The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life by Joseph Ledoux |
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Sometime before he wrote The Synaptic Self, Joseph LeDoux walking down Bourbon Street spotted a T-shirt that read, "I don't know, so maybe I'm not". This stimulus zoomed from eyes to brain, neuron by neuron, via tiny junctions called synapses. The results? An immediate chuckle and (sometime later) a groundbreaking book. To LeDoux, the simple question, "What makes us who we are?" represents the driving force behind his 20-plus years of research into the cognitive, emotional and motivational functions of the brain.
LeDoux believes the answer rests in the synapses, key players in the brain's intricately designed communication system. In other words, the pathways by which a person's "hardwired" responses (nature) mesh with his or her unique life experiences (nurture) determine that person's individuality. Here, LeDoux nimbly compresses centuries of philosophy, psychology, and biology into an amazingly clear picture of humanity's journey toward understanding the self.
Equally readable is his comprehensive science lesson, where detailed circuit speak reads like an absorbing--yet often humorous--mystery novel. Skilfully presenting research studies and findings alongside their various implications, LeDoux makes a solid case for accepting a synaptic explanation of existence and provides to the reader generous helpings of knowledge, amusement, and awe along the way. --Liane Thomas, Amazon.com --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
One of the key issues in modern scientific research is how the brain works, and, as a consequence, how we become the individuals we are. Joseph LeDoux, Professor of Science at the Centre for Neural Science and the Department of Psychology at New York University, has demonstrated his authoritative research in The Emotional Brain and (with Michael Gazzaniga) The Integrated Mind, and here he turns his attention to this most crucial of questions. In lucid, cogently argued prose, he argues that the key to everything the brain does lies in our synapses. In physical terms, these minute spaces between neurons are the channels of communication by means of which we think, act, imagine, feel and use our memory. And these synapses permit interactions between the brain systems, encode the essence of what makes us individuals, maintaining the integrity of our personalities from moment to moment, from week to week and from year to year. In a style that is never hijacked by the technical, we are told how the various modular functions in the brain work, how the synaptic organization of individual brain systems is set up as infants develop and how this organization is modified by all the experiences that affect us in the course of a lifetime. A major area for examination here is the notion that the self is sustained by coordinated learning which occurs simultaneously in diverse systems, many of which function implicitly or unconsciously. This is an excellent, intelligently structured and insightful guide to a topic of vital interest. (Kirkus UK)
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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