The 21st Century Brain: Explaining, Mending & Manipulating the Mind

by Steven Rose

Neuroscientists now claim to be able to explain the roots of human personality. In this overview of the grey matter, Rose explores the evolutionary route by which brains progressed, up to today’s complex societies, and ponders the brain’s future.

Genres: Science, Psychology, Nonfiction, Brain, Neuroscience, Popular Science, Biology

256 pages, Hardcover

First published March 31, 2005

About the author

Steven Peter Russell Rose was an English neuroscientist, author and social commentator. He was an emeritus professor of biology and neurobiology at the Open University and Gresham College, London.

Reviews

[Richard Newton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A wide ranging book on the understanding of the brain. This book is now almost 15 years old, as I write this review, and in a dynamic field like the study of the brain I suspect that is a long time in which some ideas and understandings will have changed. However, at the very broad level some of this book is at, I suspect it is still valid.

Rose comes across as an excellent, broad-minded, interesting scientist. He talks in a way that appeals to me. He is dismissive of simplistic reductionist scientific statements of single answers to involved problems. (e.g. in the nature versus nurture debate or DNA versus environment). He is similarly critical of simplistic pharmaceutical answers to mental problems of the form "this pill will solve all your mental problems". He understands his field profoundly. So there is much virtue in what he says and this is a very worthy read.

A couple of issues though knocked down the scoring the 3 stars for me. Firstly, I'm not clear who the audience is. This is pretty much an intelligent lay readers book, I can't believe it would interest anyone deeply involved in the various brain sciences as it would be too simple. Yet it is written in the long sentences of a more academic book. Most of the time this is fine, but he throws in words, which for me and I suspect many other readers are unfamiliar (e.g. "Iatrogenic"), which interrupt the flow and disrupts clarity. Secondly, the chapters meander around. Each one is interesting, but it's not clear what the overall point of the book is.

[Niklaus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Libro datato ma ancora godibile.
15 anni in ambito neuroscienze sono tanti e in alcuni capitoli si sentono tutti, specialmente in quelli deputati ai risultati di studi con fMRI, MEG o stimolazione transcranica.
Nondimeno molte parti sono ancora valide, in primis i problemi su come affrontare l'analisi di sistemi complessi, con critiche sulla psicologia evoluzionista e sull'adattivismo.
Alcuni capitoli, come quello sul Ritalin, sono molto importanti ancora oggi, a fronte dell'ampia diffusione di tali farmaci nei paesi anglosassoni.

[Martin Empson · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the dialectical scientist, the brain is not simply an unchanging lump of matter. Rose is keen to emphasize that the brain, and its functionality, is part of an evolving, changing structure that has a history. This history has shaped the physical structure of the brain, but it has also shaped how individual humans think, remember and learn.

Key to this is of course evolution, and in some of the most fascinating science writing I have ever read, Rose traces the likely evolutionary development that takes us from the soup of chemicals on the very early earth, through small cellular animals and to today's complex animal brains. Studying human brains "reveals their ancestry. Their basic biochemistry was essentially fixed at the dawn of evolutionary time, with the emergence of cells." Though obviously the has been enormous evolutionary development since then.

Full review: http://resolutereader.blogspot.co.uk/...

[Kerem · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book making a good critique of our understanding on how brain works and how we think/feel/empathize, discussing a lot of aspects from the biology and evolution behind how human brain got to where it is, to environmental factors in the play, and most importantly, our ignorant perspective on social and cultural aspects affecting its development. Some of the earlier chapters are at times heavy with medical/biological terms (I admit I'm not a fan of biology and medicine terminology so that surely affected my view on that) and hence I'm giving it a 4-star, but I see it is also necessary to build up the later chapters and the very interesting discussions in there. Definitely recommend to anyone for a non-fiction read!

[Kei · Rating 4 out of 5]

though it deals with difficult topics, it is written understandable for general readers like me. the author's ethical views are also impressive.