Mapping the Mind
I have always been fascinated by what makes people tick. Why do some people love dressing up while others are happy wearing a sack? Why do certain individuals flock to parties while others do anything to avoid them? How come certain otherwise sensible folk believe that aliens have landed? Why do some people find farting funny? And why are some of us natural artists while others would be hard-pushed to paint their toenails?
Psychologists have done their best to explain these things but until recently they could only guess what was happening in the brain by observing behaviour - there was no way to look inside people's heads and see what caused them to act the way they did. Now, though, scientists can do just that. Imaging technology like PET and functional MRI make it possible to watch the human mind at work, and the picture that is being built up as a result is astonishing.
I first came across these brain imaging studies in the late 80s and I was instantly hooked. The first studies were pretty crude but as the technology got better I saw that the images were adding up, like bits in a jigsaw puzzle, to reveal something quite startling: a complete picture of the human mind at work. The biological roots of human behaviour, and the neurological differences which create individual personalities, were suddenly becoming visible.
For several years I scoured the bookshops looking for a book which pulled this picture together, but all I could find were dense, jargon-laden tomes or superficial psychobabbble. So I decided to write the book myself. I soon found that it was not enough simply to piece together brain imaging findings. To make sense of them it was necessary to weave them into our existing models of the mind - those we have constructed through evolutionary biology, psychology and studies of eccentric or aberrant behaviour. Then it seemed essential to relate what happens in "the" brain to what happens in "my" brain - and yours ....to put the neuroscience into the context of everyday experience and behaviour. "Mapping the Mind" is the result.
Books:
→ Mapping the Memory
← Mapping the Mind
→ (Exploring) Consciousness
→ Multiplicity
The first edition was published in 1998 and was short-listed that year for the prestigious Rhone-Poulenc Science Prize (now Aventis). It has since been translated into 14 languages and remains one of the standard primary texts on the subject.
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�Mapping the Mind� was written under the sceptical eye of Professor Chris Frith of the Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology in London. Chris�s work is quite simply brilliant (as is that of his wife, the developmental psychologist Uta Frith ) Their books are also terrific � you can read about Chris�s latest � on hallucinations - here. |
You can read a bit of "Mapping the Mind" here or check out the reviews.
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