About the book
From brain scans that show thoughts, memories and moods, Rita Carter builds an illustrated guide to how the landscape of the brain shapes personality, behavior and culture. She suggests behavioral quirks may trace to differences in individual brains: obsessions and compulsions apparently to a stuck neural switch in an area that watches for danger, addiction and eating disorders to trouble in the reward system, and rigid thinking possibly to low activity in the frontal lobes. Belief in God is also linked to one particular brain region. Carter compares the brains of men and women, and looks at autism, dyslexia, depression, psychopathy and attention deficit. The jacket bills it as the first illustrated guide to the brain.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb endorsed it in an Amazon review, recalling that an FT piece by Rita Carter first sparked his interest in neurobiology in 1998.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Flaneur)
I started my interest in neurobiology in December 1998 after reading a discussion by Rita Carter in the FT showing that rational behavior under uncertainty and rational decision making can come from a defect in the amygdala. Since then I've had five years of reading more technical material (Gazzaniga et al is perhaps the most complete reference on cognitive neuroscience) and thought that I transcended this book.
But it was not so. I picked up this book again last weekend and was both astonished at a) the ease of reading , b) the clarity of the text and c) the breadth of the approach! I was looking for a refresher as I am trying to capture a general idea of the functioning of that black box and found exactly what I needed without the excess burden of prominent textbooks. Very pedagogical.
I read here and there comments by neuroscientists dissing the book over small details perhaps invisible even to experts. I just realize that Carter should keep updating it, as it is invaluable in my suitcase when I travel! I do not conceal my suspicion of "science writers" and journalists more trained in communicating than understanding and usually shallow babblers but Carter is an exception. Perhaps the science of the mind requires breadth of knowledge that she has. She is a thinker in her own right not just a "medical journalist".
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