How the Mind Changed: A Human History of Our Evolving Brain

by Joseph Jebelli

The extraordinary story of how the human brain evolved… and is still evolving.

We’ve come a long way. The earliest human had a brain as small as a child’s fist; ours are four times bigger, with spectacular abilities and potential we are only just beginning to understand.

This is How the Mind Changed, a seven-million-year journey through our own heads, packed with vivid stories, groundbreaking science, and thrilling surprises. Discover how memory has almost nothing to do with the past; meditation rewires our synapses; magic mushroom use might be responsible for our intelligence; climate accounts for linguistic diversity; and how autism teaches us hugely positive lessons about our past and future.

Dr. Joseph Jebelli’s In Pursuit of Memory was shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize and longlisted for the Wellcome. In this, his eagerly awaited second book, he draws on deep insights from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, psychology, and philosophy to guide us through the unexpected changes that shaped our brains. From genetic accidents and environmental forces to historical and cultural advances, he explores how our brain’s evolution turned us into Homo sapiens and beyond.

A single mutation is all it takes.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Neuroscience, Psychology, History, Evolution, Anthropology

320 pages, Hardcover

Published July 12, 2022

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review If the book had been entitled, "Hypotheses on How the Mind Changed: Theories of the Human History of Our Evolving Brain and Unproven Musings on Where it's Going", I would have thought this is going to be all over the place. I would have assumed that it would a personal rather than rigorously historical book and that the author would be cherry-picking research to fit in with his agenda, whatever it might be, and I might find titbits here and there of solid science I didn''t know. But that would be it. And that was it.

And if the author lived in the real world he would see that there are scarcely any people who want their children to be autistic let alone 'isn't it absolutely wonderful how autistic people have contributed so much to the world' and we might even be evolving new autistic brains. He did that based on what would be called extremely high-functioning Aspergers people a couple of years ago. The majority of people on the autistm spectrum are not savants, not any cleverer than anyone else, often miserable with their inability to connect to others, and there are a vast number who will never be able to live independently. So yes, cherry-picking.

And although I didn't skim, I wanted to. It had long boring patches.
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Reading notes

I am totally infuriated right now. The author thinks our brains might be evolving into totally wonderful new brains, autistic ones. So we will be totally wonderful autistic people. He presents this amazingly glowing picture of all the wonderful things autistic people contribute to the world and more conjectures about early man developing tools might have been autistic and Van Gogh being autistic because of the way he painted.

He mentions not that those are the high-functioning ones used to be called Aspergers, not the ones like my friend's son who goes to a school for autistic children. At nearly 10 he isn't toilet-trained and isn't verbal, all of them at the school are developmentally delayed. Because of my friend and customers I know quite a few autistic children. None of them are ever going to be able to have the wonderful discussions that the author has with the autistic people he knows. None of them are ever going to be able to live independently.

I do not believe that Aspergers and Autism are the same disorder, not even as opposite ends of a spectrum. Aspergers people have terrible trouble communicating socially and it absolutely concerns them, they want so much to be able to. Autistic people do not care about communication and often can't be persuaded to communicate at all.

I have finished the book. I will try and write a review and provide some quotes to do with autism, but right now I need the solace of something read, something soothing like what insects can tell us about crime. Better than a Harlequin, at least to me!
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I am on the verge of dnf'ing this book. There is so much conjecture, the word 'believe' as in 'some scientists believe' and 'was it as xxx suggests', 'it is thought', 'arguably', 'perhaps', 'hypothesis' and such. It is like a docudrama - undoubtedly true in part, but story-telling, anecdotes, and much to do with drama rather than documentary. There is science, but it is woven around all the 'conjectures', some of them, to me, absolute flights of the imagination.

Sometimes though, the 'it is thought' contradicts what is logical. The author says it is thought that Neanderthals were probably capable of speech but it is a mystery if they did speak or not. (This is after much talk of how if two of you are going to paddle a boat you need to tell the other person which way to paddle, and the Neanderthals certainly got around). Most people have between 1 and 4% Neanderthal in them, this is incontravertible DNA evidence.

How likely is that lots of people, sociable as we are, liked going on dates, whatever a date was back then, perhaps sitting around a fire roasting meat before sloping off into the forest for a bit of nooky (conjecture!) with people who grunt and can't carry on a conversation, appreciate a joke, or discuss where they might go hunting tomorrow and what can be done about the present drought? It is just beyond the realms of all imagination that Homo Sapiens pair-bonded with clever grunting apes.

There is more,

Researchers have found that ancient cave art is often located in acoustic hot spots: spaces where sound generates echoes. These cave chambers are harder to reach than chambers that have no echo, so it’s thought they were deliberately chosen as places for secretive rituals and dramatic storytelling.

Strikingly, when acoustic archaeologists study the sonic properties of these caves, they find that paintings of cloven animals such as bulls, bison and deer, appear in chambers that generate echoes and reverberations that actually sound like hoof beats. Quiet chambers, on the other hand, are painted with dots and handprints.

Maybe these chambers that are harder to reach were chosen because they were safer? Maybe the art is a product of being in them for a while and having nothing better to do? Are the 'quiet chambers' easier to access, it seems so but the author doesn't say, if so maybe the people weren't in them very long compared to the safety of the hard to access ones?

My thoughts are also conjecture, but then I'm not writing a book on that says "How the Mind Changed" not "How Minds Possibly Developed and Changed". This cherry-picking of hypotheses is like a fictionalised documentary. Some of it is undoubtedly true but there is lots of story-telling too.

There are interesting anecdotes, most of which have I have read before. And perhaps that is the problem, there isn't much new science in here that hasn't been printed in other pop science books and what there is, is too much conjecture and hypothesis.
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The author believes that the brains of certain species, including elephants, dolphins and apes as well as people, got bigger to handle all the social networking.

Simply put, it states that humans need large brains to manage their remarkably complex social systems. However, there is a constraint on the number of individuals a person can maintain a stable relationship with, which Dunbar calculates to be about 150 people – Dunbar’s number, otherwise known as a ‘clan’.

It turns out that a striking number of human organisations from factories to villages to armies operate around units of about 150 people. And the vast majority of Facebook users list around 150 friends.

I wonder if that is true or not of Goodreads, I can't believe myself it is true of FB, Twitter or anything else surveyed without any bias.

What he doesn't say is that there are other hypotheses, all of them based on field research, finding skulls, animal bones, artefacts and mostly it is conjecture, albeit by experts (who disagree) but there is no univerally-accepted truth, no one really knows. I suppose I could go woke and say the scientists were all speaking their truths, a la Meghan who feels 17 lies differences from what really happened were her 'truth', see Oprah et al

But there are many other hypotheses. There is Ben-Dor and Barkai's hypothesis that early humans hunted slow-moving megaherbivores, big fatty creatures like elephants, "Modern humans are better at digesting fat than other primates are, Barkai and Ben-Dor said, "and humans' physiology, including stomach acidity and gut design, indicate adaptations for eating fatty meat."

But as the megaherbivores died out from either over-hunting or changes in the environment this is known by fieldwork where bones are found in Homo Erectus sites humans would have been forced to adapt by switching to smaller animal which is more complicated as smaller prey move fast and are harder to track.

These growing brains would then explain many of the behavioral changes across the Pleistocene. Hunters of small, fleet prey may have needed to develop language and complex social structures to successfully communicate the location of prey and coordinate tracking it.

So this hypothesis is that social structures grew as a result of bigger brains, rather than the author saying that brains grew bigger because of social interaction.

Still another hypothesis is the unpredictability of the climate making food and water more difficult to find, having a big brain allows animals to problem-solve these unpredictable conditions. Some anthropologists think that the switch from plant to animal food was the key factor in the brain increasing in size. Then there are scientists and authors, Michael Pollan among them, who believe that the discovery of fire meant being able to cook meat and extract more calories more easily enabled brain growth.

Interestingly, Homo floresiensis, the 'hobbit' people, and became extinct 60,000 and 100,000 years ago hunted elephants and large rodents and had small brains. Also interesting is that as people turned to farming, brain size shrunk! People with autism, at least boys females are studied less than males, and 'people' usually means 'man' in the world of science including medicine tend to have bigger brains, females have some differences in the amygdala. There are large research studies on the differences with autistic brains, all of which are ignored by the conspiracy theorist anti-vaxxers.

I am enjoying the book, but I don't think that 'belief' in big brains evolved is enough to say that this is the definitive history of why we developed them.

I finished the book, I can't say I enjoyed it overall. 2.5 upgraded to 3. For a more detailed and much better and more objective (I think) review than mine, read Stetson's.

[Stetson · Rating 2 out of 5]

How the Mind Changed: A Human History of Our Evolving Brain by Joseph Jebelli is billed as a pop-sci book on the evolution of the human brain. And Jebelli does initially make an effort to cover human brain evolution, but after a few chapters his focus wanes. Before even beginning to develop this complex topic with sufficient depth and nuance, he begins spinning through topics, delivering chapters on autism spectrum disorders, psychometrics, and brain-computer interfaces. These topics are of course related to the evolution of the brain and have sustained whole books themselves, but they are peripheral to the Jebelli's purported central theme. These are also topics that should be discussed after robustly establishing the narrative of human brain evolution. His work is just too thin to justify the special topics. Jebelli cheats the full scope of evolution by starting immediately with the early primate brain and then mentioning a few genetic and morphological adaptations that contributed to brain expansion. Then, poof! Humans! Even to most lay readers, this narrative will likely feel flimsy.

Jebelli's musings are not only haphazard about the complex science of brain evolution, but also weirdly polemical in unscientific ways. Of course, some of the position-staking-out is warranted. For instance, Jebelli provides a pithy argument for materialism, debunking mind-body dualism and casual understandings of "free will." This is consistent with the empirical record and the current state of neuroscience despite being over-simplified (and later seemingly contradicted by Jebelli's comments on other topics including the importance of human agency). However, on intelligence and autism, Jebelli veers wildly into science denialism and advocacy. For instance, he dismisses mainstream psychometrics and essentially endorses the rigorously debunked theory of multiple intelligences (see Waterhouse 2010 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep41...). He also severely misunderstands or misrepresents the nature of autism and the purposes of autism research. For example, he incorrectly claims there is not a female protective effect against autism, arguing that Simon Baren-Cohen's systematizing "extreme male brain" model has been overturned. This is inconsistent with up-to-date research published in high-impact journals (See the Sebat lab's recent paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158...). Plus, he makes incredibly sloppy claims about the role of autism in the evolution of the human brain and economic development; these claims are patently inconsistent with how evolutionary theory is understood and tested and is almost entirely without empirical support.

There are of course some interesting tidbits in How the Brain Changed, but they are overwhelmed by discount Gladwellism (i.e. a glibness about complex topics done in an engaging style or as Appleyard states "the hard sell of a big theme supported by dubious, incoherent but dramatically presented evidence") and stealth demagoguery cloaked in the veneer of scientific respectability. Human brain evolution is a serious and important topic that all educated people should try to understand. For a good lay introduction and alternative to this book, I recommend checking out Bret Stetka's A History of the Human Brain: From the Sea Sponge to CRISPR, How Our Brain Evolved. It is a more sustained and balanced work that is also accessible to a lay audience.

**Disclosure: I received this book as an ARC through NetGalley.

[Emma Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

One part neuroscience and one part paleoanthropology. The chapter on autism was especially good.

[Rossdavidh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh. It wasn't horrible, but I DNF (though I got more than halfway through so I'm rating it).

If this was the first book I'd ever read on the topic, maybe I would think more of it. But, to be honest, there seems like an awful lot of room for projection here. Humans developed language around 50,000 years ago, or else maybe 10x that, it's hard to be sure. Autism is a neurodivergent phenomenon which helped our Stone Age ancestors improve at toolmaking and the like, or else maybe it wasn't. Consciousness is something we share with many other species, or only with a few, or it's unique to humans, or (a la Julian Jaynes and "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind") it didn't even exist in humans until around the time of Homer. There is just a lot we don't know about how human brains worked in prehistoric times, and that means that this book is filled with way too much that cannot be (or at least hasn't been) confirmed.

[Nicole Simovski · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a very poor human evolution book. I only dragged through 100 pages before having to put the book down. Countless scientific inaccuracies. A shallow and novice understanding of human evolution and it’s impact on our brain, psychology, and behavior. Further fuel for the negative perception of applying evolutionary theory to understand human psychology. Do not recommend.

[Cav · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Our minds are changing. They have been changing for nearly 7 million years. What these changes were, how they affect us today, and where they may lead us in the future is the subject of this book..."

How the Mind Changed was an interesting look into the workings of our most complex organ. As Bob Moawad once said: “the human mind is the fastest, coolest, most compact and efficient computer ever produced in large quantities by unskilled labor.” I enjoyed most of the book; on balance, but I had a few thoughts and contentions. More below. This review will be a long one, so get comfortable. Or feel free to skip to the bottom for a tl;dr.

Author Joseph Jebelli is a neuroscientist and a writer. He received a PhD in neuroscience from University College London for his work on the cell biology of neurodegenerative diseases, then worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Joseph Jebelli:


Jebelli opens the book with a solid intro that set a good hook. He's got an effective style, which is a nice treat in a science book. This one won't struggle to hold your attention.

The book also had excellent formatting and cohesion; overall. It is broken into well-delineated chapters, and each chapter into blurbs with relevant headers at the top. I generally do well with books set up like this.

I have read a fair bit about neuroscience, and many of the things talked about here were new to me. Another nice treat! The book is full of super interesting writing. I found many excellent quoteables throughout.

The author drops the quote at the start of this review early on, and it continues:

"...When we think of minds changing we usually think of psychological changes that affect our moods and outlook. Or neurological changes following a head injury or during an illness. But the changes I am interested in run much deeper. They span the evolutionary history of our early human ancestors and shape every aspect of who we are – our emotions, our memories, our languages, our intelligence and, indeed, the very fabric of our cultures and societies. It might not feel like it, but we are all heirs to millions of years of brain evolution: countless trial-and-error experiments in our mind’s relationship with the natural world. As a result, we are cleverer and more interconnected than our forebears ever imagined."

On the positive side; I enjoyed most of the writing in here. The author writes very well, and did a great job covering an incredibly wide swath of subject matter in an accessible manner.

However, there were a few things that stuck out to me. Off the top - he talks about consciousness and how it is "an illusion." He also asserts there is no free will. These are among some of the most contested arguments in all of neuroscience, and some nuance and more careful, drawn-out examinations of these hotly debated discussions would have been nice.

Additionally, he talks about intelligence at some length here. He downplays the significance of both IQ and "G factor" intelligence. He also says intelligence is malleable, and can change during one's lifetime. These assertions run contrary to what I've read elsewhere. I have previously read that IQ is the most robustly evidenced psychometric known; they have been testing it for over 100 years. In the US Army, applicants are given a form of IQ test. As well, SAT scores are somewhat of a proxy for IQ. So, it's been measured across cultural groups, over multiple decades, producing an enormous body of data. I don't have a dog in the fight either way, and it would have been nice if the author had spent a bit more time backing up such a contentious claim with more evidence. A cursory Google search turned up this article, which was a decent look further and seems to bolster the author's claims.

He talks a bit about the "Flynn effect;" basically that people have steadily become more intelligent over the last ~hundred or so years. What he doesn't mention is this effect has apparently stopped, and is now actually reversing, in what has been dubbed the 'Reverse Flynn Effect.' See here for more.

Weirdly enough, he's also got a short bit of writing here that seems to espouse the benefits of countless personal pronouns. He says:

"Scholars in the new field of discursive psychology, a branch of science that investigates how the self is socially constructed, are particularly interested in how people’s pronouns affect their sense of self. According to these scholars, the self is a ‘continuous production’ built from words and culture. Until recently, the first-person pronouns ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘mine’ predominated in Western society. Now, however, dozens of pronouns are used to express various identities: ‘ze’, ‘ey’, ‘hir’, ‘xe’, ‘hen’, ‘ve’, ‘ne’, ‘per’, ‘thon’ and more. Sticklers for grammar view this as an assault on the English language. Sticklers for tradition view it as a slippery slope to government-mandated speech codes.
Yet far from being new-age gobbledygook or an omen of tyranny, novel pronouns in fact have a crucial social function. They reveal your personality, reflect important differences among groups and help knit communities together."

~I'm sorry, but "new-age gobbledygook" seems to summarize the situation aptly. Personally, I might use harsher language, but I'll refrain here. Human beings are a sexually reproducing, sexually dimorphic species with two default phenotypes. We have been this way for the entire ~7 or so million years that we've been hominids...

Cry-bullying people into using made-up words for yourself also has indeed been used to enforce "government-mandated speech codes." In Canada under Bill C-16, gender identity has recently become protected under hate speech legislation, punished as a criminal offense. This is the backdrop in which Toronto-based professor and clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson rose to fame. He refused to comply, making a case that government-compelled speech is tyrannical, which it objectively is. So, it does sound pretty much like an "omen of tyranny" to me.

TBH, I'm not sure why any of this was included here, as it is arguably not pertinent to the book's thesis. And especially in a book that managed to avoid the thorny topic of political narrative up until that point...

Finally, near the end of the book he talks about autism. The way he writes about it makes it seem as though it is advantageous; even somewhat of a superpower. He asserts that autists often have higher intelligence (I thought we didn't like IQ??) and wonders if autism could have "played a role in what made our species." Additionally, he cites the work of another scientist, who posits that "We know there must have been an element of positive selection for autism in the past." He chides society at large for propagating social norms that often leave people with autism to feel excluded, before asking: "Could autism be the next phase of human evolution?"
He also writes:

"Even today, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnosis and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM-IV, defines autism as a condition manifesting in an ‘abnormal development in social interaction and communication, and a markedly restricted repertoire of activity and interests.’ But I am reluctant to accept the words of a psychiatric organisation that as recently as 1968 defined homosexuality as ‘a mental disorder’."

~Where to begin with all this?? I'll go step by step. First of all, autism is on a spectrum. There are people that range (informally) from "highly functioning" to "low functioning." In a high-functioning autist, you might only observe some quirky social behaviours. Conversely, a low-functioning autist might present with limited or no verbal communication skills, and may not be able to live independently, requiring support from a caregiver throughout their lives. Although I have not seen a distributive curve for autism, I can only assume that it is Gaussian, and for every extremely high-functioning autist the author lauds here, there is likely another low-functioning one that will never even speak. Talk about cherry-picking.
Secondly, his claim that autism could have played a role in what made our species is only bolstered by a tenuous observation in van Gogh's "The Starry Night" painting.

The claim that "We know there must have been an element of positive selection for autism in the past" is contentious on its face, and might only be applicable to people whose autism elevated them above their non-autistic contemporaries; like a craftsman, scholar, musician, artist, etc. It is absurd to think that someone who is non-verbal and requires constant care as an adult would enjoy higher evolutionary fitness compared with someone who is not that way.

Further, chastising society for having norms is about as productive as pissing into the wind. Societies amalgamate individuals into a broader group. In order for those individuals to be aligned in their goals and values, some form of social norms are necessary. Every society in history has had social norms, and taboos against breaking them. They are effectively the only way that a group of people can live in relative stability, and not become atomized and fractured. Complaining that the majority does not acquiesce to every demand of a small minority is both ridiculous, as well as completely impossible; theoretically and practically. By definition, if you start to move norms in any direction, you will be excluding some number of people in another. By shaping norms to accommodate some, you exclude others. Ray Bradbury talked about this in his famous book Fahrenheit 451. All societies have norms. That some people don't fit these norms is unfortunate, but advocating a ground-up change to the fabric of society doesn't seem like a particularly tenable solution to this problem to me.

Moving on, him asking: "Could autism be the next phase of human evolution?" shows his naïveté of evolutionary theory. Human evolution would only move more towards becoming more autistic if it had a broad-based evolutionary advantage, which it arguably does not. Even on the surface, difficulty with communication and empathy are not pro-social traits. Since humans are extremely pro-social animals, any trait that goes against this is likely to be maladaptive, not adaptive. I thought this would be common sense...

Finally, I'm not sure why the author takes a quote from the DSM IV in the quote above, while saying "even today." This book was published in 2022, and the DSM IV was been replaced by the DSM V in 2013. So, no "even today" we don't still cite the DSM IV. Definitely some slippery wording there, and it makes you wonder whether the author was trying to pull a fast one on the reader, or was actually unaware of the existence of the DSM V. I'm not sure which is worse...

All of which can't help but call into question the credibility of his other claims. He uses slippery language often in the book, and makes many outlandish claims; too numerous to count. A few of the top reviews here go into more detail. I'm not a neuroscientist, and my level of expertise is "armchair" tier. If this book made me scratch my head a few times, it makes me wonder how much of the content here warrants further scrutiny.

The topics covered here are: (Chapter titles)
• Building the Human Brain
• Inventing Emotions
• Our Social Brains
• The Genesis of Memory
• The Truth About Intelligence
• Creating Language
• The Illusion of Consciousness
• Different Minds
• The iBrain

********************

I enjoyed most of How the Mind Changed. On balance, it was an informative book that covered a lot of ground. Sadly, there was a lot of contentious info presented here as though it were objectively true. I did not feel the author did a good enough job buttressing some of his more contentious claims.
3 stars.

[Ady ZYN · Rating 5 out of 5]

Evoluția minți este evoluția creierului, și Jebelli o expune prin optica antropologiei evoluționiste. O evoluție a creierului nici n-ar putea să fie expusă altfel. Antropologia evoluționistă este o disciplină ce cuprinde o serie de domenii în care poate fi analizată dezvoltarea omului printre care doar câteva sunt: evoluționismul, paleoantropologia, genetica evoluționistă, neuroștiințele, neuroantropologia etc.

Creierul este cel mai complex organ și cel mai flexibil în materie de schimbări. Din cele mai vechi timpuri răspunde cel mai complex la schimbările din mediu pentru a-l ajuta pe posesorul lui să supraviețuiască într-un mediu într-o continuă mișcare.

Pentru a explica aspectele importante ale minții, autorul aduce cititorului imagini din trecutul îndepărtat al speciei, timpurile când ființele acelea vag umane trebuiau să trăiască găsind tot felul de strategii pentru supraviețuire într-o lume preponderent ostilă, sculptând involuntar materialul fragil, acea mâzgă din spatele frunții lor, perpetuând de-a lungul îndelungatelor vremuri arhitecturi din ce în ce mai complexe ce aveau să se transforme în umanitate de azi. Pe lângă poveștile ancestrale, avem parte de poveștile contemporane ce explorează trăsăturile dobândite dar în contrast cu afecțiuni ce ne par stranii, greu de intuit pentru mințile ce se desfășoară în parametrii uzuali.

Emoțiile, sentimentele, depresia, sociabilitatea, memoria sunt câteva trăsături mediate de creier prin mecanisme biochimice complexe și fiecare are o motivație pentru care se dezvoltă, fiecare are utilitatea ei și de aceea constituie câteva din subiectele cărții de față. Poveștile de viață ale unor oameni care suferă perturbări ale unor astfel de trăsături ne arată cum selecția naturală a construit cu răbdare umanitatea din noi.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. It is a fun, well-written story that was hard to put down. I found it easy to read, with its conversational tone and clearly-explained science. I also enjoyed the author’s anecdotes. Although the section wasn’t long, the discussion of consciousness is one of the best I’ve read. I also liked how the book uses stories of people to initiate discussion. I also appreciated the discussion of what may come. A lot of books fall down at this point, but this one stayed true to the rest of the book. This is a book that is well worth reading. Thank you to Netgalley and Little, Brown and Company for the advance reader copy.

[Nelson Zagalo]

A ideia era muito boa, apesar de ter à partida grande desconfiança, uma vez que denotar a evolução do cérebro humano seria algo bastante complexo. Também, porque é uma constante ver os média, mas também alguns investigadores, falarem de mudanças no cérebro como se isso fosse vísivel em meras décadas, nem séculos ou milénios o mostram, basta pensar no quão próximas de nós foram as sociedades das Antigas Grécia e Roma.

Ainda assim teria sido interessante, se realmente o autor o tivesse tentado fazer, centrando-se nos tempos remotos, e depois discutindo essa evolução, nomeadamente os grandes saltos. Mas não é disso que o livro trata. Vão-se convocando uma série de questões, que sendo importantes, parecem-me laterais, tais como o autismo.

Depois de ler aqui algumas resenhas que diziam o mesmo que eu estava a sentir acabei desistindo.

[Simon W · Rating 5 out of 5]

Your mind is changing! What a fascinating evolutionary tale. I absolutely loved this book. Part neuroscience, part natural history, and filled with intrigue and the unexpected. I couldn’t get enough of the chapter on autism and its evolutionary role in brain evolution. I’ve already told a friend who has autism to read it. I also loved the opening chapter, with its enthralling take on how our brains became so big. The chapters on intelligence, emotion, and conciousness are some of best I’ve read on the topics. It’s also a beautifully written book. You can tell the author put a lot of time and thought into this work. It’s gripping and truly original. Everyone should read it.

[Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Memory is not what we think it is. It twists and distorts our perception of reality in countless ways."

From descriptions of the brain to explaining its intricacies and how it came to be. We get to know the social, emotional and cultural brain, the illusory notions of consciousness, free will and self.

4.50 stars

"Conventional wisdom suggests that seeing the bear triggers a feeling of fear, which in turn causes the surge of adrenalin our body needs to fight or flee. But this is actually the reverse of what happens. The truth is that when we see the bear, our body instantly responds — blood pressure rises, pulse rate increases, respiration quickens — and because of these physiological changes we feel afraid. The emotion arises at the end of the sequence, not the beginning. It is merely the perception of change. "

My favourite part was chapter 2 "Inventing Emotions", where they explain what emotions are and how the brain translates them into feelings. We are just a body reacting to the environment and a brain that interprets such internal sensations into emotions.

"Common sense says we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike... the more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble. "

"My body was feeling happy, because I felt a rush, a flutter, as if blood was coursing through my veins, trying to tell me, 'this is joy'. It might sound strange, but I think emotions aren't really made in the brain; they're interpreted there. Predicted, maybe. "

"We construct emotions all the time. We are not born with them. They are not hardwired into the brain. When we think about that upcoming exam, or desire someone else's possessions, or bump into an old flame, the emotions of anxiety, envy and love can appear and then disappear automatically. They are as fleeting and ephemeral as memory — and as equally dependent on the times. Just compare how we feel about the environment and gender roles today with how we felt about them only a few decades ago. We create emotions. The brain invents them, moment to moment, to make sense of an ever-changing world.
[...]
Evolution still had to build the amygdala and Other neurological hardware to let us experience different emotions. To separate the biology of emotions from the cultures that influence them would be like separating the tides from the sea. "

"Different cultures create their own emotional language. [...] It is our societies shaping our emotions, rather than our emotions shaping our societies. We are reacting to society, not simply feeling in a void. The societies we build have an extraordinary influence on how we feel and experience the world"

Another section I thoroughly enjoyed was that where Depression is discussed in evolutionary terms. it really puts things into perspective:

"The second possibility is that depression is an adaptation that evolved in response to complex problems, and is our brain's way of telling us to stop and solve these problems. Research shows that depressed people are often highly analytical: they think intensely about their problems and are usually unable to think about anything else. Viewed this way, the sufferer's indifference to everything from house- cleaning to socialising to simply staying awake is instead the brain redirecting energy in order to ruminate on an important problem that has become unbearably difficult to resolve, such as a failing relationship or a struggling business. The psychologist Lauren Alloy calls this ability 'depressive realism'. "

"Though it might sound a little far-fetched, geneticists are now finding that many of the genes that increase one's risk of depression also boost the brain's immune response to infection. Among them is a gene called NYP, which codes for one of the most abundant proteins in the brain: a neurotransmitter known as neuropeptide Y. Normally NYP kills infectious agents by unleashing the brain's inflammatory response, a powerful yet short-lived measure that must be tightly controlled "

"Depression forces us into a kind of social hibernation, much like the self-imposed hibernation we go through when unwell, and this would have allowed our ancestors to conserve the energy necessary to fight off an infection, as well as reducing their chances of being infected by something else. The theory also helps explain the extended duration and diversity of depression's symptoms — because infections can last a long time and are becoming increasingly diverse themselves. With this radical new approach to depression, Bullmore writes, 'we can move on from the old polarised view of depression as all in the mind or all in the brain to see it as rooted also in the body; to see depression instead as a response of the whole organism or human self to the challenges of survival in a hostile world.'"

The chapter on memory was also exquisite, while listening to the audiobook I had to write so many notes because everything was so interesting. In the chapter they divide memory into 7 systems:
1. Reinforcement memory: remembering predators and the location of foods.
2. Navigation memory: to build a cognitive map of the world.
3. Biased-competition memory: the ability of various memories to compete for our attention.
4. Manual foraging or muscle memory: to remember how to handle and make objects and tools, memory based on touch.
5. Feature memory: a sensory memory for visual and auditory cues
6. Goal memory: to remember objectives and targets of action, and to create a future
7. Social subjective memory: to remember one's behaviour and its consequences in social systems, forming the base of human morality.

Then, comes the question of what is memory? and where it is stored, and this is what the author has to say:

"Many scientists argue that memories are physically encoded in the brain by a network of neurons in the hippocampus and cortex. The fundamental idea is that you have an experience — say, you lose your virginity — and a memory of the experience is sent to the hippocampus in the form of electrical signals travelling across synapses. The memory may then reside in the cortex as long-term memory, or it may not. 'That depends on complex molecular processes involving neurotransmitter receptors, enzymes, genes, epigenetics, and so on. Until recently this idea was mainstream neuroscience.

The language that scientists use to describe memory — 'memory' retrieval', 'memory acquisition', 'memory trace', 'memory consolidation' and so on presupposes the notion of 'a memory', something that is separate from the person doing the remembering. Do you see the problem? The language defines memory as separate from the mind instead of an integral part of it; when the truth is, your brain doesn't store or retrieve memories. It is memories. "

Then imagination and intelligence, and arguments for the notion that consciousness is an illusion....


The book is basically a mix of biology, neuroscience, psychology and philosophy, which in truth all seek to understand human nature and why we are the way we are, which basically all surrounds the mystic of the brain.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought-provoking. Any sweeping book on the evolution of the brain seems destined to unfulfilled ambition; we're dealing with theories and research studies in their infancy. But, this led me down an enjoyable rabbit hole toward additional philosophers, scientists, and theories to read up on. I tend to agree with the author that we have no unified self (what's essentially a belief in Buddhism, atheism and materialism), so I especially loved the chapters on consciousness and neurodiversity.

[Sunny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compelling storytelling rich in facts and syntheses

I think this book can be read as an introduction to your brain- even the main topic is about evolution of our brain, the book covers wide range of (unique) human brain function.
There's quite a bit of speculations on brain of earlier humanoid (understandable considering brain matter doesn't preserve well). Non-the-less, I find it interesting to think about evolutionary meaning of depression and autism.

[Sierra · Rating 4 out of 5]

So neuroscience is fun. I read this because of the evolution aspect and learning more about the cognitive abilities of early primates, but I ended up really liking the whole book. The author definitely thinks he's smarter than all of his readers, but he's probably right. The autism chapter was wonderful, it made me feel so seen.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Emma Strawbridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

i am on a ROLL today with books! this book was great and felt like the perfect collection of New Scientist articles about brain evolution I wish i’d read. the chapter about autism was incredibly well written and had the book been about that alone it would be fascinating. very well organized and i loved hearing about all different types of research and experiments that neuroscientists have been doing all over the world. my only issue is i wish there was a little more care used with the specific word choice about consciousness/self because i feel like things were clunky there. 4.5 stars tbh but i’ll round up bc of this quote : “because being human is about integrating people who are vulnerable without asking questions” (193). great read!

[Mario Sailer · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is not so much about how our brain evolved. That is covered only a bit at the beginning. It is more about the brain itself and it covers some aspects of it like consciousness. At the end, when he writes about the future it becomes speculative.
I would call the book pop-science. He stays pretty much on the surface without sound scientific evidence. When he writes about free will for example, he is not wrong, but others write a whole book about that topic (without expanding it unnecessarily), whereas he devotes barely a chapter for it.

[Richard Archambault · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. There were flashes of great insight, embedded in a lot of generalizations, hints of fascinating information in scientific research (usually without getting into the details nor the possible counterpoints to some of the mentioned studies). I wish the book had had a narrower focus with a deeper dive into fewer topics.

[Niya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing breakdown of what conditions caused and how those mechanisms developed for our brain to be what it is today - really a must read for anyone with an interest in the neuroscience and evolution behind human behaviour (liked it so much I took a few dozen pages of notes in a hopeless attempt to memorise as much knowledge that this book provided as possible). Would be 5 stars but it fell off last chapters but when it goes into what is more a philosophical question (e.g. free will, consciousness) since neuroscience is yet to reach any answers that are an idea more than superficial, there are swiping statements forced, more showing the personal beliefs and assumptions of the author than any true scientific exploration and the honest admission that we just don't truly know a lot yet.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr Howarth you know me well🤭🤭

[Victor Toma · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book for the neuro fans out there.Maybe sometimes the style is a little too dry but still a lot to learn from this one.

[Adele Giovanniello · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting. I enjoyed the history of how the homo sapien brain evolved and found the section on evolutionary advantage of autism particularly fascinating. Great work debunking myths of Homo sapiens emerging as the final, ultimate, and perfectly evolved animals, when in reality we are a blip in time curated by genetic mutations and happenstance.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a rather difficult review for me to write because of how conflicted it has left me. On one hand, I love the field and there are many fascinating parts. However, the author was fairly intolerable. While I had a number of issues, I will discuss a few, for the sake of not spending my entire evening on a book review. The book itself is not very focused in writing and jumps around too much to really be considered cohesive. There is also a distinct divergence in writing style at various points. My opinion is that the author is trying very hard to seem intelligent and will sometimes write in a very flowery and over wordy manner, yet at other points finds himself in more of a flow state of writing and the writing is much more simplified. His simplified writing is still well written, so there is absolutely no need to adapt the less natural manner when he does. Again, my conclusion was that he was trying to come off a certain way, but breaks character at times. The biggest issue I had is with how narrow-minded the author is. One may think that the field of neuroscience may have humbled him to realize how much he, or humans as a society, don't know or understand. But no, that is not the case. He speaks in absolutes about his opinions and ideas that are not truths. He speaks as though science in general, and more specifically, neuroscience, is this stagnant field that is not constantly evolving, or rather our understanding of it and its intricacies are constantly changing. He claims consciousness is an illusion because we have no way to test. This is ludicrous to me. Based on your standards, you can't test something, so it must not exist? Does he suppose he is all powerful and has all of the answers? Based on his writing, I believe so. He also claims that humans are the only species that has consciousness. How conceited must one be to believe they understand how all other species feel and think and that they must not feel they experience consciousness? Even if some "test" concludes a hummingbird has no concept of consciousness, how do we know this test is accurately testing what we assume it is? Anyone with a bit of humility and curiosity may conclude that we can't and we can't assume they don't experience it, nor can we assume it doesn't exist based on us not understanding it or being able to test it. This is just one example, but his arrogance in assuming he always has the answers is extremely off putting. He takes current thought in neuroscience as gospel truth and he severely limits himself in this. A bit of self reflection, humility, and curiosity about what he doesn't understand would expand his mind so much more and help him continue to learn and grow, but his writing very much gives the idea that he won't. Assuming one has all the answers is the death of progress and learning. Maybe living more life will eventually give him more perspective and help him become less close minded, or maybe not. But as it is, this book really just feel short and felt like a way to give himself a pat on the back for being the smartest person he knows, in his opinion at least.

All that said, there are some interesting parts, so the stars I did give are due to those keeping my interest. Also, he doesn't always come across as so pompous. Just be aware that the book contains many opinions stated as facts that may or may not be true. I feel he should have indicated this, rather than telling the reader the opposite of what he believes is definitively false. Again, this book discusses very fluid fields of science and very little can be said definitively on some of these topics. For someone who has researched the field and these topics previously, this can be an interesting read, so long as one is able to parse through the fact and fiction of his conjectures.

[Ken Justison · Rating 1 out of 5]

Books on the brain are usually enjoyable, though I have read one that was as bad as this by a neuroscientist who wanted to explain consciousness after explaining that all the advisors
warned him against it. He failed to enlighten at all. The only benefit was he could say he
was published again. This was awful the absolute worst. I got it to learn about how the brain has evolved long after Julian Jaynes The Origins of Consciousness not what he thinks about Maduro's government or climate change. Hawkins, Harris or Eaglemans Incognito or non neuroscientist Sam Kean's Dueling Neurosurgeons were books that actually helped me understand the brain. One tidbit Keans book left me with was the french neuroscientist who knowing he was to be beheaded asked his assistant to count how many times he blinked after his
head was separated. He counted 17 blinks.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an absolutely fascinating read. I love neuropsychology and brain health so this was right up my alley. The author wrote a compelling book regarding the brain and it's functions in an easy, accessible way

[Juny · Rating 1 out of 5]

Este ha sido el libro más decepcionante que he leído en 2022... y por tanto el peor; esperaba mucho más de él. Por ello, y tras echarle un último vistazo, he rebajado su calificación de dos estrellas a una.

[Brendan · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a disclaimer: I listened to this on audiobook, and therefore I couldn't see what/where exactly the author or the extent of the bibliography in general.

The first half of this book is fairly good, and the content suits the title. However, I have major issues with the latter half.

The most obvious issue is that Jebelli loses sight of the proclaimed objective of the book: to provide a 'human history of our evolving brain'. The first half of the book is indeed largely about the evolution of human intelligence, although the narrative is slightly confused and lacks proper chronological order like most historical writing. However, the focus then diverges, first into descriptions of various brain injuries and then into some fairly unscientific chapters on psychological philosophy and autism. While brain injuries and disorders are interesting, these chapters don't fit into the history of the mind, and the focus shifts from evolution and anthropology to the stories of individuals with specific, usually rare, mental difficulties that the author finds interesting. There is some touching on the history of psychology as a field, which is again interesting but not the advertised point of the book. Finally, the autism chapter and the final chapter on transhuman minds do come slightly back to the point in theory, but in execution they do little to re-centre the narrative before the end of the text.

The other main issue, which is possibly more important than the lack of narrative, is the unscientific nature of much of the content in the latter half of the text. I was frustrated, though also amused, when the author discussed the anthropological legacy of autism as a rare but positive trait in early human society and then stated (paraphrasing): "We shouldn't take a utilitarian attitude towards autism. Autistics were not integrated into early society because they provided some usefulness to the tribe. They were integrated because to be human is to unconditionally accept everyone regardless of their personal differences." If you think about it in context, this is a pretty funny sentence for a book about evolution. "Did australopithecus adopt tool use because it provided a material benefit when hunting? No, it adopted tool use because to be of the genus homo is to unconditionally adopt tools regardless of their utility." It was a very disappointing turn for the chapter, which until that point seemed to be building the idea that autism in a small number of individuals of a society is an evolutionary advantage and that's why the genes for it have survived for so long. The preachy tone is also oft-repeated to the detriment of the scientific content. At one point during the section where Jebelli discusses the philosophical differences between the single-self and multiple-self models of understanding consciousness, he links belief in the single-self model with 'bullying and opposition to social justice' and does not elaborate. I can't see his citations, but how could this possibly have been proven? Is there really a survey of psychology PhDs out there that correlates their specific philosophical viewpoints with the degree to which they bully their colleagues? Even if there is, I consider it irresponsible for a scientist to encourage the lay reader to believe such a tenuous statement without proper elaboration.

There are many other instances of unscientific and sometimes even magical thinking. For example at one point Jebelli claims that Vincent van Gogh understood quantum behaviour in fluid mechanics because he was autistic. Van Gogh died about 40 years before quantum physics was invented, so this is a pretty impressive claim. His evidence is some 'research' that 'demonstrated' that the stars in van Gogh's masterpiece Starry Night seem to abide by fluid mechanics. But of course they do. By Jebelli's logic, one could claim that any accurate drawing of a moving liquid was evidence that the artist was an instinctive quantum physicist. This sort of mysticism is very unbecoming of a scientific text. Besides, quantum physics doesn't even play a major role in fluid mechanics so the whole thing is nonsense!

Overall, this was a frustrating book and Jebelli comes off as the sort of scientist who thinks he has an enlightened understanding of the world at large because he has a PhD (I am a physicist, so I have met this sort of person before). He clearly feels the need to inject this enlightenment into his readers in inappropriate and off-topic ways that detract from the scientific content of the text and distract from the focus. The early parts of the book showed promise, but as this book just devolves into a discussion of neuroscience in general, I would instead recommend the book 'Connectome', as it sets out to do what this book devolves into and, unsurprisingly, does a much better job of it.

[WiseB · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being an average reader interested in neuroscience, I was attracted by the book's coverage on human brain's evolution relating to memory, intelligence, language, consciousness etc. It is understandable a book of 200+ pages will not cover the comprehensiveness of our brain's vast history, functions and abilities in great detail, but I still find interesting content from the perspective of science like neurosciences, biology etc. Though the author has included his hypothesis over various features and observations, some may seem more like conjectures, one just have to decide based on knowledge or doing our own side line checkouts ... I have noted that some other Goodreads reviews of this book can help in this aspect. Regardless, reading the book sure expanded my limited knowledge and understanding about the brain in the areas covered by the author.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good! A beautiful and captivating book full of neuroscience natural history (which I knew little about) and wonder. A massive amount of research has clearly taken place here, as seen by his extensive scientific references. His chapters on consciousness and autism are thoroughly enjoyable - he's actually broken new ground on how we should think about them, which is refreshing, invigorating and more than anything uplifting. Everyone interested in deeply understanding our brains should read this book. Loved every page and hugely recommend. Thanks Dr!

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant and surprising tour of how our brains evolved. Got this as a gift from someone who knows how much I love neuroscience, and couldn’t put it down. Favourite bits include the brain’s 'Big Bang' and the chapters on consciousness, autism, emotion, and maybe the last one. Basically the whole books excellent. Jebelli comes full circle and the length is perfect. Really a thought-provoking and fascinating read. Highly recommend.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful sweeping account of the brain.

The first part examines the evolution of the brain while the second part looks into aspects of higher cognition. The final part of the book explores the future of human brains.

The following themes are unpacked:
- emotions/feelings
- the social brain
- memory
- intelligence
- language
- consciousness
- autism/neurodiversity
- tech future of the brain