Title: Robinson Crusoe's remarkable discovery
First published: 1997
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.
Subjects: Cognition, Cognition and culture, Human information processing, Social aspects, Social aspects of Cognition, Social aspects of Human information processing, Brain, Psychology, Social psychology, Cognitive psychology, Neuropsychology, Sociology, Cognitie, Sociale aspecten, Kognition, Kultur, Informationsverarbeitung, Aspect social, Cognition et culture, Traitement de l'information chez l'homme
LC classification: BF311 .B75 1997