What can be a good book to start the YEAR 2016?

[Piyush]

What can be a good book to start the YEAR 2016?
(So that I can start my year with one of these books)

Please name at least one book in the following genres:

1. Biology
2.Evolution
3.Genetics
4.Neuroscience

Thank You

[Adam]

1. The latest edition of the Campbell and Reece - Biology
4. Thinking, Fast and slow

[Teo]

1., 2. & 3. The audiobook version of The Selfish Gene is excellently narrated by both Richard Dawkins and his wife Lalla Ward, taking turns to e.g. indicate the return from an endnote to the main text. Brief contents:
(view spoiler)[01. Why are people?
02. The replicators
03. Immortal coils
04. The gene machine
05. Aggression: stability and the selfish machine
06. Genesmanship
07. Family planning
08. Battle of the generations
09. Battle of the sexes
10. You scratch my back, I'll ride on yours
11. Memes: the new replicators
12. Nice guys finish first
13. The long reach of the gene (hide spoiler)]

~4. I'll second Thinking, Fast and Slow as an introduction to (& overview of) heuristics & biases research. I don't remember it being very neuro, though? Contents:
(view spoiler)[1. Two Systems
– The Characters of the Story
– Attention and Effort
– The Lazy Controller
– The Associative Machine
– Cognitive Ease
– Norms, Surprises, and Causes
– A Machine for Jumping to Conclusions
– How Judgments Happen
– Answering an Easier Question
2. Heuristics and Biases
– The Law of Small Numbers
– Anchors
– The Science of Availability
– Availability, Emotion, and Risk
– Tom W's Specialty
– Linda: Less is More
– Causes Trump Statistics
– Regression to the Mean
– Taming Intuitive Predictions
3. Overconfidence
– The Illusion of Understanding
– The Illusion of Validity
– Intuitions Vs. Formulas
– Expert Intuition: When Can We Trust It?
– The Outside View
– The Engine of Capitalism
4. Choices
– Bernoulli's Errors
– Prospect Theory
– The Endowment Effect
– Bad Events
– The Fourfold Problem
– Rare Events
– Risk Policies
– Keeping Score
– Reversals
– Frames and Reality
5. Two Selves
– Two Selves
– Life as a Story
– Experienced Well-Being
– Thinking About Life (hide spoiler)]

+5. Psychohistory / cultural evolution [of consciousness]: I enjoyed (as an audiobook) entertaining Julian Jaynes' grand theory in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Some of its supporting evidence comes from neuroscientific sources. I've still to look into more recent discussion to know what to make of it, but it's certainly a very interesting mix. Contents:
(view spoiler)[Book One: The Mind of Man

1. The Consciousness of Consciousness
– The Extensiveness of Consciousness
– Consciousness Not a Copy of Experience
– Consciousness Not Necessary for Concepts
– Consciousness Not Necessary for Learning
– Consciousness Not Necessary for Thinking
– Consciousness Not Necessary for Reason
– The Location of Consciousness
– Is Consciousness Necessary?

2. Consciousness
– Metaphor and Language
– Understanding as Metaphor
– The Metaphor Language of Mind
– Paraphiers and Paraphrands
– The Features of Consciousness

3. The Mind of Iliad
– The Language of the Iliad
– The Religion of the Early Greeks
– The Bicameral Mind
– Further Qualifications

4. The Bicameral Mind
– The Bicameral Man
– The Bicameral God
– Hallucinations in Psychotics
– The Character of the Voices
– Their Locality and Function
– The Visual Component
– The Release of the Gods
– The Authority of Sound
– The Control of Obedience

5. The Double Brain
– Both Hemispheres Understand Language
– There Exists Vestigial Godlike Function in the Right Hemisphere
– The Two Hemispheres Can Behave Independently
– Hemispheric Differences in Cognitive Function Echo the Differences of God and Man
– A New Look at the Brain

6. The Origin of Civilization
– The Evolution of Groups
– The Evolution of Language
– Calls, Modifiers, and Commands
– Nouns
– The Origin of Auditory Hallucinations
– The Age of Names
– The Advent of Agriculture
– The First God
– The Hallucinogenic King
– The God-King
– The Success of Civilization

Book Two: The Witness of History

1. Gods, Graves, and Idols
– The Houses of Gods
– From Jericho to Ur
– A Hittite Variation
– Olmec and Maya
– Andean Civilizations
– The Golden Realm of the Incas
– The Living Dead
– Idols That Speak
– Figurines
– A Theory of Idols
– The Speech of Idols

2. Literate Bicameral Theocracies
– Mesopotamia: The Gods as Owners
– The Mouth-Washing Ceremonies
– The Personal God
– When the King Becomes a God
– Egypt: The Kings as Gods
– The Memphite Theology
– Osiris, the Dead King’s Voice
– Mansions for Voices
– A New Theory of the Ka
– The Temporal Changes in Theocracies
– The Complexities
– The Idea of Law

3. The Causes of Consciousness
– The Instability of Bicameral Kingdoms
– The Weakening of Divine Authority with Writing
– The Failure of the Gods
– The Assyrian Spring
– Eruption, Migration, Conquest
– How Consciousness Began
– The Origin of Narratization in Epics
– The Origin of the Analog ‘I’ in Deceit
– Natural Selection
– Conclusion

4. A Change of Mind in Mesopotamia
– Prayer
– An Origin of Angels
– Demons
– A New Heaven
– Divination
– Omen and Omen Texts
– Sortilege
– Augury
– Spontaneous Divination
– The Edge of Subjectivity
– Assyrian and Old Babylonian Letters Compared
– The Spatialization of Time
– Gilgamesh
– Conclusion

5. The Intellectual Consciousness of Greece
– Looking Forward Through the Iliad
– Preconscious Hypostases
– Thumos
– Phrenes
– Kradie
– Etor
– Noos
– Psyche
– The Wiles of the Odyssey
– Foolish Perses
– Lyric and Elegy from 700 to 600 B.C.
– Solon’s Mind
– The Invention of the Soul

6. The Moral Consciousness of the Khabiru
– Amos and Ecclesiastes Compared
– Some Observations on the Pentateuch
– The Loss of the Visual Component
– Inconsistency Between Persons
– Inconsistency Within Persons
– Divination by Gods
– The Book of 1 Samuel
– The Idols of the Khabiru
– The Last of the Nabiim

Book Three: Vestiges of the Bicameral Mind in the Modern World

1. The Quest for Authorization
– Oracles
– The Oracle at Delphi
– The General Bicameral Paradigm
– Other Oracles
– The Six Oracular Terms
– Sibyls
– A Revival of Idols

2. Of Prophets and Possession
– Induced Possession
– Negatory Possession
– Possession in the Modern World
– Glossolalia

3. Of Poetry and Music
– Poetry and Song
– The Nature of Music
– Poesy and Possession
– A Homily on Thamyris

4. Hypnosis
– The Paraphrands of Newtonian Forces
– The Changing Nature of Hypnotic Man
– The Induction
– Trance and Paralogic Compliance
– The Hypnotist as Authorization
– Evidence for the Bicameral Theory of Hypnosis
– Objection: Does Hypnosis Exist?

5. Schizophrenia
– The Evidence in History
– The Difficulties of the Problem
– Hallucinations
– The Erosion of the Analog ‘I’
– The Dissolution of Mind-Space
– The Failure of Narratization
– Body Image Boundary Disturbance
– The Advantage of Schizophrenia
– The Neurology of Schizophrenia
– In Conclusion

6. The Auguries of Science

Afterword
– The Cognitive Explosion
– The Self
– From Affect to Emotion
– From Fear to Anxiety
– From Shame to Guilt
– From Mating to “Sex”

Index of Persons
Index of Subjects (hide spoiler)]

[Piyush]

Thanks Teo and Adam. Can you also suggest the best book on human DNA to read for a beginner that is well written in Modern Times thank you again

[Teo]

Piyush wrote: "Thanks Teo and Adam. Can you also suggest the best book on human DNA to read for a beginner that is well written in Modern Times thank you again"

I can't, since I haven't really read much on the topic. Maybe someone who's read e.g. Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters could tell if it's a good start or not. :)

AFAIK, that Campbell Biology is a widely used coursebook. But for genetics specifically, I might give a look to this website http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/ recommended by a friend with a heart emoticon.

[Piyush]

Thanks Teo

[Adam]

Piyush wrote: "Thanks Teo and Adam. Can you also suggest the best book on human DNA to read for a beginner that is well written in Modern Times thank you again"

I can't recall any book I read that narrowly focused on human DNA.

However, I would recommend Campbell Biology again. I was reluctant to read it, but it's an absolutely wonderful book. You can always skip the topics that you have no interest in. If you want to understand the subject you probably can't do better than this book, as it requires the reader no prior knowledge of anything, it's up to date, it explains every concept in detail, in an understandable manner.

[Judith]

Anxious: using the brain to understand and treat fear and anxiety by Joseph LeDoux. It is not for the lay person. However, with a working knowledge of neurobiology the book provides many new insights, particularly with regards to relationship between amygdalae and different regions of prefrontal cortex.

[Sasha]

I greatly enjoyed Moonwalking With Einstein. It's altogether a layperson's book, about memory in general and memorization in specific. Includes a kind of natural history of memorization that I found fascinating.

[Piyush]

Thanks Shasha

[K]

1. Biology
The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World

2.Evolution / 3. Genetics
The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics: How Conservatism and Liberalism Evolved Within Humans

4.Neuroscience
Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing

[Chelsey]

I will always recommend Phantoms in the brain by VS Ramachandran. That book blew my mind when I read it. I plan to reread it one day. There's an interesting chapter on phantom limbs and how your brain builds a mental picture of your body. You think your body schematic is innate? Think again! It can be tampered with! Ok, rant done. :)

[Ali]

Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters
And
The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science

Thank you all for your suggestions

[Scott]

One of my favorite neuroscience books is "The Emporer's New Mind" by Roger Penrose. For anyone interested, I'm making my own book on neurophilosophy, "Socrates in Cyberspace," available for FREE from Wed (1/20) to Fri (1/22) on Kindle at Amazon. You can get your copy no cost at: http://www.amazon.com/Socrates-Cybers...