Nonetheless, individual chapters are often excellent. Only two sections truly disappoint. Some chapters border on the perfunctory. Here, the reader is catapulted into minutiae such as how the amygdala responds to the ingestion of salted oranges, and how post-traumatic stress damages the hippocampus. Here we learn nothing about phenomenal aspects of emotion.
Nothing here reveals how emotions are shared or socially triggered.
This book provides two larger messages. The first is that the shining successes of cognitive neuroscience tend to concern evolutionary adaptations. In each instance, the study of an ancestrally relevant skill has been rewarded by the discovery of specific anatomical substrates. As the editors of the evolution section rightly insist, brains are organized according to an evolutionary logic and can be understood only once this logic is firmly grasped. The second message is that the field of cognitive neuroscience is now an emperor with at least some clothes.