Books for Prep | |
 - For a college freshman seminarHad to buy this book for class - - people in my seminar didn't like it and thought LeDoux was boring, but I enjoyed his widespread take on the subject - - that identity could ultimately be explained by changes in synaptic and neural activity. Rating:  - Good overview of neuroscienceLeDoux is clearly brilliant. He's accomplished an enormous feat in distilling scientific knowledge on emotions and the brain into a 300-page text. He clearly has his finger on the pulse in this rapidly evolving field, and he knows how to explain complex and competing neurodevelopmental theories in a fair and balanced manner. At the same time, I would hesitate to recommend this book for anyone without a fairly good grasp of science. It gets pretty technical, and bogs down in explanations and counter-explanations. Further impeding the flow is LeDoux's incessant name-dropping. I think what he's trying to do is humanize the field by naming and describing all of the players in all of the many experiments, but it get a bit much after a while. In addition, I was disappointed at the brevity and superficiality of the discussion of emotions other than fear. Overall, these are fairly minor criticisms. If you are looking for a single source on what's known and what's yet to be discovered in brain science, this might be it. It's definitely a wide-ranging, up-to-date survey of the field, and LeDoux presents the information in a compelling and impartial style. Rating: - GREAT READINGFor all those who want to know a little more about how we become who we are. Most enlightening, well written and concise! Rating:  - We Are Our Synapses?!"Synaptic Self" is a worthy follow up on LeDoux's seminal work "The Emotional Brain" which was published in 1996. Before starting this book, if you are a believer in mind-body dualism, you have to suspend your belief and accept that we are entirely the product of our nervous system. That is, our behaviors, thoughts and emotions, indeed our personality, are entirely created by our brain and nervous system. With that premise, LeDoux takes us through the neuronal organizations and brain circuits that are responsible for what he calls the mental trilogy of cognition, emotion and motivation. He then explains how these brain circuits are coordinated and unified to make a person who he or she is. As the title of the book implies, the core of LeDoux's assertion is that the mental trilogy ultimately exists at the synaptic level. In other words, as he puts it, "You are your synapses. They are who you are." Some of the explanations in the book are very basic, even to the readers who have little prior studies in neuroscience. On the other hand, some of the explanations of various brain circuitries and their schematics may be difficult to process for a reader without a fair amount of knowledge in this field. LeDoux certainly has not figured out the neurobiology of the self; I don't believe he himself contends that he has either. But, he definitely gives the reader a lot to ponder. Overall, I consider this book a decent review of some of the recent literature in neurobiology of cognition and emotion. My main problem with the book was that the chapter on the biological basis of major mental disorders was superficial and seemed to unnecessarily flatter the field of biological psychiatry. Rating: - Not an easy read but well worth the effortJoseph LeDoux's book Synaptic Self is one of those works that is so dense with material, it may take a second run through to really appreciate it all. Although probably written for a general audience, it is not an easy read. Don't expect to be able to zip right through it in a few days. His descriptions of the central nervous system, how it develops, how it functions, and how it matures, is very detailed. It gets down to the chemistry of the process and into the sub-areas of brain topography in a much more thorough way than many books of this kind tend to do. I have a health care background and started my career as a neurology nurse, and it still took me some time to go through the material. The book is a wonderful compendium of both the history of the research into neuro function and of the more recent discoveries. The author does a splendid job of synthesis for the reader; he presents a very balanced report of what is believed about brain function and the concept of self and of the literature on the topics. He presents theoretical models by himself and others and integrates them into a more coherent whole by pointing out where the likely weaknesses are and where research is still needed. This requires a very thorough knowledge of the recent literature and of the field in general, which requires a great deal of time and dedication to do well. The newest information was of considerable interest to me. It certainly made me realize how far behind I was with respect to what is understood already about brain/mind functioning and about the development of the self. Information on the function of the working memory, especially on why we forget the way we do sometimes, was very intriguing and made considerable sense (p. 175), as did the concept of the "executive" function in decision making (p. 178). What I found most practical was the author's placement of the material in a health care context. The last chapter is devoted to the treatment of depressive and anxiety disorders. Some of the medications that have arisen for the treatment of these problems over the years are familiar to me from my career as a nurse, and it was interesting to understanding the underlying principles of their effect and why they are prescribed. I was especially pleased to see that the author was not "lazy" in dealing with his citations either. He includes not only a list of footnotes for each chapter at the end of the book, citing and explaining his references, but also includes a bibliography of these at the end as well. So many books, often by very competent authors, let their footnote citations serve as their only bib, which means one has to go through every entry to mine for further reading materials. While some of these entries are older ones, mostly those dealing with historical material and early research, most of them are dated 1996 and later. The names listed are virtually a who's who of the neurosciences and experimental psychology. Several books might make good starting points for those wanting to know more. The material cited is, however, mostly journals of original research, always a good sign. While the average general reader might find some of these difficult to obtain, the student should find many of them in their periodicals department or their biomedical library if they attend a university. In association with Amazon.com | |