Robinson Crusoe's remarkable discovery
Subtitle: discovery and the implications of the brain's social nature
By: Leslie Brothers.
Publisher: Oxford University Press; Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 1997
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 187
Subjects: Cognition -- Social aspects.; Cognition and culture.; Human information processing -- Social aspects.
Description: A psychiatrist who has received international recognition for her research on the neural basis of primate social cognition, Leslie Brothers, M.D., offers here a major argument about the social dimension of the human brain, drawing on both her own work and a wealth of information from research laboratories, neurosurgical clinics, and psychiatric wards. Brothers offers the tale of Robinson Crusoe as a metaphor for neuroscience's classic (and flawed) notion of the brain: a starkly isolated figure, working, praying, writing alone. But the famous castaway of literature, she notes, came from society and returned to society. So too with our brains: they have evolved a specialized capacity for exchanging signals with other brains - they are designed to be social. Perhaps most important, she connects neuroscience, psychiatry, and sociology as never before, showing how our daily interaction creates an organized social world - a network of brains that generates meaningful behavior and thought. Emotion, the sense of self - the entire spectrum of the mind - has no existence outside of a social context.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.