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The Private Life of the Brain
 
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The Private Life of the Brain (Hardcover)

by Susan Greenfield (Author)
3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 258 pages
  • Publisher: Allen Lane; 1st edition (1 Jun 2000)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0713991925
  • ISBN-13: 978-0713991925
  • Product Dimensions: 24.2 x 16.4 x 2.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 639,803 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
  • See Complete Table of Contents

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

What's going on in there? One of the great scientific and philosophical mysteries is how a few pounds of wet, salty cobwebs can give rise to the rich experience that we call consciousness. Oxford neuroscientist Susan Greenfield peers inside the dimly lit skull to show us what she thinks is going on in The Private Life of the Brain. Greenfield has a great facility for explaining tricky scientific concepts in language that is engaging to all readers. She presents the basics of contemporary thought on consciousness as they relate to her own theory involving a continuum of experience between sensual, emotional grounding in the surrounding world and rational, cognitive withdrawal into mental life. Arguing from a wide range of animal and human research, as well as the work of philosophers such as John Searle and Daniel Dennett, she makes her case compellingly but gently, allowing that other theories might also hold in this still-uncharted territory. Looking in depth at depression, drug use, and fear, Greenfield shows how each is explained by her continuum theory and how each relates to the life of the human organism as a whole. Could it be true that as our minds work harder, our hearts lose some feeling, and vice versa? Whether or not the idea withstands time and testing, it is intriguing and thought-provoking, making The Private Life of the Brain essential reading for minds seeking self-enlightenment. --Rob Lightner


Product Description

With great originality, celebrated neuroscientist Susan A. Greenfield shows that states of abandon - intensely felt experiences of pleasure, exhilaration, joy and pain - in fact draw us to the centre of the mind. Between emotion and the mind there is no dichotomy, but rather a continuum in which we create the self. With passion and learning, Susan Greenfield addresses the most fascinating aspects of contemporary neuroscience, revealing exactly what happens to the brain when we are in the throes of an intense experience. How do drugs act on the brain? How might an understanding of the science of emotion help us better understand schizophrenia and depression? What is the relationship between pleasure and fear? Why is it impossible to maintain a state of high arousal for more than a brief period? Challenging a series of common assumptions about the relationship between emotion and the brain, Susan Greenfield finally asks whether "mind-blowing" experiences might in fact form the basis of consciousness. Informed by the most recent neuroscience, "The Private Life of the Brain" develops new models with which to answer these questions.

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Average Customer Review
3.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but nothing new here, 14 Nov 2001
By A Customer
As a Neuroscience Student, I read this book as part of my course, but having read other books by Susan Greenfield, there is nothing new here. The first few chapters are interesting for people new to the subject, but much of the content can be found in other books by Greenfield - The Human Brain:A Guided Tour and Brain Story. If you already have these titles, then I wouldn't bother buying this book. There are much better titles around.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Good non-technical introduction, marred by poor editing, 27 Jul 2000
By A Customer
Don't be put off by the subject matter; this book is extremely readable, even to non-experts. Prof Greenfield clearly illustrates some basics of neuroscience (with the use of amusing metaphors), before setting out her own theories of conciousness (which are controversial but interesting). Even to those who have some knowlegdge of the field, this book provides a lively overview, and looks at some ideas from new angles.

What spoils the book is its tendancy towards repetition, which quicky becomes wearing when one reads more than a few chapters at one sitting (for example, I'm sure many other readers will tire of the author's apparent obsession with her mortgage). A bit of editing wouldn't go amiss before the release of the paperback.

Recommended, despite its flaws.

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0 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Well writ neuroscience for armchair and tutorial room alike., 28 Jun 2000
By A Customer
This is a must for those wanting to add an up-to-date and readable book containing 'mind' or 'brain' in the title to their collection. Greenfield argues for consciousness to be more than mind, and proposes that we look to our emotional life for clues as to its emergence and continuity. In a crude nutshell, we are asked to believe that "the interaction between body and brain IS consciousness" and that whereas the mind needs the brain (alone ?), consciousness requires the neuronal brain plus its modulatory interaction with the hormonal system(s) of the body as a whole. (i.e., the brain is necessary, but not sufficient to produce consciousness).

In a little more detail, although this volume provides the reader with an attempt to distinguish mind from consciousness, we are at the same time given a model continuum with 'emotion' at one end and 'mind' at the other; the goal of neuroscience (of whatever flavour its researcher) being to uncover the 'Rosetta Stone' of the physical brain Vs emotion/consciousness. Starting with the thesis that emotions are suppressed by logic and reason, we are taken on a tour of metaphysical models of mind-brain coexistence and a useful series of historical analogies of self-hood persistence are drawn from the literature. What an agent does (behaviourally) is rightly in my view distinguished from what it might think or understand (concerning its situation), but Greenfield pushes for the further dependence upon consciousness to underly true understanding. What of consciousness itself, here as elswhere in the book, there is little new. The middle chapters concerning specific brain regions, their known behavioural correlates, and their modulation by the use of both clinical and street drugs are well written in a style accessible to the general reader, but perhaps cloud the formation of the 'bigger picture'. However, such might be beyond the remit of this volume, requiring a different vocabulary and indeed a couple more chapters. The standard amine neurotransitter stories are appropriately given, but I am left wondering whether we have really come thereby to know how (as opposed to that) "feelings influence thoughts" before before turning to how "thoughts influence feelings" ? (concluding Ch.6). Discusing the ways in which thoughts and words might give rise to our emotional sensations is 'difficult' because we are unclear as to 'the physical stimuli and triggers [which] impinge upon the senses' - but this begs the question as if other behaviours such as sensorymotor transformations are already understood. Even if emotions are found to be "the most basic form of consciousness" as Greenfield contends, I'm not convinced that such a view helps me to know what consciousness IS (either for myself or another). Indeed, I'm rather afraid that this might result in the term dissappearing following the phenomenon being explained away [cf the eliminative materialism of Churchland]. It is only in the latter two chapters that Greenfield comes clean, adding the effects of the (traditionally separated) endocrine system in progressing our understanding of consciousness (as opposed to merely describing the brain-mind). Keeping the two systems apart, Greenfield introduces peptides as "vying between the brain and the rest of the body", affecting neuronal assemblies (as they do) and thus the extent, type and degree of consciousness experienced. This is all intuitively plausible, but no clear mechanisms are offerred here. I felt that the warrant for a further chapter had been given and wanted to know Greenfield's view as to how this might come together re the mind-brain correlates already 'in-the-bag' with regards neural plasticity in growth and development. I was expecting to go on to read, for example, how circulating hormones were involved in quite different time-courses of events (as the appendix discussed fast quantum theoretical proposition effects dismissively in contrast to the millisecond events occuring at the synapse) but there was no mention of the mush (significantly) longer min/hour/daylong effects of hormonal releases in contrast to synaptic (electrical and chemical) transmission. Furthermore, no mention was made of work [e.g., Dixson (Camb) and Tom Insel (Emory)] currently attempting to determine the effects of hormonal regulation upon gene expression and its effects upon the developing nervous system (both postnatally and in utero). Such an inclusion would have provided for me a more rounded closure.Maybe in adulthood more rationality does appear to be correlated with decreased emotionality - instant by instant - but in that case, how does one get 'high' on one's own intellectualism ? And, somewhat tongue in cheek, might plants with auxin circulation (a botanical equivalent of an animal hormone) have consciousness but no mind ?

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