The Biological Mind: How Brain, Body, and Environment Collaborate to Make Us Who We Are

by Alan Jasanoff

A pioneering neuroscientist argues that we are more than our brains

To many, the brain is the seat of personal identity and autonomy. But the way we talk about the brain is often rooted more in mystical conceptions of the soul than in scientific fact. This blinds us to the physical realities of mental function. We ignore bodily influences on our psychology, from chemicals in the blood to bacteria in the gut, and overlook the ways that the environment affects our behavior, via factors varying from subconscious sights and sounds to the weather. As a result, we alternately overestimate our capacity for free will or equate brains to inorganic machines like computers. But a brain is neither a soul nor an electrical it is a bodily organ, and it cannot be separated from its surroundings. Our selves aren't just inside our heads -- they're spread throughout our bodies and beyond. Only once we come to terms with this can we grasp the true nature of our humanity.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Neuroscience, Psychology, Biology, Health, Brain

304 pages, Hardcover

Published March 13, 2018

Reviews

[Freymuth Sommer]

This was very informative and I learned some nice things about the brain and how we perceive our mind.

What struck me most about this book what was done in the name of psychology and neuroscience to people after the world war until the 90's. To me it is inadmissible to condemn healthy people to brain surgery because they represented signs of mental disorder or just did not conform to the momentary zeitgeist.
All those crazy horror movies where a crazed psychiatrist enters and starts experiments on sane and living people seemed to be reality back in those days.
Terrible... and people in power of the law ruled and contributed to those causes because in that time they did not know better.
I am happy that nowadays we somehow can confront mental disorders in a more holistic way by adjusting eating habits, clean our environment and be mindful with social interactions.

This book reflected to me that, even if our science is already well developed, we know very little about the brain, its precise functionality and how it affects our mind and soul. We cant explain that the brain is merely are machinelike organ that dictates our behaviour through its physical constitution, like how well developed some brain areas are and how big or small the brains are. Also we cant merely say that we are dictated by the stimulus that the environment offers us like chasing after food, shelter, sex and money. Beneath this lays, in my opinion, the question of our free will. Scientists and people with a strong materialistic world view would tend towards the opinion that we are devoid of free will. On the other hand, the religious and spiritual community defends freedom of conduct in every situation. My opinion on this matter is that I am somewhere in the middle. I have a scientific background and acknowledge the importance that our “bodily machine” functions well in order to have a greater sense of freedom. Free will is possible to a certain degree in my opinion.

I was awestruck in a section where the author mentions that scientists had removed large brain sections from patients. After recovering these still had all normal bodily functions and showed their normal senses of humour and intelligence. This showcases the amazing plastic capacity our brain has. Also on the case of brain plasticity. I am a big fan of the idea that we are capable to learn even into a high age. What might make us stuck and unwilling to learn new things are rigid and poor beliefs and the permanence in our mental comfort zone.

A remark on the last chapter. To me the change into a fictional narrative did not work. I broke the flow to abruptly and it felt too dark. I have the feeling that the author is quite against the digitalisation of the mind and with the text tried to simulate how our soul would feel in it. Well, a soul in 0 and 1’s might be pretty boring for us indeed. Still how he painted it might not be the whole picture and some optimism might be found in there by thinking differently.

Anyway. The title sounds a little daunting at first but the book is written in a very informative and lightly digestible manner. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in psychology, mental health or who is curious about biology and revealing the mysteries of the brain.

[Christopher L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book about the neuroscience of how the interactions between what we think, how we move (or not), and who we socially engage with create the individuals we are becoming. Jasanoff's argument, in brief, is that "who we are" is the result of "the interdependent nature" of our brain, body, and environment (p. 3). Two of my favorite quotes are:
(1) "Our brains are not mysterious beacons, glowing with inner radiance against a dark void. Instead, they are organic prisms that refract the light of the universe back out into itself" (p. 170).
(2) "...the most fundamental lesson of neuroscience: that our brains are biotic entities woven organically into a physical world from which they cannot be extricated without grave loss" (p. 234).
All I'll say about the final chapter is that it is a wild ride and reads like an episode from "Black Mirror."

[Massimo · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title misled me because I was looking for a book on the biology of the brain after reading so many, and that's partly what the book is about, but as a long introduction to the real topic which is the sensory brain and the effects the environment has on the mind, to end up in a futurist future in which brains detached from the body make the mind live in a vat without the rest of the body; yes, because the author does not reduce the mind to just the brain but to an autonomic entity connected to the brain as the biological seat of our intellect, of our mind, of who we are (precisely the biological mind). But even this counter-reductionist point of view results in being reverse reductionist because the brain is seen solely as the organ that allows us to receive information from the outside as a recipient that receives, processes a little and causes consequent reactions. It is too little for a neuroscientist to describe our biological nature in this way. In my humble opinion, the chapters dedicated to mental illness seen from a social point of view are not at the level, without in-depth analysis and with references to psychiatric literature too dated. It is still an interesting reading, but the author could have done better.

Il titolo mi ha tratto in inganno perché pensavo a un libro sulla biologia del cervello, e in parte è di questo che parla il libro ma come una lunga introduzione al vero tema che è il cervello sensoriale e gli effetti che l’ambiente ha sulla mente per finire in un avvenire futurista in cui cervelli staccati dal corpo fanno vivere la mente senza il resto del corpo; si perché l’autore non riduce la mente al solo cervello ma ad un’entità a sé connessa al cervello in quanto sede biologica del nostro intelletto, della nostra mente, di chi siamo noi (appunto la mente biologica). Ma anche questo punto di vista contro-riduzionista ha come risultato di essere riduzionista all’inverso perché il cervello è visto unicamente come l’organo che ci permette di ricevere le informazioni dall’esterno come un recipiente che riceve, elabora un po’ e si comporta di conseguenza. Non all’altezza secondo me i capitoli dedicati alla malattia mentale viste dal solo punto di vista sociale senza approfondimenti e con riferimenti alla letteratura psichiatrica datati. Resta pur sempre una lettura interessante, ma l’autore avrebbe potuto far meglio.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is more of a thought experiment than your typical popscience book. It's a lot more conjecture and theory than fact. The ideas posed are fairly common sense and I felt that the source material was limited severely by modern doctrine. The largest barrier to scientific breakthrough today remains political correctness. In some places, I felt like I was being lectured by a dinosaur with no knowledge of genetic breakthroughs and what they mean about brain function and intelligence.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

OK... I feel so bad already because the guy who wrote this book is so smart and accomplished and just brilliant and I will never be him and have what he has and achieve what he achieved... but now the book ... Pursuit of Wonder recommended this book this and other three ones including Being You, and I was so excited for this book, I had such high hopes... I think my expectations were too big... It was interesting enough but not as interesting as I would have liked it to be... Anyway, I finished it, because I am not a quitter... There were some fascinating facts, like the benefits of exercise, I swear I searched the entire internet for articles on this topic and I couldn't find them anymore, they puff disappeared, that or, I am so stupid I cannot find them. So I will add the information here, in the hopes that I will reread it from time to time and put that damn big ass to work sometimes!!! All for my brain of course, which is getting a bit retarded, it’s not because I think my ass it’s too big and it’s making me uncomfortable in my own body. Not at all, all for the brain!!! If I did not do it for my ass, at least do it for my brain!

“Some of the strongest evidence for a connection between physicality and cognition comes from studies of the effects of exercise on mental functions. These studies support the general conclusion that an active body promotes an active mind. Perhaps the greatest interest in this idea stems from the enticing suggestion that exercise programs might stave off cognitive decline during aging. In adults over fifty, regular forty-five- to sixty-minute sessions of moderate to vigorous exertion do in fact increase performance in tests of memory, attention, and problem solving; improvements occur both in healthy subjects and in people with the mild cognitive impairments seen in early-stage Alzheimer’s disease. There is some evidence for cognitive benefits of exercise in younger people as well. In one of the most impressive demonstrations, psychologists Marily Opezzo and Daniel Schwartz of Stanford University had college students sit on a chair or walk on a treadmill in an empty room and then undergo standardized tests of creative thinking. Compared with sedentary participants, the people who had been walking on average gave better answers when asked to come up with novel analogies or think of unusual uses for common objects. In a related experiment, subjects either walked through campus or were pushed along the same route in a wheelchair; again the students who had walked seemed to get a more pronounced cognitive boost, as measured by creativity tests.
We may be tacitly evoking the relationship between physical activity and cognition when we say that someone has an “agile mind,” or that she is “thinking on her feet.” But this particular relationship goes well beyond metaphors. Exercise is now known to produce physiological changes that directly couple the brain to the rest of the body. Over a short term during and immediately following exertion, the heart pumps faster, and the brain experiences increased blood flow, which increases its oxygen and energy supply. The brain also produces locally acting chemical substances called neurotrophic factors, which promote cell growth and maintenance. Over the longer term, these chemicals induce the formation of new neurons in an area of the brain called the hippocampus. This area is specifically important in memory formation, and the replenishment of its cells may be particularly critical for counteracting the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, which causes cell death in this brain region. The effect of exercise on cognition thus shows that relatively superficial things we do with our bodies can alter our minds through defined physiological pathways like those we considered in the previous section.”

Anyway, Amen to this:

“Schizophrenia is a disease like pneumonia,” says the prominent neuroscientist Eric Kandel. “Seeing it as a brain disorder destigmatizes it immediately.” There is evidence that redefining mental disorders in such biological terms makes people with these problems more likely to seek treatment, a hugely important outcome for patients and their friends and family. Admitting to yourself that you have an organic disease may be far easier than admitting to yourself that your soul is corrupted.”

Oh, my goodness, I hope I will die and never live such times!!! I don’t want hackers to know what’s in my brain, in my mind… I like privacy… No, I don’t want to share my dreams… I sometimes do bad things in dreams, because, well, my prefrontal cortex is well-resting, I have no control, absolutely. WHY WOULD MY FRIENDS WANNA KNOW MY DREAMS? Yeah, they would be useful to know for Peterson, the psychologist I dream of going to therapy.


“Taking a similar tack, physicist and science popularizer Michio Kaku writes that “one day, scientists might construct an ‘Internet of the mind,’ or a brain-net, where thoughts and emotions are sent electronically around the world.” “Even dreams will be videotaped and then ‘brain-mailed’ across the Internet,” Kaku adds, perhaps evoking the Berkeley imagery reconstruction study. Although many are skeptical of such predictions, conjectures like Kurzweil’s and Kaku’s garner substantial attention.”

You know, this guy is right, very right. I studied Fukuyama in school, but back then I was not interested in school… Ooops, crazy, weird, stupid child!

“In a 2004 essay, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama labeled transhumanism one of “the world’s most dangerous ideas” because of the potential threat of transhumanist-style intelligence improvements to conceptions of human equality. “If we start transforming ourselves into something superior, what rights will these enhanced creatures claim, and what rights will they possess when compared to those left behind?” Fukuyama asked. “If some move ahead, can anyone afford not to follow?… Add in the implications for citizens of the world’s poorest countries—for whom biotechnology’s marvels likely will be out of reach—and the threat to the idea of equality becomes even more menacing.”

I wish I had access to such drugs too, I mean I would give anything to make my brain work faster and study faster and more and more... My brain is short-circuited. Man, it’s not working anymore. But yeah, it’s a bit scary, indeed.

“It is exactly this mindset that leads many to dystopian premonitions. “All this may be leading to a kind of society I’m not sure I want to live in,” laments New Yorker staff writer Margaret Talbot, “a society where we’re even more overworked and driven by technology than we already are, and where we have to take drugs to keep up; a society where we give children academic steroids along with their daily vitamins.”

[Rehmat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Heard its audio book


The book explains how the brain is more deeply entwined with biology than is commonly thought. However, the field of biology is also more complex than it appears as well.

The brain is not the transcendent seat of the soul, nor is it a powerful supercomputer controlling our bodies from above. The brain is a biological organ, the same as a kidney or a heart, and it can be understood through scientific inquiry. What we think of as our “self” is actually the result of a complex interaction between our brains, our bodies, and the world around us.

The best best part of the book is examination of the ex-marine, Whitman, who killed 18 innocent people by opening indiscriminate fire at them. What drove Whitman to this senseless massacre? These represent two competing viewpoints on human psychology. The first attributes all of a person’s actions to the internal functioning of the brain. This view is sometimes called "neuroessentialism". The second, says human action is merely the result of outside forces. This is known as "behaviorism". 

However, significant point which conspicuously absent is evolution of human brain discussed by Yauha Noah Harrari in Sapiens.

[Felipe CZ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many people believe that our brains are disconnected or independent from the body, but this book demonstrate the complexity of the connection between body, brain and surroundings. The brain is a biological organ and what we think of our "self" is the result of our bodies interacting with our brains.

[Don Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well written and construed book that carefully explains the interrelationships and science that regulates who we are and how the stated interrelationships make it so.

[Soren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the best book I've ever read, but the subject matter was pretty interesting. That last chapter was pretty weird.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

The perception that the brain is all that matters arises from a false idealisation of this organ and its singular significance, called cerebral mystique.

Five themes give rise to a brain-body distinction that tend to elevate the brain above the rest of the natural realm. Abstraction, the tendency to view the brain as an abiotic machine based on different principles from other living entities; Complexification, a vision of the brain as so vastly complicated as to defy analysis or understanding; Compartmentalisation, a view that stresses the localisation of cognitive functions without offering deeper explanations; Bodily isolation, a tendency to see the brain as piloting the body on its own, with minimal influence from biological processes outside the skull, and Autonomy, the view of the brain as self-governing, receptive to environment but always in control. Depictions of the brain as inorganic, hypercomplex, functionally self-contained, and autonomously powerful present the brain as a surrogate for the disembodied soul and feed the attitude that I have termed scientific dualism. The cerebral mystique rests on this attitude. Rejecting it requires accepting the biological basis of the mind on its own terms and witnessing how the brain, body, and environment work together to shape us.

- A more biologically realistic view of our brains and minds is important; in psychology, the mystique fosters a view that the brain is the prime mover of our thoughts and actions; this leads us to overemphasise the role of individuals and underemphasise the role of contexts in a range of cultural phenomena, from criminal justice to creative innovation. Secondly, accepting that our minds have a physical basis relieves us of the traditional tendency to view mental illnesses as moral failings, but recasting psychiatric conditions as brain disorders can be almost as damning to the patients affected. Society tends to view broken brains as less curable than moral flaws, and people thought to have problems with their brains can be subject to greater suspicion as a result.

- ABSTRACTION: Despite growing awareness of brain science, most of us continue to live our lives in denial about the biological reality of our minds. We echo the spirituality of the past when we conceive of the brain as an omnipotent structure that encapsulates everything about our personalities, intellect, and will. The cerebral mystique draws an aritificial distinction between brain and body, and this distinction is upheld by conceiving of the brain as a computer. Scientific dualism is the tendency to draw a distinction between the brain and the body; but this is false. The brain is a part of the body, and does not stand apart from it. By emphasising the electrical aspect of the brain, people downplay the chemical (biological) aspect of the brain; but both chemical and electricity form part of the brain’s mechanisms. Raising some components above others is like choosing which gears in a clock are the most important; they are all needed for a fully functioning brain.

- COMPLEXIFICATION: The brain is certainly complex, but this complexity is overplayed. If each neuron could contact 150 randomly chosen neurons then a single cell would have 101,389 possible configurations, so it’s easy to see where complexity comes in. But not every brain cell is needed in order for normal function to occur. Enormous parts of the brain can be missing, killed off, or removed without compromising essential aspects of personality and thought. So if cerebral volume and number of cells are not the keys to understanding brainpower, what is? Many neuroscientists believe that brains are composed of a set of cell types, defined by the neurochemicals they use and the types of connections they make. If the role of each cell type remains roughly the same in different parts of the brain, then the task of understanding brain function could be dramatically simplified, much as the construction of a city could be understood by grasping how individual buildings are put together. Exhaustive information gathering does not necessarily lead to understanding, and understanding does not necessarily depend on all or even most of the data we could obtain and analyse. To ask that neuroscience studies account for all of the brain’s functions at the level of individual cells is to hold this organ to a special standard of its own. To cloak brains behind complexity is to segregate them from any other organ, which is the brain-body distinction in another form.

- COMPARTMENTALISATION: viewing fMRI scans does nothing to contribute to the idea that we are biological creatures; in the eyes of some religious people, the fMRI machine is a tool for detecting spiritual influences on the matter of the brain, rather than for explaining spirit itself in terms of matter. Unfortunately, it’s a valid interpretations of our shared empirical reality; I completely disagree, but it is coherent. If we use fMRI machines, we can see more or less what we want to. Discovery of specialised brain regions has indubitable biological significance, but critics feel that fMRI overlooks the networked or distributed nature of the brain’s workings. Even if we could associate precisely defined cognitive functions in particular areas of the brain, it would tell us very little if anything about how the brain computes, represents, encodes, or instantiates psychological processes. Contemporary neuroimaging strengthens the mystique of the brain with a combination of scientific lustre, media hype, simple findings, and compatibility with a wide variety of belief systems. fMRI results today are like cartography before the days of authoritative atlases, settled borders and satellite imagery.

- BODILY ISOLATION: people tend to ‘equate’ the brain with the person it supposedly controls. Does the question of whether or not a person can be reduced to his brain boil down to definitions? No, the brain interacts in essential ways with the rest of the body. If part of what makes you you includes you emotional side, your physical abilities, and the decisions you make, then it is scientifically inaccurate to equate yourself to your brain. The mental functions we attribute to the brain are actually functions of the body as a whole. The rest of the body unambiguously guides what we do, how we think, and who we are. Virtually all of our actions depend on the capabilities of our bodies; the violinist Paganini suffered a connective tissue disorder that gave his hands unusual flexibility; what Paganini accomplished and, in a deep sense who he was, were thus inseparable from his physique.

- AUTONOMY: Can we conceive of a handoff point where the deterministic response to environmental input ends and the brain’s cognitive control kicks in? No, our brains are natural entities subject to the universal laws of cause and effect. The sensory organs conduct a ceaseless torrent of neural impulses into our brains each second; the brain has no barrier against this flood of information. Examples: temperature-dependent aggression is more or less hardwired, and it emphasises our lack of freedom to acquire or shed this environmental sensitivity; similarly, depression based on our exposure to light is something over which we have no control. Colours can also act through our sensory systems to influence our behaviour; Solomon Asch’s peer pressure studies show that others are powerful influences on individual beliefs too. A tree opens its leaves toward the light and sways to avoid damage from powerful gusts, but only in a twisted sense could one say that the tree controls its actions. Trees and brains are fundamentally responsive to the world around them; neither presents a firewall against the environment, neither one can be understood apart from the forest of influences that envelops it.

- The cerebral mystique constrains our culture by reducing problems of human behaviour to problems of the brain. In idealising the brain, we overplay its role as a powerful internal determinant of how people act. Conversely, by ignoring the brain, we might overstate the importance of external influences and fail to recognise individual differences. The brain, body, and environment work in tandem to create us. The history of psychology has been a history of debate over whether human behaviour should be analysed from inside our outside the individual, and whether internal or external factors are more important influences in people’s lives. Wundt and James; according to the fathers of modern psychology, the object of study was individual subjective consciousness, and the primary research method was introspection; manipulating the external sensory world was merely a means to an end. Applied psychology, at the turn of the twentieth century cam to be dominated by an essentialist view of human nature - the idea that human capabilities are inborn and immutable. Watson and Skinner changed all this; they believed that stimulus-response relationships could explain most forms of behaviour, even in people, and that conditioning could entrain activities of arbitrary complexity. According to behaviourism, the environment was a far more powerful factor than any internal quality in determining the behaviour of an individual. Chomsky’s excoriation of Skinner helped catalyse a wholesale reorientation of psychology back toward studying processes internal to individuals; the cognitive revolution. After the cognitive revolution; researchers came to equate mental functions with brain processes. The neuroessentialist attitude that our key characteristics are determined by our brains reflects the backlash against behaviourism and its emphasis on the environment; but it encourages a focus on the brain to the exclusion of other factors that influence what people think and do. When it comes to explaining criminal behaviour say, a focus on neuroessentailism or behaviourism are both partially correct; focusing on one makes us exclude the other. What makes someone a drug addict? External social and environmental variables such as peer pressure and weak family structure are well-known risk factors for addiction; but a person stuck in such conditions can hardly be blamed more for his or her situation than a person with brain disease can be blamed for having an illness. What makes someone an outstanding artist or scientist? While few scientists would dispute the notion that brain biology underlies differences in many cognitive abilities, we also know that culture, education, and economic status contribute enormously to the expression of such abilities in creative acts. Similarly, by framing moral processing foremost in neural terms, this serves once again to distract from the importance of environmental and social influences. Ethical decisions are highly dependent on intangible factors, as well as bodily states. Today, we can bring the sparring sides together. With the cognitive rebellion against behaviourism receding into the past, and with growing understanding of the ways in which the brain interacts with its surroundings, we need no longer see the internally and externally weighted views of human nature as necessarily opposed. Our brains are not mysterious beacons, glowing with inner radiance against a dark void. Instead, they are organic prisms that refract the light of the universe back out into itself. It is in the biological milieu of the brain that the inward-looking world of Wundt and today’s neuroessentailists melts without boundary into the extroverted world of Watson and Skinner. They are one and the same.

- The cerebral mystique is part of the reason why mental illnesses remain such a scourge. First, it introduces a stigma of having a ‘broken brain’ Among environment, genetics, and the biology that comes between, the causes of mental illnesses may be just as complex as the mystified brain. A mental illness is not like a broken car; a mental illness is more like a car crash in which several elements conspire; problems with the car, the driver, and the road. Second, by focusing the attention of psychiatric patients on the brain, the equation of mental illness with brain disorders diminishes consideration of potentially effective therapies that do not physically enter the brain. Third, because problems with individual brains are necessarily problems with individual people, an overemphasis on neural underpinnings of mental illness understates the role of environmental and cultural contributions that extend beyond individuals; this makes it seem less urgent for us to discover and correct ambient factors that might increase the prevalence of mental disorders. Mental illness is a multilayered phenomenon: environmental and ultralight factors interact with intrinsic human biology to create both the manifestations and perceptions of disease. The dichotomy between medicine for the brain and talk for the mind is a false one; even if we accept the brain’s central role in our mind and behaviour, it should be easy to understand that a variety of internal and external ways of interacting with the brain could help a troubled individual.

[Paul Gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last year I had intended to stop reading on the topic of neuroscience for a while but when my wife recommended The Biological Mind book to me, I had to read it. This book is a sort of check and balance for neuroscience in general and specifically for what the author calls the “cerebral mystique.” I wonder if this was the author's intended title. The thrust of the book was to debunk the single-minded:) focus upon the brain separate from an environment. The final chapter provided an interesting demonstration of this reality. The author wants to stress the holistic aspect whereas some books minimize or deny its importance.

[HYPHEN MED · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fine book, but the last chapter is easily refuted. VR already can, today, provide an amazing, immersive, grounded social experience with only visuals and limited player input; so to postulate that decades in the future with incomprehensibly advanced computers and direct computer to brain signal transfer, that fully immersive simulations without a real body would be meaningless and dull is total nonsense.

Imaging thinking that digital environments are unstable and amorphous like dreams, that social relationships are not possible online, and that your outside appearance determines your identity.

[Sylvia Coopersmith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually really loved this and I think Jasanoff so beautifully translates science in a way that everyone can understand. His arguments and drawings from both neuroscience and sociology were poignant and nuanced - but my ONLY quip is that I think it needs a new title!! He so clearly had an opinion and bias on the topic which is FINE (and I do agree with his take on the brain), but the intro and title suggests he is presenting multiple arguments on behalf of nature vs nurture/mind vs. body.

[Jap Hengky · Rating 4 out of 5]

The brain is not the transcendent seat of the soul, nor is it a powerful supercomputer controlling our bodies from above. The brain is a biological organ, the same as a kidney or a heart, and it can be understood through scientific inquiry. What we think of as our “self” is actually the result of a complex interaction between our brains, our bodies, and the world around us.

[Synthia Salomon · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The brain is not the transcendent seat of the soul, nor is it a powerful supercomputer controlling our bodies from above. The brain is a biological organ, the same as a kidney or a heart, and it can be understood through scientific inquiry. What we think of as our “self” is actually the result of a complex interaction between our brains, our bodies, and the world around us.”

[VWA · Rating 1 out of 5]

i was hoping there were more science based info in it but it sounds more like an opinion and the author’s POV rather than actual explanations and scientific theories about how and why we function the way we do. i didn’t finish, at most i got half way but i don’t really think i even got that far. i found it boring.

[Jph12 · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Biological Brain would be a more accurate title because it barely touches the mind. Criticizing those who treat the electrical activity in the brain as the only important thing is worthwhile. But insisting that the brain is just a lump of biological matter like any other organ without offering up a theory of consciousness just rings hollow.

[Cheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were some very interesting parts of this book, and I did learn a few new things, but overall it was very dry. The last chapter was also particularly strange.

[Russell Christenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worth a read. Not ground breaking — unless you thought your were autonomous with free will. You can’t separate the human, the mind, the person from the body or the environment.

[Taylor Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alan Jasanoff writes engagingly a tale of the whole-body brain.

[M]

Didn't engage me in the first 50 pages

[P Michael N · Rating 4 out of 5]

A convincing read about how we should view the brain. The book also does a good job of covering the latest developments and trends that came before.
The last chapter really brought it home.

[Mariana · Rating 3 out of 5]

La idea es buena, pero la verdad me aburrió.

[Derek Henderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Moderately interesting but goes on a bit too long.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked it and thought he made some important points. If anything, the book could be longer. I'd like to read more about how pain and disease affect the brain. Or about the ways conditions including UTIs and diabetes trigger behavioural changes.

[Sonia Kolodziej · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bardzo mnie wymęczyła ta książka. Spodziewałam się czegoś innego. Ta pozycja jest bardzo naukowa i chyba nie dla wszystkich. Najbardziej podobał mi się ostatni rozdział, w którym autor pokazuje na wymownym przykładzie co ma na myśli pisząc, że nie można oddzielać mózgu człowieka od jego ciała. Ponieważ człowiekiem nie są poszczególne jego organy tylko całość, która harmonijnie się uzupełnia

[Armen Shirvanian]

Great MIT Professor

Interview with him at:

Episode 206 with Professor Alan Jasanoff

[Hal · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well written book which explains the arguments that the brain is not a reducible organ hosting our consciousness. It is at the nexus of the external physical and cultural world and the other organs in our own bodies. I learned a lot, and it made good sense to me.