We can actually observe a person's brain registering a joke or experiencing a painful memory. Drawing on the latest imaging technology and the expertise of distinguished scientists, Rita Carter explores the geography of the human brain. Mapping the Mind charts the way human behavior and culture have been molded by the landscape of the brain. Carter shows how our personalities reflect the biological mechanisms underlying thought and emotion and how behavioral eccentricities may be traced to abnormalities in an individual brain. Obsessions and compulsions seem to be caused by a stuck neural switch in a region that monitors the environment for danger.
Addictions stem from dysfunction in the brain's reward system.
Even the sense of religious experience has been linked to activity in a certain brain region. Looking inside the brain, writes Carter, we see that actions follow from our perceptions, which are due to brain activity dictated by a neuronal structure formed from the interplay between our genes and the environment. Mapping the Mind charts how human behaviour and culture have been molded by the landscape of the brain. It shows how our personalities reflect the biological mechanisms underlying thought and emotion and how behavioural eccentricities may be traced to abnormalities in the geography of an individual brain. Obsessions and compulsions, for example, seem to be caused by a stuck neural switch in a brain area which monitors the environment for danger.