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The phenomenon of `consciousness' is intrinsically related to one's awareness of one's self, of time, and of the physical world. What, then, can be learned about consciousness from people who have suffered brain damage such as amnesia which affects their awareness? This is the question explored by Lawrence Weiskrantz, a distinguished neuropsychologist who has worked with such patients over 30 years. It has been discovered that many of these patients retain intact capacities of which they are unaware, in what is known as `covert' processing. Weiskrantz maps his own research onto a philosophical arguement which, combined with the latest brain imaging studies, points the way to specific brain structures which may be involved in conscious awareness. The book also analyses new approaches to the question of animal consciousness and its evolutionary value. Written in an engaging and accessible style, Consciousness Lost and Found provides a unique perspective on one of the most challenging issues in science today.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• 1 Introduction
• 2 The unseen and the unknown
• 3 Deficits, degradation, and dissociations
• 4 The ""What?"" of consciousness
• 5 Animal consciousness - the problem of ""whether?""
• 6 The memory commentary is NOW
• 7 Attributes and possible pathways of residual visual capacity
• 8 The evolutionary ""why""?
• 9 The question of ""how?""
• 10 And so. . .
• Appendix - Terminology

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CHOICE Review

On the whole, this book is truer to its starting premise--a study of brain-damaged patients who retain a limited capacity of perceptive and cognitive faculties they claim to have lost--than to its title. The book more closely resembles a dissertation, citing a veritable plethora of empirical clinical research in support of that premise. However, it falls short of developing a coherent picture of the meaning of consciousness. The chapter on the evolutionary "why" of consciousness is particularly revealing in this weakness. Weiskrantz never develops a clear argument for any evolutionary reason for consciousness. He presents an overly pedantic review of research that, in sum, fails to convince the reader that covert consciousness has any practical or conscious functional value. And he ends the chapter with the vague and effete conclusion that "All of these handicaps [e.g., paranoia, obsessions, aggression] bestowed by evolution must be worth the sacrifices and the risks, or else the capacities would not have survived." The reader has no more a clue as to the evolutionary reasons for consciousness than before reading this book. There are currently more provocative and meaningful books about consciousness than this one. F. L. Coolidge; University of Colorado at Colorado Springs

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

One of the century's most distinguished neuropsychologists, Lawrence Weiskrantz is a Professor in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University.