An Introduction to Brain and Behavior: International Edition

by Bryan Kolb, Ian Q. Whishaw

"An Introduction to Brain and Behavior" takes uninitiated students to the frontiers of contemporary physiological psychology more effectively than any other textbook. Renowned researchers and veteran teachers, Kolb and Whishaw help students connect nervous-system activity to human behavior, drawing on the latest research and revealing case studies.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Neuroscience, Reference, Textbooks, Science, Brain

526 pages, Paperback

First published November 17, 2000

Reviews

[Masha]

Year 1
Okay so I may not have read everything, and I may not be prepared for this exam at all, but oh well.
First opportunity: 4
Second opportunity: 4.5
I so did not pass this course

Year 2
Since I didn't pass this course last year, here we go again...
Grade: 6
I PASSED, FINALLY!!!!

[Jonathan]

I hated this course book. But that was more my fault than the book's. I dropped biology 12 years ago so when my psychology study said I had to memorise this book within 8 weeks, I was not amused. I really struggled with all the Latin terminology for body parts and functions, because I also never had Latin in school. I was real close to chucking this book out of the window a few times, but I passed this course with a 6.5, which is good enough for me. I don't want to dive into this book again.

So why give this book 4 stars then? Well, it is actually a really good course book. I've had to read a few books by now and lemme tell you, writing a course book is hard and these writers nailed it. The tough material was made understandable by the way it was written, but mostly by the amazing illustrations and figures. A picture is really worth a 1000 words sometimes, and in this case they helped me pass my exam.

The fact that this is only an INTRODUCTION to cognitive neuroscience boggles me though. If anything, this book also helped me narrow down my major choice because no way in hell I'm going to study brain stuff in more detail after this book.

[Brandon Stariha]

Read most of it for class and just it finished up.

Great and informative book on the brain and it’s inner workings

What matters most to me is neuroscience and it’s relation to free will and consciousness. The book’s argument for no free will is unsubstantiated, a definition is not even given, and was left wanting.

However, the *unstated* argument is not bad, in fact it’s quite good, which goes something like this. So long as we can explain every phenomenon of behavior and the human via neuronal action potentials there’s no room left for free will to do anything. I.e. free will is not needed to explain everything about behavior.

I think, there are several ways around this unstated argument. First it depends on what definition of free will we take up, if it’s a free will of the sort where free will is just doing the things you want to do, than that’s not incompatible at all with what was stated. The route I would go is the Kantian one which is that free will is not an object of experience so isn’t something that can’t be the subject of empirical sciences and is wholly indeterminate, that is, can’t be confirmed or disconfirmed via experience or via the study of the world we experience (phenomenal world)

The book does also touch on different theories of consciousness but they seem lacking as well, for it seems at least two things are missing, first, they lack what I and many would consider THE feature of consciousness, the what-it’s-like aspect of consciousness, it feels and seems a certain way to look up the evening sun. The use of consciousness in the book is clearly different than this idea but that’s the issue, which I’ll elaborate on after the second thing which nothing in the whole book gave any explanation of why all the workings of the brain come to an experience. Like all the workings of neurons are interesting but when and how does the experience of the neurons come to be? It’s like there’s a large gap that is left unexplained. Like we can talking about the beginning of some sensation, how it travels through the brain and the neurons do their work, and then we can work from phenomenal experience and see how things are affected by the neurons working but the middle seems to be missing. Not saying this problem can’t be crossed but it definitely wasn’t here.

Then onto the problem that stems from these two issues and then a third issue which is I take to be a limitation of taking a behavioral approach to neuroscience which is there’s nothing there to explain why we aren’t just philosophical zombies. Their theories of consciousness leave out the important what-it’s-likeness, only looking at behaviors as evidence, and large gaps that are ignored, leave a picture in which there’s no reason and room ire explanation of why we are nothing but mindless, unexperiencing machines with no actually inner experience. I think these approaches are taken out of practical necessity to make progress but at the cost of many fundamental features of experiencing and it’s the forgetting of this that I think leads to people to think that consciousness must be an illusion when I think that they are getting lost in the sauce or missing the forest for the trees and not realizing that these approaches have limits and that should be kept in mind. So far neuroscience can explain a lot, but why should we think it can explain everything?

[Amber]

This 592 page textbook was legit work to get through so I am definitely adding it to my list of books I've tackled this year, even though it's a textbook.

[Yates Buckley]

Not a bad overview textbook introduction, positive is its description of key relevant experiments in a clear manner, not as good when it comes to explaining the most difficult aspects of neuroscience such as the Action Potential which would benefit from at least a mention of what is happening mathematically.

[Aina]

I recommend this book as an utterly comprehensive introduction to neuroscience. It gives you that general knowledge that is needed before going more in-depth. In the first part of the book there was a phrase that made me go slightly nuts as the phrase was repeated to no end, but luckily the language improved.

[Sarah]

You bet I’m adding textbooks to my fkn reading goal now because this textbook took up the last 4 months of my life AND I READ THE DAMN THING FRONT TO BACK (…86% in the class if anyone is wondering so it must have helped lol)

[S.G. Clark]

This book should be read over and over for a longer period than just one semester, it is a must own as the contents are exceptional.

[Brian Garber]

This was easily one of the hardest college classes I took. The book was really helpful, and if you could overcome the memorization barrier, the concepts were difficult but not impossible.

[nia *✧･ﾟ *✧･ﾟ]

the unit this textbook was for was such a joke

[Tim]

A difficult topic that this book explores well.

[Mijs Van Iersel]

(filip freriks stem) wat weet je van ; het brein 😍

hopelijk genoeg om mn tentamen te halen xoxoxo

[Nadia]

ik hoop dat ik mijn toets heb gehaald en dit niet opnieuw hoef te lezen 🫣

[Jessica]

Finally calling it finished, because I just ended up skimming the other chapters and want to get it off my list...

[Ilknur]

Pretty comprehensive for Neuroscience 101

[Charlotte]

good and relevant for my course at uni

[Mik]

hey if i read it, it counts toward the reading challenge

[connie p]

great