Brains: How They Seem To Work

by Dale Purves

For 50 years, the world’s most brilliant neuroscientists have struggled to understand how human brains really work. Today, says Dale Purves, the dominant research agenda may have taken us as far as it can--and neuroscientists may be approaching a paradigm shift. In this highly personal book, Purves reveals how we got to this point and offers his notion of where neuroscience may be headed next. Purves guides you through a half-century of the most influential ideas in neuroscience and introduces the extraordinary scientists and physicians who created and tested them. Purves offers a critical assessment of the paths that neuroscience research has taken, their successes and their limitations, and then introduces an alternative approach for thinking about brains. Building on new research on visual perception, he shows why common ideas about brain networks can’t be right and uncovers the factors that determine our subjective experience. The resulting insights offer a deeper understanding of what it means to be human. • Why we need a better conception of what brains are trying to do and how they do it
Approaches to understanding the brain over the past several decades may be at an impasse • The surprising lessons that can be learned from what we see
How complex neural processes owe more to trial-and-error experience than to logical principles • Brains--and the people who think about them
Meet some of the extraordinary individuals who’ve shaped neuroscience • The “ghost in the machine” problem
The ideas presented further undermine the concept of free will

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Neuroscience, Medical, Health, Reference, Psychology

303 pages, Hardcover

First published November 24, 2009

About the author

Dale Purves (born March 11, 1938) is Geller Professor of Neurobiology Emeritus in the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences where he remains Research Professor with additional appointments in the department of Psychology and Brain Sciences, and the department of Philosophy at Duke University. He earned a B.A. from Yale University in 1960 and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1964.

Reviews

[Bernard Kripkee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is part biography, part history of neuroscience, and part brain theory. The author, Dale Purves, was a participant in some of the essential movements in current brain science, and worked with, or otherwise knew, many of the leading figures of contemporary brain science. His accounts of the work and personalities of these people are vivid and insightful.

In the later parts of the book, he advances a theoretical approach to perception that explains perceptual phenomena (such as illusions) as the result of molding brains through evolution and learning to match statistical regularities in the environment. This interpretation is supported by masses of experimental data, but, in my view, some essential controls are missing. For example, in Chapter 11 Purves considers a well-known "illusion" in which a vertical and a horizontal line segment of equal length are joined to form an inverted T. The vertical line appears longer. Purves argues that the illusion is a consequence of the statistics of the visual environment, in which horizontal line segments of a given apparent length are more common than vertical segments of the same length. However, it appears to me that the illusion depends critically on the way the two segments meet. If they meet to form an L instead of an inverted T, the illusion is weakened. However, the illusion is preserved if the inverted T is turned on its side. Neither of these control experiments is consistent with Purves' explanation. I confess that my control experiments were very informal and must be taken cum grano salis -- I hope to do formal controls in the future.

I don't think it can be just an accident that the statistics of the "illusion" closely match the statistics that Purves and his collaborators obtained from photographs of the visual environment, but without the kinds of controls I suggested above, I don't think the interpretation Purves offers is warranted.

[Bethany · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half is painful. He just walks you through his life and how he got where he was. But the second half is decent and offers a few pearls to think through. No real definitive theory on how brains really work, other than - we are all experiencing the world through an umwelt but our biology is well suited to the task.

You might understand that whole blue/black vs white/gold dress thing after this.

[Cheri · Rating 1 out of 5]

I received this on the free books list at Kindle, and as a neuropsychologist I think I paid too much. I read through this on the plane to Greece, and most of it reads like an introductory to psych text (it dropped some big names, talked about neurons, and discussed sensation and perception), but with more personal pictures. It was needlessly complex to read in areas, I thought. If you have a sudden desire to know how brains work, skip this author's explanation.

[Dee Renee Chesnut · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was free when I downloaded it to my Nook from Barnes and Noble.

I have a general interest in neuroscience. For the first six chapters, this book was an entertaining memoir of Purves' career and other scientists exploring the function and anatomy of nerve cells and brain cells. Then he switches his outlook to an empirical study of vision and perception. This part seemed more difficult to read and even boring. "Accordingly our perceptions never correspond to physical reality despite the fact that hey provide successful operational guides to behavior."

I recommend it only to readers who have more of an interest and more of a knowledge of this area of neuroscience than I do.

[Wei-Tang · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author is gentle in guiding us to understand his point about the need to reconceptualize how brain works, through progressively more complex examples. Overall, pretty easy to read for an informative book outside my general field of interests, though some passages /sentences are (unavoidably?) dense. The enjoyable personal / historical parts of the book also helped in giving me some breather in between the denser, slower-going explanatory sections. Left me with more questions than answers - as any good books in this genre should, I think.

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is autobiography first and neuroscience second. There are several chapters describing experiments undertaken to support his hypothesis about the empirical nature of how the brain works that are fundamental to his argument. Yet I found them tedious. I was more interested in the implications which are profound. But he gives us only the tiniest bit of thinking about those implications. The best thing about the book was that it informed me sufficiently to make me hungry for more on the topic.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book describes the history of research into the processing of vision in the human brain. The author makes a very good case for the evolutionary development of visual perceptions as they relate to survivabilty. The reasoning is compelling. Diagrams are included. The research is far from finished, but the progress as of 2010 is explained very clearly. The associated Web site has graphics with animation that are very helpful to understanding the concepts being presented. I enjoyed this scientific work.

http://www.purveslab.net/seeforyourself/

[Rachel C. · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF 20%

Unsuitable for general reading. The writing is very jargon-y and technical. Furthermore, it struck me as egotistical that the author couldn't seem to stop talking about himself and his august alma mater, Haaahvahd. Perhaps this book should have been marketed as a scientific memoir instead?

(Kindle freebie)

[Erika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, the book provides some indications of Purves' personal research interests and some overview of major developments in the field of neuroscience, but the focus of the book is Purves' own career and his relationships with his colleagues, not on brains.

[Jack · Rating 2 out of 5]

i'm interested in the science of the brain and was hoping for some new insights, but this book was just so, so dull in its delivery, I struggled to get through it.

[Lindsay · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this to be more an autobiography of Purves rather than specifically on how brains work. However, it was still an interesting book on neuropsychology and I did learn a few new things.