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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? |
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| ............. | 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 observe the brain activity underlying their conduct. 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 1980s and I was instantly hooked. The first studies were 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 psychobabble. 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. |
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| From reviews of Mapping the Mind ______________________________ " . . . one of the clearest and best-illustrated attempts to explain the virtually inaccessible - the human brain. " John Cornwell, Sunday Times "Within the hardware of the brain there lurks a software called the mind. Rita Carter has brilliantly conveyed the thrill of discovering what this software can do." Matt Ridley " . . . riveting and up-to-the-minute." Maggie Gee, Daily Telegraph ". . .a handsomely produced and accessible introduction to our startling new ability to observe and map the brain ... no previous knowledge is assumed, but by the end the reader will be well informed of the latest developments." Anthony Daniels, Sunday Telegraph "It is a tour de force - a compendium of anecdote, research, and speculation that is quite breathtaking . . . excellent, informative and provocative." Prof Haydn Ellis, Vice-Chancellor Cardiff University |
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