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With forays into evolutionary biology, this analysis of mental function answers some of our most common questions about how we've come to be who we are.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Prologue: Brain, Explained(p. 1)
• 1 The Inelegant Design of the Brain(p. 5)
• 2 Building a Brain with Yesterday's Parts(p. 28)
• 3 Some Assembly Required(p. 50)
• 4 Sensation and Emotion(p. 82)
• 5 Learning, Memory, and Human Individuality(p. 107)
• 6 Love and Sex(p. 145)
• 7 Sleeping and Dreaming(p. 184)
• 8 The Religious Impulse(p. 221)
• 9 The Unintelligent Design of the Brain(p. 235)
• Epilogue: That Middle Thing(p. 247)
• Further Reading and Resources(p. 257)
• Acknowledgments(p. 264)
• Index(p. 267)

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Publishers Weekly Review

The brain, that "cobbled-together mess," is the subject of this lively mix of solid science and fascinating case histories. Linden, a neuroscientist from Johns Hopkins University, offers "the Reader's Digest version" of how the brain functions, followed quickly by the "real biology," before tackling the big questions: Why are people religious? How do we form memories? What makes sleep so vital to mental health? Which is more important, nature or nurture? Linden tackles these problems head on, debunking myths (people do, in fact, use more than 10 percent of their brains) and offering interesting trivia (Einstein's brain was a bit on the small side) along the way. Anti-evolutionary arguments are answered in a chapter titled "The Unintelligent Design of the Brain," in which Linden proposes that it's the brain's "weird agglomeration of ad hoc solutions" that makes humans unique. The book's greatest strength is Linden's knack for demystifying biology and neuroscience with vivid similes (he calls the brain, weighing two percent of total body weight and using 20 percent of its energy, the "Hummer H2 of the body"). Though packed with textbook-ready data, the book grips readers like a masterful teacher; those with little science experience may be surprised to find themselves interested in--and even chuckling over--the migration of neurons along radial glia, and anxious to find out what happens next. (Mar.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

CHOICE Review

Many popular neuroscience books emphasize the brain's complexity using terms of purpose: this region is for emotion, that one for vision, and so forth, each interacting in a perfectly designed whole. This ambitious, engaging, and often irreverent book by Linden (Johns Hopkins Univ.) adopts a quite different perspective, instead emphasizing the evolutionary origins of the human brain. Initial chapters offer, in broad strokes, an overview of gross neuroanatomy, functional divisions, and cellular neuroscience. Somewhat surprisingly, the book provides considerable detail about basic neuroscience, which increases its potential usefulness as a classroom text. Lay readers, though, may end up skipping much of this material. The subsequent chapters introduce key topics in the neuroscience of the mind: sensation, emotion, memory, sex, and dreams. Chapters cover these topics in a well-written, enjoyable style. A short chapter speculates on the neural basis of religiosity. The book returns to its thesis at the end with a well-argued discussion of the tension between neuroscience and intelligent design. The emphasis on evolution is laudable--though not always present in the chapters on specific functions--making this book an important counterpoint to breathless paeans to brain design. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through faculty/researchers; general readers. S. A. Huettel Duke University