The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God |  | Author: David J. Linden
Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Category: Book
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Rating:  37 reviews
Sales Rank: 270449
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 7.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0674024788
Dewey Decimal Number: 612.82
EAN: 9780674024786
ASIN: 0674024788
Publication Date: March 31, 2007
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Product Description
You've probably seen it before: a human brain dramatically lit from the side, the camera circling it like a helicopter shot of Stonehenge, and a modulated baritone voice exalting the brain's elegant design in reverent tones. To which this book says: Pure nonsense. In a work at once deeply learned and wonderfully accessible, the neuroscientist David Linden counters the widespread assumption that the brain is a paragon of design--and in its place gives us a compelling explanation of how the brain's serendipitous evolution has resulted in nothing short of our humanity. A guide to the strange and often illogical world of neural function, The Accidental Mind shows how the brain is not an optimized, general-purpose problem-solving machine, but rather a weird agglomeration of ad-hoc solutions that have been piled on through millions of years of evolutionary history. Moreover, Linden tells us how the constraints of evolved brain design have ultimately led to almost every transcendent human foible: our long childhoods, our extensive memory capacity, our search for love and long-term relationships, our need to create compelling narrative, and, ultimately, the universal cultural impulse to create both religious and scientific explanations. With forays into evolutionary biology, this analysis of mental function answers some of our most common questions about how we've come to be who we are. (20070601)
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 37
 Good science explained with humor October 22, 2009
Peter Clarke (Lausanne, Switzerland)
David Linden is a professor of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University and leads a research group that works on the cell biology of memory storage in the cerebellum. It is thus no surprise that the science in this book is accurate and up-to-date. But the book is also witty, readable and accessible to a fairly wide readership. Despite the title, the emphasis is on the brain as substrate for the mind, not just the mind in isolation.
There has been such an explosion of knowledge in neuroscience that any author of a book on it has to be very selective. As a neuroscientist myself, I tend to have strong views on what should be included. On the whole I think Linden has selected well, but I am surprised that he left out the work of Nobel prize-winners David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, whose discoveries in the visual system are eminently explicable to a general audience. Incidentally, he also left out all the other Nobel prize-winning neuroscientists (Hodgkin, Huxley, Eccles, Levi-Montalcini, Neher, Sakmann, Carlsson, Greengard, Kandel, Buck etc.), but many of their discoveries are too technical to explain in a general book. In any case, Linden certainly brings in plenty of fascinating research on numerous topics including brain development, sensation, memory, human individuality, love, sex, sleep and dreams. He also doesn't hesitate to deal with controversial subjects such as sexual orientation and the religious impulse, where our knowledge is still rather limited.
I have never met David Linden, but I'm sure he must be a fascinating dinner guest, because he tells several amusing stories about himself without ever seeming overly narcissistic. For example, to illustrate what kinds of dreams occur during REM sleep he recounts his nightmare of being pursued on his bicycle by a beautiful woman as snakes that cover the road snap at his feet. He then mentions that his father is a psychoanalyst!
One emphasis of the book (and the title) is that the brain (and hence the mind) is an accidental result of evolution. Linden makes scathing criticisms of those who oppose Darwinian evolution in the name of religion, but points out that many forms of religious belief are compatible with evolution. One may agree or disagree with his views, but he does try to be fair.
I consider this to be currently the best available book on brain and mind for intelligent lay readers.
 Well Written Introduction to the topic of Brain/Mind August 1, 2009
Andrew J. Givens (Diamond Bar, CA USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The Accidental Mind is extremely well written and is easy to read and understand. Technical descriptions are frequent, but are presented in such a way that no technical training is needed to grasp these basic concepts.
My only criticism is the complete lack of citations. While a few general in-text references are provided, there should have been citations to lead the reader to follow up reading on specific aspects. There is included a "Further Reading" appendix, where each chapter has a few titles provided in two categories "Material for a General Audience" (too few) and "Scientific Reports and Reviews" (Journal publications). Still, very few of these works is connected to specific details presented in the chapter text.
Overall, this is a wonderful introduction on the subject. Highly recommended for Intro purposes.
More than a primer on neuro-physiology! June 28, 2009
Jeff Pickens (USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
You know, this is just a fun book to read! Dr. David Linden has taken a would-be terrifying subject (neuroscience) and made it a hands-on reading story that serves a general audience very well, particularly an audience with any background or curiosity about our "marvelous and miraculous" brain.
In fact, having (suffered?) through a medical school education that included detailed neuroanatomy and physiology, I wish we students had had access to this book. In addition to reading the huge, somewhat "dry" tomes required for the courses, I wish we had substituted this book for yet another lecturer whose personal research interest included the wonders of calcium channel regulation, nerve potential propagation, or other such micro-detail in the overall picture. Perhaps there might have been more students interested in research careers in brain science. To bring FUN into learning science is a marvelous and miraculous gift, which is what Dr. Linden is able to do well.
Other reviewers have done a fabulous job describing the content of the book, so I'll avoid repeat. What struck me personally during the reading (my "take home" lesson) was the impression that evolutionary biology does indeed suggest here that we do the best that we can with what nature generates over the eons, and that our brains are anything but "irreducibly complex." Additionally, Dr. Linden is very academically honest when he describes, several times throughout the narrative, what we simply "don't know." It may be fair to suggest that the essence of science should be all about self-confessional "I don't know, or don't know absolutely. But let's see if we can learn"--he touches upon this a few times in the reading.
I would recommend this book to anyone who seeks to understand the basics of brain anatomy and physiology, but particularly for those who want to add to an overall understanding of why we think or believe or behave as we do. Definitive Answers might not be particularly forthcoming in this book--there are many black-boxes, or "middle things" that remain unknown. But I think Dr. Linden does a great job in suggesting our future challenges, and describing the small victories where the processes are already particularly well understood.
In the half-century I've been lucky enough to experience (and remember), he confirms for me that our brains do indeed strive to create some meaningful narrative, to fill in the "gaps" of incompleteness. Despite the seeming mess that has "accidentally" evolved with all its inefficiencies, it may be a wonderfully unique fleshy mass that can appreciate itself and strive to know more. It was the spirit of making neuroscience fun and interesting that generates my praise for this book. I hope you enjoy it!
Fantastic look into the wonder and imperfections of your brain! June 21, 2009
C. Meriam (Dayton, OH USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book was quite an eye opener looking into the evolution of the brain. I found it fascinating and highly enlightening. Some of the initial explanations of brain functions as far as neurons and synapses went into a little too much detail than what was needed to make a point, but it was otherwise a great read!
My one little disappointment was the brevity of the information about religion, god, supernatural beliefs. I was hoping for more.
Overall a great read!
A happy accident June 16, 2009
George Ricker (Palm Bay, FL United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
You know that elegantly designed computer inside your head, that marvelously efficient processor of information, sensory input and everything else? It doesn't exist. In its place, as David Linden reveals in this book, is a hodgepodge of evolved structures built up bit by bit over time. It isn't elegant. It isn't even especially efficient. In fact, Linden describes the human brain, which usually accounts for about two percent of body weight but burns up about 20 percent of the energy we use internally, as the "Hummer H2" of the human body.
In "The Accidental Mind," Linden, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University, shows how the brain is constructed and how its construction influences the way it works. The most important thing to know about the brain, he points out, is that it wasn't designed from scratch all at once, but that it evolved over time with new sections overlaying but not removing or drastically changing the older parts. In a sense, our brains are like an ice cream cone with one scoop piled on top of another.
This is an interesting and well-written book. Linden has a talent for demystifying the subject matter without patronizing the reader. Along the way he reveals lots of interesting tidbits, like the fact that Einstein's brain was actually a bit on the small side--as human brains go--and that as transmitters of electrical impulses, neurons are terribly inefficient. Although there is a bit of technical language involved in the descriptions of brain function, Linden's explanations and descriptions are clear enough that the jargon should not pose an obstacle to the average reader.
The accidental evolution of our human brains has given us accidental minds, and it is that accidental creation that makes us behave as we do. If you are at all interested in learning about your brain and everyone else's, this is a good place to start.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 37
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