The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God Paperback – December 15, 2008

The prologue begins, "The Best Thing about being a brain researcher is that, in a very small number of situations, you can appear to have the power of mind reading. Take cocktail parties. Chardonnay in hand, your host makes one of those introductions where he feels compelled to state your occupation.... [Then I say] `You're about to ask if it's true that we only use 10 percent of our brain, aren't you?'"So, the author is A-list on the cocktail party circuit, and perhaps that accounts for his ability to weave a fascinating tale that is this book. Oh, yes, he is a distinguished scientist as well, so there are some dashes of new science that are fun to know. It is science with an Attitude.Here's what the author says he tries to do, which is dead-on for a review of this book: "I will be your guide to this strange and often illogical world of neural function ... pointing out the most unusual and counterintuitive aspects of brain and neural design.... I will try to convince you that the constraints of quirky, evolved brain design have ultimately led to many transcendent and unique human characteristics: our long childhoods, our extensive memory capacity (... the substrate upon which our individuality is created by experience), our search for long-term love relationships, our need to create compelling narrative and, ultimately, the universal cultural impulse to create religious explanations."Along the way, I will briefly review the biology background you will need to understand the things I am guessing you most want to know about the brain and behavior. You know, the good stuff: emotion, illusion, memory, dreams, love and sex, and, of course, freaky twin stories." [The author knows well what is the "good stuff."]There is much more. A stunning plus for the book is the illustrations, all of them original, excellent to behold, and some of them an entrancing story in their own right. Evidently, someone found a talented creator, as the illustrations just have to be examples of Intelligent Design.Did you know that non-REM sleep appears to have evolved as early as the fly, about 500 million years ago? REM sleep is found only in warm-blooded species, including the most primitive surviving mammals, such as the platypus. Appears to be absent in reptiles and amphibians. Why do mammals need REM sleep and reptiles do not? The book has some interesting speculation and interesting experiments showing plausible reasons that are not true.Did you know dolphins are among those needing the least REM sleep (at under 12 minutes)? Book says they sleep 10 hours total. Makes me wonder if they swim in their sleep to surface to breathe. Horses only sleep 3 hours total. Ferrets do 6 hours of REM and the platypus does a fabulous 8 hours of REM. Wonder what dreams play thru its brain?The book has a web site for more info, AccidentalMind.org.Hope you enjoy the book as much as I did.

"The Accidental Mind" is basically a neural guide to the brain showing how the brain is basically a kluge of lots of things evolving over millions of years. Not that I have to be convinced about evolution, but the book does present some interesting thoughts along the way, like:1. Human experience (feelings, perceptions, actions, etc) has taken the inefficient design of the brain and evolved its structure into the remarkable thing it is, our very humaness.2. The brain is like an 'ice cream scoop', with the highest functions being added to the top, scoop by scoop, so to speak, during the course of evolution. Highest functions at the top, lowest at the bottom.3. Human constructs of neurons, gliel cells, axons, dendrites, synapses, etc. are not much different from a worm, hence evolution is a logical conclusion.4. Nature vs nurture - result is in the middle - for instance, about 50% of intelligence is because of genes, the rest is not genetic.5. There are critical periods for certain aspects of learning - after 6-12 months a baby exposed to two languages can no longer have perfect accents in both languages. Also, there is an argument that whole language vs just phonetic learning of language is better during the critical early time period.6. Sensations and emotions don't result in totally accurate pictures, so the brain fills in gaps (saccades). e.g. eyes jumping around.7. Higher brain functions involve both memory and emotion, emotion basically 'underlining' something for easier recall. A memory is really a distributed network of associated memories, and are the building blocks of logic, reasoning, decision-making and social cognition. That is why if some memory is forgotten (misattribution - error), it can sometimes be pieced together from scattered locations. The reason young child-abuse victims are more open to suggestibility during interviews is because the brain/memory network is still growing.8. Human sexual behavior is mainly influenced by culture, less by genes. That is why human females have concealed ovulation and humans engage in recreation sex - perhaps in order to build long-term bonding, longer times needed to raise children and for the male to more likely be around long enough.9. Gender identity is a complex interplay of biological and social factors. Male homosexuality likely linked to the X chromosome. Also, a mom's stress could affect the male fetus.10. Women are better at arithmetic, while men are better at mathematical reasoning, in general. Different cognitive styles - not necessarily genetic, but likely.11. Oxytocin surges during childbirth and breastfeeding - likely in order to enhance bonding.12. Sleep deprivation can make the brain delusional, suggestible, and/or psychotic - hence can be considered torture if intentionally caused. REM sleep, dreams are important for memory consolidation.13. Religion is cross-cultural, even its variety is constrained. Why? The brain looks to develop narratives to fill in gaps, like visual 'saccades'. Narrative functioning of the brain can't be shut off. Confabulation - piecing together old memories for a narrative context. Therefore, we are predisposed to believing things we can't prove.14. Intelligent Design is not even a scientific theory since it is not falsifiable.So, the book does give a pretty good overview of human brain function - many technical details of the brain, plus explanations and scientific thoughts about what makes us 'human'.

Great book. Helped me with my research.

Stephen Haines' review covers the content and central topics of the book extremely well. All I wish to add is a further recommendation to read it if you wish to have a sound understanding of the neurological underpinnings of human behaviour - from the simple firing (or probably not) of individual neurons to the epiphenomena of consciousness that arises when billions of poorly functional brain cells combine. And as to the notion of 'Intelligent Design', if the human brain was indeed designed then this book clearly shows that we should have very serious concerns about its designer. As a psychologist familiar with much of the content, I still learned a great deal from the author's insights and approaches. It is both lucid and informative. Read this book.

The author mixes complicated, poorly exposed, explanations, with banal observations.