The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell us about Ourselves, Eric R. Kandel, 2018.
Kandel is an eminent neuroscientist, known for his work on the low-level mechanisms of learning and memory as demonstrated in Aplysia. He’s won a host of prizes, including the Nobel for this work. Interestingly, as an undergraduate he majored in humanities, and afterwards became a psychiatrist, before migrating into neuroscience. Now in his 90’s, he is writing about larger themes, and addressing himself to more general audiences.
This is his most recent book in this vein; it is preceded by In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind (2007); The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present (2012); and Reductionism in Art and Science: Bridging the Two Cultures (2016).
Introduction
Here he sets the scene, offering an extremely abbrieviated account of the development of the current view of the brain/mind from Darwin (Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, which suggests that mental processes have evolved in the same way as morphology, etc.), to the emergence of cognitive science and its synthesis of philosophy, psychology and neurophysiology.
He mentions two concepts in the introduction that I hope to come away with a good understanding of. One is “neural circuits,” and I am curious about what these are, how they function, and whether “circuit” is more of a model or a metaphor. The second, at the end of the introduction, he suggests that we now know that consciousness is not unitary:
Modern studies of consciousness and its disorders suggest that consciousness is not a single uniform function of the brain: instead, is different states of mind in different contexts.
This too I would like to understand better.
Table of Contents
- What Brain Disorders Can Tell Us About Ourselves
- Our Intensely Social Nature: The Autism Spectrum Emotions and the Integrity of the Self: Depression and Bipolar Disorder
- The Ability to Think and to Make and Carry Out Decisions:
Schizophrenia - Memory, the Storehouse of the Self: Dementia
- Our Innate Creativity: Brain Disorders and Art
- Movement: Parkinson’s and Huntington’s Diseases
- The Interplay of Conscious and Unconscious Emotion:
Anxiety, Post-Traumatic Stress and Faulty Decision Making - The Pleasure Principle and Freedom of Choice: Addictions
- Sexual Differentiation of the Brain and Gender Identity
- Consciousness: The Great Remaining Mystery of the Brain Conclusion: Coming Full Circle
My Thoughts on the Book — TBD
TBD after reading.
Notes on the Text
C1: What Brain Disorders Can Tell Us About Ourselves
C2: Our Intensely Social Nature: The Autism Spectrum Emotions and the Integrity of the Self: Depression and Bipolar Disorder
C3: The Ability to Think and to Make and Carry Out Decisions: Schizophrenia
C4: Memory, the Storehouse of the Self: Dementia
C5: Our Innate Creativity: Brain Disorders and ArtC6:
C6: Movement: Parkinson’s and Huntington’s Diseases
C7: The Interplay of Conscious and Unconscious Emotion: Anxiety, Post-Traumatic Stress and Faulty Decision Making
C8: The Pleasure Principle and Freedom of Choice: Addictions
C9: Sexual Differentiation of the Brain and Gender Identity
C10: Consciousness: The Great Remaining Mystery of the Brain Conclusion: Coming Full Circle
Views: 0