Consciousness and the Brain

Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts Audio CD – Audiobook, CD, Unabridged
Author: Visit ‘s Stanislas Dehaene Page ID: 1452616701

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*Starred Review* For 15 years, professor of cognitive psychology and science writer Dehaene (Reading in the Brain, 2009) and his team have been working to identify and understand patterns of brain activity, or “signatures of consciousness.” He now brings us up to speed on the whole of consciousness research in this exciting delineation of the scientific breakthroughs, including the advent of brain-imaging technologies, that have illuminated the brains astonishingly complicated anatomy and intensely intricate, lightning-fast processes. Dehaene recounts experiments involving visual illusions and semantic processing that reveal key facts about the brains management of the incessant stimuli bombardment and ponders the evolution of our all-important “language of thought.” An excellent teacher with a gift for vivid analogies, Dehaene writes that “consciousness is like the spokesperson in a large institution . . . with a staff of a hundred billion neurons” issuing briefs that tell us what we need to know moment by moment. He then explains his and his colleagues groundbreaking theory about the “global neuronal workspace,” where information is made “available to the rest of the brain,” wowing us with descriptions of our pyramidal neurons and their spiny dendrites and the discovery that each neuron “cares” about such specific stimuli as “faces, hands, ­objects.” A stunning examination of the “exquisite biological machinery” that has made us an animal unlike any other. –Donna Seaman

–This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

This book’s spunky writing and popular topic should have made transforming it into an appealing audio an easy proposition. But David Drummond’s repetitive tonal patterns give the production a flat quality that falls short of making this title the “joyous exploration of the mind” that the publisher claims it to be. Drummond’s phrIDg is always clear, but he repeats the same pitch sequences again and again. However, the author’s boyish enthusiasm for this kind of psychological inquiry saves the production and helps it deliver a stirring look at how today’s scientists are parsing the experience of being conscious. T.W.

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Audio CDPublisher: Tantor Audio; Unabridged CD edition (January 30, 2014)Language: EnglishISBN-10: 1452616701ISBN-13: 978-1452616704 Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.1 x 5.3 inches Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies) Best Sellers Rank: #300,417 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #348 in Books > Books on CD > Nonfiction #1229 in Books > Science & Math > Behavioral Sciences > Cognitive Psychology #2086 in Books > Science & Math > Biological Sciences > Biology
As a physician and Stanford researcher (initially in artificial intelligence and currently in cognitive neuroscience), I have been interested in consciousness research for 50 years. How does the brain create consciousness? And, if this is "simply" a story of billions of spiking neurons talking to one another, can it be done in silicon? (If so, this may occasion a profound turning point in human history.)

I have followed Professor Stan Dehaene’s prestigious journal publications for a decade as he has amassed a wealth of evidence supporting the view that consciousness is 1) experimentally accessible, 2) has reliable neural correlates (signatures), and 3) is functionally important . Dehaene (a professor at the College de France in Paris and director of the INSERM Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit) is one of the world’s leading scholars of consciousness. Fortunately for us, his literary agent, John Brockman (of "Edge" fame) persuaded him to write this popular work.

That Dehaene writes this well in English makes me wonder how spectacularly he must write in his native French. We are not only transported to the cutting edge of research on consciousness, but the voyage is a thrill. As expected, Dehaene is thoroughly steeped in the history of consciousness from Plato, through Descartes, Hume, and the Continental philosophers. His writing is also filled with references to French art, literature, and humanism (like serotonin molecules, that culture seems to have diffused from the Louvre down the Boulevard Saint-Michel and become bound in this book.)

Right from the start (see the beautiful, free Introduction on ) he reminds us that it all began in the caves at Lascaux with the depiction of a dreamer’s soul wafting about like a sparrow.
This book is an impressive tour de force on the research on consciousness, particularly on the question of what makes the difference between a conscious and an unconscious perception. I flash the image of a coffee cup on a computer screen briefly, followed by a "masking" image (say, of random lines). If the mask follows the coffee cup too closely in time, the cup is never seen – make the gap in time between cup and masking image a little longer, the cup is seen. What is going on in the brain that makes the difference? What makes the cup "accessible" (gives it "access" in consciousness, or not? That is, how to explain "access consciousness." That the unseen/unregistered cup has been perceived unconsciously, that there are real effects of this hidden perception that can be shown, is one of the fascinating stories in Dehaene’s book – by the way, eerily confirmative via now current, open science (though Dehaene doesn’t go into the subject), of widely-read books circa 1970’s (sorry, don’t remember titles) arguing that industry psychologists had extensive, but non-public studies on this effect and were using this subliminal effect widely in marketing. Along the way, Dehaene develops his concept of "signatures" for consciousness – areas of the brain that must be involved in the brain’s processing for the coffee cup to be perceived. This includes, for example, the P3 "wave" – a synchronous firing of a set of these areas. The book is very detailed, yet readable; the case for his conclusions thoroughly made. A read to be appreciated for the great deal of information it provides.
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