other modules are common across species. Neither adults, nor human infants nor wallabies, for example, have to be explicitly taught to avoid certain dangers. Encountering a large, fast-approaching creature with sharp teeth - even if you have never encountered it before - causes an automatic fear and avoidance reaction. Evolution has hard-wired a general fear response into our brains, rather than a fear of specific things - you never know what you might encounter, and you don't want to sit there ruminating about it while you become lunch. Speaking of rumination, part of what makes human brains special is that we are the only animals who even bother to ask the question of why we're special. Gazzaniga, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara (and one of the inventors of the field), takes us on a lively tour through the latest research on brain evolution. (Full disclosure: the book discusses three of my papers, among hundreds by others.) Human brains turn out to be less different from other animal brains than you might think. Language and social cognition fall along a continuum across species. Deception, for instance, long thought to be unique to humans, is present in monkeys and crows, which can even hide their attempts to deceive. Counterintuitively, much of what makes us human is not an ability to do more things, Gazzaniga writes, but an ability to inhibit automatic responses in favor of reasoned ones; consequently, we may be the only species that engages in delayed gratification and impulse control (thank you, prefrontal cortex). Gazzaniga doesn't shy away from hard problems, like why humans, alone among species, have art. The attraction to stories, plays, paintings and music - experiences with no obvious evolutionary payoff - is puzzling. "Why does the brain contain reward systems that make fictional experiences enjoyable?" he asks. Part of the answer, he argues, is that fictional thinking engages innate "play" modules that enhance evolutionary fitness (that is, the ability to propagate one's genes) by allowing us to consider possible alternatives hypothetical situations - so that we can form plans in advance of dangers or even just unpleasant social situations. "From having read the fictional story about the boy who cried wolf when we were children," he writes, "we can remember what happened to him in the story and not have to learn that lesson the hard way in real life." Art may be more than a leisure activity. Artistic, representational thinking could have been fundamental in making us the way we are. As Gazzaniga concludes, "The arts are not frosting but baking soda." In a hair-raising final chapter, Gazzaniga turns to the question of whether technology may eventually make us something other than human, exploring such potential enhancements as brain implants and germ-line gene therapy, which alters the DNA in sperm, egg or embryo (thus passing the changes on to future generations). It's one thing to eliminate genes that cause cystic fibrosis or muscular dystrophy, which tests already allow us to detect in developing embryos. But what happens, Gazzaniga asks, when we identify genes that indicate a high probability of developing diabetes or heart disease in middle age? Will we toss the embryo, "start all over again and try for a better one?" Or change the offending genes based on probabilistic outcomes? YOU may reject out of hand the idea of a neural implant, a computer chip grafted to your brain. But the lines become blurred. We already alter our neurochemistry through caffeine and alcohol (not to mention Prozac). People with thyroid or pituitary problems use pills or injections to restore their hormonal balance. Others have cochlear implants or electrodes to stimulate injured parts of the brain. If a chip could mediate thyroid function, that doesn't seem so different. A neural implant might also stimulate the prefrontal cortex and brain stem the way caffeine or Ritalin or Prozac do. But will we accept an implanted memory restorer for people with Alzheimer's? What about intelligence-enhancement chips for schoolchildren? Gazzaniga imagines the conversation: "Honey, I know that we were saving this money for a vacation, but maybe we should get the twins neural chips instead. It is hard for them in school when so many of the other kids have them and are so much smarter." If this is fundamentally different from discussions about glasses, hearing aids or Ritalin, that difference is not obvious. And if neural implants could keep Shadow from rolling in dead squirrel, maybe they wouldn't seem so disgusting after all. Daniel J. Levitin is a professor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience at McGill University and the author, most recently, of "The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
Thinking through human characteristics, and deciding whether they are in fact distinctly human, is the aim of this popular work about neuroscience. Gazzaniga is a prime name in the field, and in jaunty, colloquial language, he mediates the research of neurobiologists as well as evolutionary and cognitive psychologists. Opening with a run through the gross anatomy of the brain and concluding that, yes, ours really is a bigger, more complex noggin than that of any other species, Gazzaniga asks: Would a chimp make a good date? Meaning: Are we justified in imputing humanlike thought to animals such as chimps or dogs? No, is Gazzaniga's general conclusion. They fail tests for theory-of-mind, the ability to act on the knowledge that other creatures have their own thoughts. Humans innately acquire that skill as Gazzaniga demonstrates through descriptions of cognitive studies of children so what's it for, he asks? He finds answers in the universal proclivity to talk, mostly about other people. From gossip to morals to art, Gazzaniga pays scientific compliments to what makes us human.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2008 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
As wide-ranging as it is deep, and as entertaining as it is informative, the latest offering from UC-Santa Barbara neuroscientist Gazzaniga (The Ethical Brain) will please a diverse array of readers. He is adept at aiding even the scientifically unsophisticated to grasp his arguments about what separates humans from other animals. His main premise is that human brains are not only proportionately larger than those of other primates but have a number of distinct structures, which he explores along with evolutionary explanations for their existence. For instance, a direct outgrowth of the size and structure of the human brain, along with their origins in the complexity of human social groups, was the development of language, self-awareness and ethics. (Gazzaniga offers some surprising comments on the evolution of religion and its relation to morals.) Throughout, Gazzaniga addresses the nature of consciousness, and by comparing the intellectual capabilities of a host of animals (chimps, dogs, birds and rats, among others) with those of human babies, children and adults, he shows what we all share as well as what humans alone possess. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Where the brain is concerned, does size matter? Until recently, research into the evolution of hominid species into Homo sapiens has focused on physical features, with the study of cognitive evolution limited to speculating how brain size affected psychosocial capacities. Advances in modern neuroscience reveal that the unique capabilities of the human mind are only possible through much more complex and subtle differences than just size. Neuroscientist Gazzaniga (The Ethical Brain) discusses the brain functions underlying the defining characteristics of what makes us human: arts, ethics, empathy, conceptual thinking, and self-awareness. The first three parts of his book ("The Basics of Human Life," "Navigating the Social World," and "The Glory of Being Human") explore the neural mechanisms that make humans different from other species. The final section, "Beyond Current Constraints," speculates freely on future brain evolution, both natural and technology-enhanced. Although the text can be a bit dense in places, readers attracted to this subject are generally more than willing to invest the neural energy required to follow it and will be rewarded for doing so. Recommended for academic and larger public library science collections.--Gregg Sapp, Science Lib., SUNY Albany (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
One grand search engine for all the qualities that make Homo sapiens different from other species. Cognitive neuroscientist Gazzaniga (Psychology/Univ. of California, Santa Barbara; The Ethical Brain, 2005, etc.) knows his stuff--and a lot of other people's stuff too. The elegant popularizer trots out study after study in brain science, emphasizing evolutionary and developmental psychology as well as his own research on split-brain patients and others with neurological lesions. No surprise, then, to find him weighing human traits for their adaptive value in terms of safety, survival and reproduction, especially qualities that promote socializing and cooperation. Indeed, he sometimes argues too much for an adaptive value for well nigh every human feature he discusses. Gazzaniga describes how lesions reveal the brain's organization into myriad modules specialized for, say, recognizing faces (located in the right hemisphere). He argues for a left hemisphere "interpreter" who's in charge--making sense of all the inputs, but ready to make up stories if need be. This seems to put him in the camp of dualism, which supposes there is something else behind the physical substance of brain tissue that accounts for the mind; though the idea's been around since Descartes, it remains debatable. The author celebrates the unique richness of the human neocortex, more complex than in any other animal. By inference, the cortex and its extensive connectivity account for art, music, analytical thinking (and thus science), self-awareness, imagination and our ability to pretend and to evoke the past and future. Gazzaniga also declares that humans are unique in their ability to project the mental states of others: to understand that behind their behavior are minds like ours that have desires and beliefs. To his credit, he discusses controversies and conflicting studies in all these areas, as well as in the origin of language, consciousness, morality and religion. Credit him too with a wonderful final section on current research on robotics and gene manipulation. A savvy, witty guide to neuroscience today. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.