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Mapping the Mind
Rita Carter is a British medical writer. She was twice awarded the Medical Journalists' Association prize for outstanding contribution to medical journalism. The book gives a comprehensive description of our knowledge about the brain (as of 1998, when the book was written). It covers popular topics, such as the causes for optical illusions, the nature of the Mona Lisa's smile, the differences between the left and the right brain, between males and females, the mechanisms of drug addictions. It also delves into less popular subjects, such as the need for rationalization, the mechanisms of speech and reading, the "programmability" of patients with a lobotomy, the causes of face-blindness and many others. In fact, after finishing the book I can hardly name any aspect of the mind that the book didn't tell me about.
Throughout the book, Carter's descriptions invariably remain strict, rigorous and factual. The book doesn't make any empty claims about our minds, nor does it delve into controversies perpetrated by the uninformed. Everything written is always based on pure hard science, with references aplenty.
This doesn't prevent the book from being easy to read and immensely entertaining. Imagine the weirdness of thousands of clinical histories condensed into 330 pages for our education. The simplest way to understand the function of some part of the brain is to find a person in whom it is damaged. Here you have it all: A man who believed that copulating with the pavement was normal; the famous man who mistook his wife for a hat; Vladimir Nabokov and his account of synaesthesia; people with Fregoli's syndrome (who constantly mistake strangers for people they know, even though they realize they look totally different); chickens excited by Pink Floyd's "The Final Cut"; Nadean Cool, her false memories of baby-eating Satanic cults and her 120 different personalities, including a duck; and people with anosognosia, who refuse to realize their illnesses, such as blindness or paralysis. And what's even better, you will be able to find explanations for your own quirks and deficiencies. There are bugs in every program; your mind is no exception. It is an amazing feeling to be able to realize how your mind works, what makes you tick, what constitutes "you" -- why you feel, think and act the way you do.
The book is a treat for the eyes: the huge number of helpful, pretty illustrations makes it both easier to comprehend it and more pleasant to read. The numerous diagrams and brain scans illustrate every subject, showing which areas become more active when you have depression, which areas cause OCD (caudate), what causes eating disorders (faults in hypothalamus), the pathways activated during face recognition, etc. This helps dispel the illusion of our brain being an incomprehensible black box, letting you get a grip on the physical basis for thoughts. It's like ignoring the EULAs and looking at the source code for your mind for the first time.
The book consists of eight chapters. It begins with an introduction to the brain structure in "The Emerging Landscape," starting with an overview of the misconceptions of phrenology, and ending with a short comment by a neurophysiologist Horace Barlow, who explains the usefulness of a reductionist approach as a first step to studying the brain. The section covers all brain modules, the neural pathways and explains the evolution of the brain.
After we are through the basics, our journey around the brain starts. First, in the "The Great Divide," Carter explains the roles of the left and the right hemispheres and the corpus calossum -- the connection between them. Among other things Carter explains the alien hand phenomena, describes experiments that demonstrate that people whose corpus calossum have been severed exhibit two separate personalities, and touches the puzzle of left-handedness.
After that, we delve deep into the brain, into its more primitive part, the limbic system, which is responsible for our emotions. Then we are shown the nature of perceptions and how they achieve their meanings. After that the author breaks from the confines of the brain and explains the social nature of humans, and how language enables most of our social interactions.
Then Carter describes the nature of our memories. She explains amnesia and Alzheimer's disease, explains the amount of memory we have, and where different memories (such as procedural memory, fearful experiences, or normal memories) are stored. She describes H.M., a patient with most of the hippocampus and amygdala removed. His mind had no continuity at all; H.M. lost the ability to form most types of new memories, but he could form procedural memories and could learn some new music to play on the piano. Another man, after having a minor stroke in the middle of a family dinner, suddenly found that he didn't remember where he was, and no longer recognized the people at the table. He didn't do anything, though, and later told the doctor: "I felt quite happy being with them even though I didn't know who they were," and "they seemed rather an agreeable lot." We are shown why false memories are the norm, rather than an anomaly.
Finally, our most unique and advanced feature -- consciousness -- is explained. Carter describes the "working memory" model developed by Alan Baddeley, where images and speech-based information is held for short time in a cache-like space, while the "central executive" part co-ordinates the information processing. She demonstrates how complex programs can be easily triggered in patients with lobotomy. French neurologist Francois L'Hermitte once invited two of his patients, a man and a woman, to his home. He ushered the man into a bedroom without explanation. In the middle of the day the man saw the ready-to-use bed and immediately undressed, preparing to go to sleep. When a woman was let in and saw the rumpled bed, she immediately started to make it. Carter explains the illusion of the free will and its evolutionary origins.
She ends the book with the optimistic conclusion: "I believe one thing is already clear: there is no ghost in this place, no monsters in the depths, no lands ruled by dragons. What today's mind voyagers are discovering is instead a biological system of awe-inspiring complexity. There is no need for us to satisfy our sense of wonder by conjuring phantoms -- the world within our heads is more marvelous than anything we can dream up."
What does this book leaves the reader afterwards? It left me with the insatiable desire to immediately read it again, this time with a notebook and a pencil at hand, so that I do not miss a single fact, a single lesson, a single bit of truth about who I am. To me the book was perfect -- a unique combination of scientific rigor and entertaining writing. Each amusing medical account was always accompanied with a detailed explanation of the physiological basis for it and a handy illustration. It was complete, well-structured and accessible.
I think it was the best book (fiction or non-fiction) that I read in the past year. The only other book that approached it was another take on the nature of the mind - the amusing Permutation City by Greg Egan, which takes the technologically feasible idea of mind uploading and pushes it to its limits, exploring the philosophical and mathematical consequences along the way.
You can browse the book at Google Print. Please do so and then read it in full. Learning about yourself should be the top thing on your agenda, if you consider yourself an intelligent creature. And for a computer scientist or a programmer there can hardly be a more interesting subject than the most complex software application, written over the millions of years, an amalgamation of legacy features, sloppy code, perfectly optimized routines, special cases and the ever-harmful neural goto operators. "Gnothi seauton," and have fun doing it.
You can purchase Mapping the Mind from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
The review leaves one with the impression that this Rita Carter person explains more in this book than scientists actually know. Let me save everyone the suspense and say that no, she doesn't.
For instance, "explaining Alzheimer's" is an extremely misleading statement. She might explain what we currently know about Alzheimer's, but that is sadly little.
I'm not saying the book is no good (how should I know?), just that the review is a little misleading.
You can never "know thyself". Even though brains are incredibly complex, they know very little about your self. You can't know yourself for the same reason you can't bite your own teeth. The human mind can only focus on things outside itself, that's why there are psychologists.
Fortunately for you, someone else has already taken the time to understand you and present the results in entertaining, easily digestible, but at the same time scientifically rigorous format.
How perfect for those of us who need instant results in this fast-food, breakneck-pace world. Who needs years of introspection and self-enlightenment when you can read about it on the train to work?
I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent. - Q
I am always very skeptical of any of these books and/or papers which purport to explain to you "how your mind works."
Although it seems to get forgotten quite often, there is a big, big difference between knowing _how_ something works and knowing _why_ it works.
From (semi?)direct observation we can see _how_ a brain functions. It's a collection of neronal fibers, little chemical receptors and excreeter's etc, but knowing _why_ these connections produce the complex behavior they do is still an unknown thing.
What differences in the way the connections are made determine whether someone will be a new Mozart? A new Newton? Why was this person so emotionally labile, while this other one was rock steady even from the samy family? Why do two children from the same parents, with very similar genes have vastly different likes, dislikes and personalities?
Remember that not everything can be ascribed to genetics and chance.
These are the interesting questions, but as of yet no one knows the answer to any of them.
Anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something or get a grant approved.
in the matrix movie "Know Thyself" is also what the sign in the oracle's kitchen says.
"Every cognitive scientist but me is an moron. Someday, they will all recognize my greatness! In the meantime, the have censored my ideas from their journals because I prove what idiots they all are, so I have to publish everything I write on the web."
Seriously, this site hits all of the "angry crackpot" buttons. The author, one Yehouda Harpaz, has a chemistry degree, did "some research in protein engineering, published several papers, but lost interest. Part of this is because of the stupid way scientific articles are published currently." Direct quote from the site. I suggest taking this site with a big grain of salt.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I know this is slashdot, where everyone thinks they are a super-genius, but that intro was arrogant and pretentious beyond belief. Was the rest of the review any good? I couldn't read anymore past that intro.
1) Map the female mind first
2) Ladies, before your relationship gets too serious, give your man a compimentary copy instead of expecting him to know what your thinking (and more importantly, feeling) all of the time
It would save us all a lot of time and trouble. Most guys are easy to figure out: sex, money, power, position, and a good time. The exact order depends on the person, and there may be a few other factors thrown in the mix and one or two on the list that I gave that may not be much of a factor, but that's basically it. Almost anything your typical guy will say or do can be explained by that list, with minor modifications based on his personality and personal traits.
You women, on the other hand. Many of you are impossible to figure out. We could use a little help.
Is the ability to be programmed the same as being conscious? So my computer in front of me here is conscious, because I can program it?
If you believe that a cat is conscious, then yes your computer is also. It has a limited sort of intelligence and conscioussness... nothing compared to a human. But that is a difference of scale, not fundamentals. Then again, if you feel that only humans are conscious, then no your computer isn't, animals are not, and no other programmed system will ever meet your criteria.
What difference can it possibly make that I experience anything? Don't talk to me about processing- that can all happen equally well if I'm not staring at it.
You suggest a disparity where none exists. You are not some small gnome (homunculus) living inside a brain, watching what comes in through the eyeballs. Have you considered that perhaps what you call "conscioussness" is just the by-product of all that processing and programmed decision-making that goes on in your brain? If the decision-making doesn't happen, you are not conscious (for example, dead or asleep). If the processing occurs, then internal it "feels" like conscioussness, but externally it just looks like your brain is processing things (just like a dog or a computer or another human looks, when viewed externally).
By experience, we're not talking about neural encodings and other Neural Correlates of Consciousness. We're talking about the actual experience, itself.
Well, if you decide to define the problem in such a way that it can never be analyzed scientifically, then yes, of course, every scientifica analysis will fail. That is because you are forcing it to be a philosophical debate, and not a scientific one. Science can explain relations between things and give you predictive abilities, but it will not answer your philosophical questions. The book in question (and related research) are not attempting to alleviate your emotional objections to study of the mind, they are trying to come up with predictive models of thought.
I hope this post doesn't sound overly pointed or accusatory, but I think your characterization of modern science is not fair.
with the facts then the reviewer. Many of the reviewer's comments seem to impute causality to certain structures of the brain, but it's often an open question whether the deviant structures are cause or effect or side-effect. The question is open because these are simply correlations between behaviour and structure, but there is no causal explanation. It's somewhat similar to these "studies" that come out every so often about diet. People who drink coffee die earlier than people that don't. Then the next study says, "Oh wait, no, it's the other way around!" And so on... They flip-flop because they have no fucking clue by what causal mechanism the effect is produced. So, till a causal mechanism is elucidated, I recommend taking these "studies" that map function to location as the beginning of the inquiry, not the end.
The mind is more than the brain. The brain is merely a processing unit.
And the mind is software running on it.
Hmmm human-brain.org is certainly an "interesting" website...
The author (one Yehouda Harpaz) has submitted numerous "papers" on cognitive science to various scientific journals. The opening of one of the more illustrious responses he received:
"The author is not recommended to seek publication of this paper: it can only damage his reputation."
The author complained to the editor and asked for a second review. It was again rejected.
The author then felt it necessary to create a website dedicated to describing how all other cognitive scientists have it wrong, and why his own ideas are correct (including numerous examples of works he has submitted and had rejected).
It's unfortunate, because he seems to be a bright guy...wrong....but bright.
In any case, you'll excuse me if I ignore his review of this book...he seems to have a personal grudge against the whole discipline...
The site you reference, as another reader noted, hits all the crackpot buttons -- in fact, it pounds on them. Obsession with minutae, insults, lack of background, etc etc. Yehouda Harpaz has a few good points about technical errors and unsubstantiated statements in Carter's book, but most of the issues Harpaz identified are trivial introductory or concluding text. If science writers (or writing scientists -- an odd lot, to be sure) were all judged by their public conjectures and literary musings instead of their research and the central body of their books, we would all be in deep doo-doo.
That said, Harpaz's screed about the "Blatant Nonsense Effect" (http://human-brain.org/blatant.html) is an interesting but short read. The halo effect is certainly something to remain aware of, but microscopic examination in critical reading should be applied a bit more sparingly, perhaps only to substantive content.
-J
Granted, senses have been replaced/repaired, with the patients *taught* how to apply meaning to the new inputs: we do the same learning a new language. The pleasure center and pain center are roughly known locations (the "wireheading" in one of Spider Robinson's novels scares me spitless) - rather than providing an input that meaning must be learned for, why not focus *more* on empirically/objectively proving: if (sensory input combination) A, then (impression/reaction/response combination) B?
IANANP, but 'twould seem to be a more fruitful approach when considered logically.
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
Yeah, people who survey the esoteric knowledge of scientists and present it in a summary form so that non-experts can learn something are monsters. They are ripping off the scientists who spend decades getting to the frontier of their field. The knowledge was hard for them to get - it should be hard for everyone else too!
Don't stand on the shoulders of giants! Pick your field of specialization and be completely ignorant about everything else! Knowledge is scare and should be hoarded! Fight the educators!! TAKE BACK THE KNOWLEDGE FROM THE LAYMEN!
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
Chinese room is an old fallacious argument. The person there doesn't speak Chinese, but the system comprised of the person, the book and the room, does speak it. Similarly, parts of the computer will not be conscious (just like parts of your brain aren't), but the whole system will be.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
The creationists (and other pseudoscientists) keep making that "bold" prediction.
Then science comes in and stomps out all the fun, and then the charlatans move to the *next* thing we don't know and start claming that we'll *NEVER* know it cause it's *way too hard*...
Pah!
The quoted review displays the sort of vehement ignorance characteristic of religious types, who seem to think that impassioned handwaving and endless repetition can somehow substitute for a cogent argument.
Specific thoughts, memories etc can already be mapped (with the subject's cooperation) fairly precisely to areas of the brain. F'rinstance, stimulating a particular point can reproducibly trigger a particular memory - a face, a place, a Guns'n'Roses song. Similarly with brain damage to particular areas disrupting particular functions. There are numerous examples quoted in Dennett's excellent (if over-ambitiously titled) "Consciousness Explained", which must be a decade or so old now. Denying this stuff is heading into Flat-Earther territory.
The "objective correlate" bit is bizarre; it reads like a sort of reverse epiphenomenalism. As if subjective qualia were the only "significant" aspects of a mental occurrence, and the physical aspects are just an irrelevant side-effect. There are certainly open questions regarding qualia and their place in an ontology of the mind, but religious prejudices like this don't contribute anything to the debate.
The last two sentences are nonsensical garbage. I'm not sure whether the author is deliberately misrepresenting physicalism or just misunderstanding it, but the claim made is roughly equivalent to "software can't just be a bunch of bits, because there's a Slashdot page in my browser window and there are no 'Slashdot' bits versus 'kuro5hin' bits, there are simply bits".
(Yes, I'm aware that you were just quoting this review, not necessarily supporting it. As you can tell, this kind of dogma-dressed-up-as-argument gets me riled.)
Some thoughts on Free Will
_ Discussion_6"
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"Structuralism has often been criticized for being ahistorical and for favoring deterministic structural forces over the ability of individual people to act"
The good old "free will v. predestination" problem. I never understood why rules conflict with free will. Does the fact that gravity exists deprive me of the ability to make choices? Consider any important point in your life. Now consider how much of it you had control over. Yet, at that point in your life, faced with the laws (circumstances out of your control), you made a choice.
Just because you don't like the fact that a drunk driver could kill you tomorrow, doesn't mean it couldn't happen. You, quite simply, are not in control of your life. When you are on the road, your life is not in your own hands alone. Your life is in the hands of everyone around you. The lives of those around you are in your hands. When you apply for a job it's ultimately up to those hiring you to make the decision. Not you.
I remember one evening I was looking to cross an intersection from one shopping complex to another. The driver on the other side was turning left. I delayed and he had to wait for me since I had the right of way. A second or two later some idiot ran the red light on his side. If I hadn't been there and he had simply gone he would have been broadsided.
I'm pretty comfortable with the fact there are laws of the universe within which I must make my choices. I'm also comfortable with the fact that the small choices people make can lead to big changes in my life.
From the deconstruction article linked from the Wikipedia
"In each of these fields, deconstructive readings attempt to show how texts are multivocal: how they cannot simply be read as works by individual authors communicating distinct messages, but instead must be read as sites of conflict within a given culture or worldview. As a result of deconstruction, texts reveal a multitude of viewpoints existing simultaneously, often in direct conflict with one another. Comparison of a deconstructive reading of a text with a more traditional one will also show how many of these viewpoints are suppressed and ignored."
Basically this says there is no truth. Anything says everything. This idea goes way back to the Sophists in ancient Greece who believed nothing and would argue the case for anything for anyone who paid them. We call these people lawyers today. Structuralism is objective while decontructionism is subjective. In today's society, it's far more popular to not believe in absolutes. Believeing in absolutes alledgedly makes you old fashioned and close minded.
But, it's a poor reason to reject something as obvious as structuralism just because you don't like the idea of objective facts and rules that govern. The fact of the matter is that there are objective truths and there are subjective opinions.
No matter how much free will you think you have, there are clear laws of nature that dictate eating jell-o will not cure cancer. You can not choose to make jell-o a cure for cancer simply because you say it is.
Both of these schools of thought can exist perfectly together. There are many things in this world that fall under structuralism and many things in this world that fall under deconstructionism. But nothing, by definition of these two theories, can exist in both schools of thought simultaniously.
Every theory has it's detractors. There are still people who think the earth is flat. But they're going to need better arguments.
"I don't like the idea of not being in control" is not a good argument against structuralism. The more aware of the laws around you the more in control you will be. Man cannot fly on their own. Laws of physics dictate we stay on the ground. However, by understanding the laws of physics man found a way to use those laws to allow him to fly.
And now we all have more choices. If I want to jump off a large cliff and not die I can do that now using tools that work within the laws of nature to slow my decent.
And I am okay with this.
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