The Mind's Past / Michael S. Gazzaniga.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gazzaniga, Michael S., Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Neuropsychology.

Brain--Evolution.

Brain.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (222 p.)

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, [1998]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Why does the human brain insist on interpreting the world and constructing a narrative? In this ground-breaking work, Michael S. Gazzaniga, one of the world's foremost cognitive neuroscientists, shows how our mind and brain accomplish the amazing feat of constructing our past-a process clearly fraught with errors of perception, memory, and judgment. By showing that the specific systems built into our brain do their work automatically and largely outside of our conscious awareness, Gazzaniga calls into question our everyday notions of self and reality. The implications of his ideas reach deeply into the nature of perception and memory, the profundity of human instinct, and the ways we construct who we are and how we fit into the world around us.Over the past thirty years, the mind sciences have developed a picture not only of how our brains are built but also of what they were built to do. The emerging picture is wonderfully clear and pointed, underlining William James's notion that humans have far more instincts than other animals. Every baby is born with circuits that compute information enabling it to function in the physical world. Even what helps us to establish our understanding of social relations may have grown out of perceptual laws delivered to an infant's brain. Indeed, the ability to transmit culture-an act that is only part of the human repertoire-may stem from our many automatic and unique perceptual-motor processes that give rise to mental capacities such as belief and culture.Gazzaniga explains how the mind interprets data the brain has already processed, making "us" the last to know. He shows how what "we" see is frequently an illusion and not at all what our brain is perceiving. False memories become a part of our experience; autobiography is fiction. In exploring how the brain enables the mind, Gazzaniga points us toward one of the greatest mysteries of human evolution: how we become who we are.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

PREFACE

1. THE FICTIONAL SELF

2. BRAIN CONSTRUCTION

3. THE BRAIN KNOWS BEFORE YOU DO

4. SEEING IS BELIEVING

5. THE SHADOW KNOWS

6. REAL MEMORIES, PHONY MEMORIES

7. THE VALUE OF INTERPRETING THE PAST

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9786612355103

9781282355101

1282355104

9780520925489

0520925483

OCLC:

475931053