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| Mapping the Mind | 
 enlarge | Author: Rita Carter
Publisher: University of California Press
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $13.50
You Save: $12.45 (48%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (45 reviews)
Sales Rank: 8179
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 10.3 x 7.7 x 0.6
ISBN: 0520224612
Dewey Decimal Number: 573
EAN: 9780520224612
ASIN: 0520224612
Publication Date: February 1, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 No Ghosts in the brain April 19, 2006
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
An exellent and optimistic book that antecipates the place of consciousness in the brain.
Very good graphicaly with beautiful images.
I strongly recomend it to everyone interested in the subject
 Superficial introduction March 31, 2006
18 out of 20 found this review helpful
I just got and read this book because of some of the more recent and enthusiastic reader reviews. But I beg to differ with their assessment, since this is not the first book on the subject I have read. The author, a journalist, is over her head in this subject matter and apparently does not realize it. This becomes apparent in the context of other neuroscience literature.
Compared to serious works on the subject written by neuroscientists who actually do some of the research upon which their books are based, this is a quick read. I zipped through it in a few hours. By comparison, it takes me days to get through a work of the same length by Drs. LeDoux or Damasio, who are both absolute authorities. The quick overview can of course be most helpful, but be aware that the real scientists are harder to read for a reason. It's because they have very deep subject-matter knowledge coupled with fine sensitivity to what can be claimed without distortion. They know *all* of the pertinent studies on their topic, not just a small subset. They're cautious, and thorough in their explanations. The journalist tends to wish to make sweeping statements on the basis of insufficient knowledge, since she doesn't have years to master such a complex discipline and the summary style is more digestible for a broad audience. I am a scholar-researcher and academic journal editor myself, and have also done quite a bit of newspaper writing, so I know intimately both sides of the writing spectrum. In Ms. Carter's case, after not too many pages I began not to trust her pronouncements. Too many are simply too glib.
Carter treats too many aspects unevenly and incompletely. Music, for instance, gets only about two pages of text, over half of which is devoted to the tingle-thrill sensation, probably because the author found a catchy anecdote in an experiment about chickens and music. It's a cute story for a newspaper, but if you wish to understand music and the brain, this is not even a bare introduction. See instead any publication by Isabelle Peretz, a psychologist-neuroscientist specializing in music at the University of Montreal (she has lots of PDFs on her departmental website), who is very authoritative yet writes accessibly. Carter does not mention Peretz anywhere in the book.
I was surprised when Carter identified the amygdala as the "source of negative emotions of anger, fear and sadness" (p. 103). And she writes: "the amygdala, as we have seen, does not convey concepts, it simply creates emotional feelings." These are misleading formulations that you'd never read in anything written by Antonio Damasio. While it is strongly implicated in the fear reflex, I have not read elsewhere that the amygdala is so clearly involved in sadness or anger. And a neurologist would not say "creates emotional feelings" -- rather, it contributes to a piece of the process of feeling. In his books, Damasio is always careful to point out that any one small area of the brain is rarely completely responsible for anything. Rather, brain functions are typically distributed over networks of brain regions that work together in complex processes and pathways that are still mostly imperfectly understood. Damasio conscientiously presents his entire books as hypotheses in need of further research, whereas the journalist is not nearly so hesitant. The occupational hazard of every journalist is the impossible obligation to get up to speed on a new topic quickly, without any of the formal training that topic experts have, yet present a lucid and balanced explication to a wide readership. In this instance, as happens daily in the newspaper, the summary simplifies the story but often twists the facts and their implications.
On the plus side, the illustrations are numerous, pertinent, and quite helpful in assisting the reader to visualize many of the abstract and difficult concepts in this book.
Mapping the Mind February 24, 2006
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Written with amazing insight, this book takes Neurophysiology from sleep-inducing to fascinating. The book is an interesting read for anyone, with great pictures and anecdotes. I would recommend it to anyone looking to understand the brain.
I love this book! October 9, 2005
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is an awesome book. It is very interesting and full of wonderful, very detailed pictures. You would think it would have large words and be totally incomprehensible. However, it is the opposite.
I have had Anatomy & Physiology I & II, so this book reviews for me and then goes a little further about the brain. If you have never had an A&P coures don't worry because she gives brief but sufficient explanations before she makes her point.
I am using this as a supplement text for a Master's level course and it is a fast read. I truly don't mind reading a chapter and it's over before I know it.
 A pleasure to own for its artwork alone August 21, 2005
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is one of the most pleasurable books to own in term so its artwork (far cry from Gray's anatomy0. It reminded me of the exquisite artwork that made Scientific American postively redolent when I was a child many years ago. The influence of Chris Frith on the writing has ensured that the text is clear and concise on important scientific points. It does however share the hubris of all modern neuroscience by persistently interchanging talk of thoughts, emptions and feelings with talk of brain activity, brain scan interpretations, etc. I am loathe to dismiss this epistemological violation as a stylistic error but in the beautiful aesthetic context of the rest of the book I let it slide. This book is not eye candy, by any means. The explanations and descriptions are constructed to be read. However, the artwork reinforces the old adage: a picture tells a thousand words. If you have an interest in anything to do with the brain, even down to delicate sweetbread fritters in a provncale sauce, this book is for you.
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