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The Ravenous Brain
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Although mammals and birds are widely regarded as the smartest creatures on earth, it has lately become clear that a very distant branch of the tree of life has also sprouted higher intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. In captivity, octopuses have been known to identify individual human keepers, raid neighboring tanks for food, turn off lightbulbs by spouting jets of water, plug drains, and make daring escapes.
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Human beings are primates, and primates are political animals. Our brains, therefore, are designed not just to hunt and gather but also to help us get ahead socially, often via deception and self-deception. But while we may be self-interested schemers, we benefit by pretending otherwise. The less we know about our own ugly motives, the better - and thus, we don't like to talk, or even think, about the extent of our selfishness. This is "the elephant in the brain".
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Signalling and self-deception explained
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Important information for meditation seekers
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V. S. Ramachandran is at the forefront of his field - so much so that Richard Dawkins dubbed him the "Marco Polo of neuroscience". Now, in a major new work, Ramachandran sets his sights on the mystery of human uniqueness. Taking us to the frontiers of neurology, he reveals what baffling and extreme case studies can teach us about normal brain function and how it evolved.
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Great if you like understanding how brains work
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In Search of Memory
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A deft mixture of memoir and history, modern biology and behavior, In Search of Memory brings listeners from Kandel's childhood in Nazi-occupied Vienna to the forefront of one of the great scientific endeavors of the 20th century: the search for the biological basis of memory. Nobel Prize winner Eric R. Kandel intertwines the intellectual history of the powerful new science of the mind - a combination of cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and molecular biology - with his own personal quest to understand memory.
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Excellent1
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The Book of Why
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"Correlation does not imply causation". This mantra has been invoked by scientists for decades and has led to a virtual prohibition on causal talk. But today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution, sparked by Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and placed causality - the study of cause and effect - on a firm scientific basis.
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Great material, but highly visual
- By Wingo Smith on 07-05-18
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Memories, Dreams, Reflections
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- Unabridged
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In 1957, four years before his death, Carl Gustav Jung, psychiatrist and psychologist, began writing his life story. But what started as an exercise in autobiography soon morphed into an altogether more profound undertaking.
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Dr. Jung's Life Would Make A Good Movie
- By M. Clarke on 05-17-16
Publisher's Summary
Consciousness is our gateway to experience: it enables us to recognize Van Gogh’s starry skies, be enraptured by Beethoven’s Fifth, and stand in awe of a snowcapped mountain. Yet consciousness is subjective, personal, and famously difficult to examine: philosophers have for centuries declared this mental entity so mysterious as to be impenetrable to science.
In The Ravenous Brain, neuroscientist Daniel Bor departs sharply from this historical view, and builds on the latest research to propose a new model for how consciousness works. Bor argues that this brain-based faculty evolved as an accelerated knowledge gathering tool. Consciousness is effectively an idea factory - that choice mental space dedicated to innovation, a key component of which is the discovery of deep structures within the contents of our awareness. This model explains our brains’ ravenous appetite for information - and in particular, its constant search for patterns. Why, for instance, after all our physical needs have been met, do we recreationally solve crossword or Sudoku puzzles? Such behavior may appear biologically wasteful, but, according to Bor, this search for structure can yield immense evolutionary benefits - it led our ancestors to discover fire and farming, pushed modern society to forge ahead in science and technology, and guides each one of us to understand and control the world around us.
But the sheer innovative power of human consciousness carries with it the heavy cost of mental fragility. Bor discusses the medical implications of his theory of consciousness, and what it means for the origins and treatment of psychiatric ailments, including attention-deficit disorder, schizophrenia, manic depression, and autism. All mental illnesses, he argues, can be reformulated as disorders of consciousness - a perspective that opens up new avenues of treatment for alleviating mental suffering.
A controversial view of consciousness, The Ravenous Brain links cognition to creativity in an ingenious solution to one of science’s biggest mysteries.
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- Gary
- Las Cruces, NM, United States
- 11-18-12
Effectively demystifies consciousness
The meaning of consciousness is no longer completely inaccessible to me after reading this book. It's starting to make sense to me. The author does an excellent job of reviewing what is only recently becoming known about the field. He explains difficult concepts wonderfully and uses some of the best analogies I've heard.
The author looks at the relevant philosophy, evolution psychology and the recent neuroscience understandings to go a long way with explaining what is consciousness. He indirectly answers two question, 1) what is it about humans that make us different and 2) will computers ever think.
I've listened to about five or so books and even watched a Great Course lecture on this topic and this book is the first one that went beyond just claiming that the meaning of consciousness is unknowable, and after having read this book, I feel that I'm getting closer to its understanding. I enjoyed the other books, but this one makes me believe that people way smarter than me are getting close to answering those two questions and discovering the real nature of consciousness. .
You know you have a good narrator when you recognize his voice from another book you've read and loved. Mr. Dixon also read "The Beginning of Infinity" and my mind would go back to some passages in that book which were covering similar material. Nicely narrated.
15 of 16 people found this review helpful
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- Mark
- Union, NJ, United States
- 10-05-12
Fascinating/compelling
Have you listened to any of Walter Dixon’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
Dixon's fabulous. Perfect cadence, engaging speaking style.
Any additional comments?
This is an intriguing journey into the roots of human consciousness, drawing on a fascinating, subtle and yet accessible array of brain-related research and creative examples. A pleasure from start to finish.
9 of 10 people found this review helpful
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- Douglas
- 02-28-14
A Very Interesting...
exploration of the physiological elements of the deepest mystery of our existence: consciousness. This book becomes increasing interesting after reading such authors as V. Ramachandran (The Tell-Tale Brain), Jeffery Schwarz (The Mind And The Brain) and Patricia Churchland (Touching A Nerve), all of which are available on Audible as well, and which I can also highly recommend. Bor has studied deeply in philosophy and neurology and thus can bring both perspectives to this very complicated but fascinating investigation of ourselves.
7 of 8 people found this review helpful
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- Lowell B. Koppel
- Winchester, MA USA
- 07-19-13
Bloated
Is there anything you would change about this book?
Contains many nuggets of interesting information gathered from psychology research and experiments that support Bor's position that the mind and the brain are largely identical. This data would be more useful to students of the mind if it were trimmed of the excessively folksy verbiage that one has to sift through to mine these nuggets. I simply lost patience and gave up a little over half way through the book.
Did Walter Dixon do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?
The narration adds to the folksiness by using the breathless style characteristic of network news magazines such as 60 Minutes. It's difficult for me to listen to even one hour of this style, let alone to the over 11 hours of it in this book.
3 of 6 people found this review helpful