Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience

by Michael S. Gazzaniga, Steven Pinker (Foreword)

Michael S. Gazzaniga, one of the most important neuroscientists of the twentieth century, gives us an exciting behind-the-scenes look at his seminal work on that unlikely couple, the right and left brain. Foreword by Steven Pinker.

In the mid-twentieth century, Michael S. Gazzaniga, “the father of cognitive neuroscience,” was part of a team of pioneering neuroscientists who developed the now foundational split-brain brain theory: the notion that the right and left hemispheres of the brain can act independently from one another and have different strengths.

In Tales from Both Sides of the Brain, Gazzaniga tells the impassioned story of his life in science and his decades-long journey to understand how the separate spheres of our brains communicate and miscommunicate with their separate agendas. By turns humorous and moving, Tales from Both Sides of the Brain interweaves Gazzaniga’s scientific achievements with his reflections on the challenges and thrills of working as a scientist. In his engaging and accessible style, he paints a vivid portrait not only of his discovery of split-brain theory, but also of his comrades in arms—the many patients, friends, and family who have accompanied him on this wild ride of intellectual discovery.

Genres: Nonfiction

Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 2016

About the author

Michael S. Gazzaniga, one of the premiere doctors of neuroscience, was born on December 12, 1939 in Los Angeles. Educated at Dartmouth College and California Institute of Technology, he is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he heads the new SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind.

His early research examined the subject of epileptics who had undergone surgery to control seizures. He has also studied Alzheimer's and Parkinson's patients and reveals important findings in books such as Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind.

While many of his writings are technical, he also educates and stimulates readers with discussions about the fascinating and mysterious workings of the brain. Books such as The Social Brain and The Mind's Past bring forth new information and theories regarding how the brain functions, interacts, and responds with the body and the environment.

Reviews

[John Devlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

A love letter to the man’s life and a letter of love over the gnomic mysteries of the brain.

[Chris M. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thought there would be more elements of neuroscience, but it was very boring to read.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this book, but about halfway through I realized that I was forcing myself to continue reading it. It is an autobiographical telling of a professional career in neuroscience, but the biographical details are mainly a listing of the many people he knew and worked with and saying how smart and nice they were. I’m glad the author speaks highly and warmly about his coworkers, but there were a huge number of people mentioned that I will never need to know about. There are a lot of interesting descriptions of brain behaviors that result from brain damage. The primary focus of his research is on split brains; when you divide the hemispheres, both can function, but you can expose one side to information while the other side remains ignorant of it. Since speech is located in the left hemisphere, knowledge known by the right hemisphere cannot be named by the subject. Other than this initial discovery, it was hard to see what else of great importance they were learning. I’m not discounting the additional research; it was important and exhaustive, just not that interesting as a read by halfway through the book. The main new insight of general interest to me was that the brain creates a narrative to tie our actions into a seemingly coherent explanation of why we are doing anything. However, the ‘why’ the narrative settles on might well be unrelated to the actual reason for the action. We don’t know and cannot tell if the narratives we have for our actions are correct. The book travels through time as the author describes his life and the research he was involved in. The split brain studies yielded insights slowly over years. However, I had trouble relating the relevance of what was learned about split brains to the intact brain. The intact brain is what I am most interested in. The author was a driving force in Cognitive Neuroscience, but I wanted to learn more about Cognitive Neuroscience discoveries and what they mean in our understanding of the mind than I did reading his book. I was expecting that science would have a better understanding of how the brain functions now. Instead most of the discoveries listed in the book were of the nature of this is the area in the brain that seems to be most active for a certain mental task. It seems a little like 15th century anatomist discovering that the liver is important for blood, but not really knowing why or how. The author acknowledges this gap between what we have learned and what we really want to know: “what magical tricks the brain uses for taking a confederation of local processors and linking them to make what appears to be a unified mind, a mind with a personal psychological signature, is still a big unknown and the central question of neuroscience.”

[K Steward · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to this book while recuperating from surgery. The author did a great job of narrating his story, both in terms of his life in brain research and his personal life without becoming annoying.

[Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book took me so long to read like 6 months on and off. Autobiography of an iconic diva neuroscientist. Really fucked with it but sooooo information heavy (had me taking notes)