Books, Arts & Manners: Matter over Mind

Mind Matters, by Michael Gazzaniga (Houghton Mifflin, 255 pp., $17.95)

It may be hard for the reader of Mind Matters to get past the second chapter—although not out of a lack of interest. Michael Gazzaniga’s book deals in a light and readable way with an enormously important subject: how the human mind works. Professor Gazzaniga takes the newest research in the field of neuroscience and elucidates it for the lay reader. He considers a variety of mental states and discusses what is known about physiological changes in the brain that occur with them—states that range from schizophrenia and clinical depression to love. The reader should persevere past the second chapter; he will find insights into behavior that are not intuitively available—and that are a long way from modern popular psychology. But that second chapter, “Memory and Thinking after Forty,” is awfully discouraging.

LW

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Lacey Washington

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Mind Matters, by Michael Gazzaniga (Houghton Mifflin, 255 pp., $17.95)

It may be hard for the reader of Mind Matters to get past the second chapter—although not out of a lack of interest. Michael Gazzaniga’s book deals in a light and readable way with an enormously important subject: how the human mind works. Professor Gazzaniga takes the newest research in the field of neuroscience and elucidates it for the lay reader. He considers a variety of mental states and discusses what is known about physiological changes in the brain that occur with them—states that range from schizophrenia and clinical depression to love. The reader should persevere past the second chapter; he will find insights into behavior that are not intuitively available—and that are a long way from modern popular psychology. But that second chapter, “Memory and Thinking after Forty,” is awfully discouraging.