The Conscious Brain

by Steven Rose

Attacking the Traditional Distinctions Between Mind and Brain

Genres: Science, Psychology, Biology, Nonfiction

446 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Steven Peter Russell Rose was an English neuroscientist, author and social commentator. He was an emeritus professor of biology and neurobiology at the Open University and Gresham College, London.

Reviews

[Tricia Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say? I helped type this book up in the days when it was originally entitled "The Architecture of Thought" - which I have to confess I rather liked. For those who have read the book for its learned content, I have to apologise as my conscious brain - and unconscious one - conjure up images of tippex; electric typewriters; cutting and pasting and exciting and heady images of the early days of the Open University (1971)

It may have been "read" in 1971 but I recently managed to find a copy to download to my Kindle. How times have changed!

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Memory theory is Rose's speciality and one of my interests. So long as there is credible room for debate, I prefer theories allowing for perdurant memory and perfect recall. For instance, a hit and run occurs. One of the bystanders who hadn't paid any particular attention to the event but had been looking in the direction of its occurrence is hypnotised at a later date and is able to conjure up the license plate number of the offender. It checks out. So, similarly, persons in brain surgery subjected to electrical stimulation of the tissue have reported experiences of bilocation--one part of them being present in the operating theatre, another having returned to an event in their pasts. Reports of this kind emphasize the substantiality of the experience. It's like, say, the sixth birthday party is occurring again. You remember the names of everyone there, what you got and from whom--in other words, data that might be corroborated. These, sadly, are but anecdotes which I've heard or read. I've yet to find a book which carefully studies these claims, seeks the corroboration. Rose doesn't, though he tends in my direction so far as memory debates go, subscribing at the time of publication to a redundancy theory of memory which eschews localization and its vicissitudes.

Doing these reviews is an exercise in memory which has brought back quite a lot I've "not given a second thought to" until now. There've been no miracles, no sudden unfolding of the past to full view, just glimpses--and, I imagine, a certain reinforcement of the agencies of recollection.

I read The Conscious Brain at Panini, Panini on Pratt and Sheridan in East Rogers Park, Chicago, the daytime hang-out in those days. I got rid of it at the Book Nook, a paperback exchange in Sawyer, Michigan.