Brain and Mind: Evolutionary Perspectives (Human Frontier Workshop V), edited by Michael S. Gazzaniga and Jennifer S. Altman

Human Frontier Science Program, 1998. $12.00 (187 pages)ISBN 92 9164 004 2Not long ago, a colleague told me that she intended to increase the odds of a favorable grant review by letting it be known that if the proposed work was not funded, she would write another book on brain and mind. The plausibility of this threat sums up a current dilemma: neuroscientists are naturally interested in understanding the high-level operations of the nervous system (an enterprise that is generally referred to as cognitive neuroscience), but this enthusiasm has been dampened by a plethora of flatulent books that pontificate on these matters, on consciousness in particular. Given this unfavorable signal-to-noise ratio, it makes sense to remain informed of what people are saying about brains and minds by sampling broader, briefer offerings (if the authors are writing nonsense, at least they do not persist for long). For those determined to keep tuned in to the brain–mind debates, which is well advised, Brain and Mind provides an excellent introduction to some of the relevant issues.The book contains 11 brief and generally well-written essays on brain evolution and the emergence of cognition by the participants of a meeting held in Strasbourg in 1997. Groups of articles are interspersed with user-friendly summaries by Gazzaniga and Altman, who intelligently distil the main points and their relationship to other work in the field. The first half of the book deals with brain evolution (with contributions from Krubitzer, Rakic, Black, Gallistell and Singer), and the second half deals more explicitly with cognitive issues (‘mind from brain’, as described by the editors) (with contributions from Dennett, Rizzolatti, Rozin, Corballis, Carey and Pinker). Each essay reviews research in a limited but important domain, for example, the role of cell death in the emergence of cortical structure (Rakic and Chalupa); the importance of trophic factors in plasticity (Black); the use of neurobiological principles to construct humanoid robots (Dennett); efforts to improve understanding of the organization of language (Corballis); and how primates deal with numbers (Carey). Perhaps inevitably, neither component of the bipartite effort is particularly well integrated, but the energetic attempt to rationalize these subjects for the general reader comes across very well.The overarching message of the collection, at least as outlined in an introduction by Tooby and Cosmides, is that the practical and philosophical antagonisms that have existed between those interested in the brain and those interested in the mind have been replaced by the consensus that ‘the mental is biological computation’; that ‘natural selection engineered the mind to carry out evolved functions’; and that ‘the mind is not a blank slate or general-purpose computer but resembles a heterogeneous network of application programs for specialized functions’ (p. 13). No one will dispute that these widely held opinions have emerged during the past 50 years or so, but readers could find themselves wondering whether cognitive neuroscience has made as much progress as its devotees would have us believe. Even if the reader emerges from the encounter with the suspicion that the field is sorely in need of some guiding principles, this well-produced, thoughtful volume provides the type of progress report that allows interested parties to make this judgement for themselves.