How the Mind Changed
A Human History of Our Evolving Brain
-
- $19.99
Publisher Description
The extraordinary story of how the human brain evolved… and is still evolving.
We’ve come a long way. The earliest human had a brain as small as a child’s fist; ours are four times bigger, with spectacular abilities and potential we are only just beginning to understand.
This is How the Mind Changed, a seven-million-year journey through our own heads, packed with vivid stories, groundbreaking science, and thrilling surprises. Discover how memory has almost nothing to do with the past; meditation rewires our synapses; magic mushroom use might be responsible for our intelligence; climate accounts for linguistic diversity; and how autism teaches us hugely positive lessons about our past and future.
Dr. Joseph Jebelli’s In Pursuit of Memory was shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize and longlisted for the Wellcome. In this, his eagerly awaited second book, he draws on deep insights from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, psychology, and philosophy to guide us through the unexpected changes that shaped our brains. From genetic accidents and environmental forces to historical and cultural advances, he explores how our brain’s evolution turned us into Homo sapiens and beyond.
A single mutation is all it takes.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Neuroscientist Jebelli (In Pursuit of Memory) ranges a bit too wide in this history of the human mind. In exploring the question of "why have we ended up with the brains we have," Jebelli draws on philosophy, theology, and literature and considers empathy, consciousness, and depression. He offers up science's take on free will ("You have free will, you just don't have conscious will"), memory (evolutionarily traced back to "remembering predators and the location of food sources"), language acquisition (which began around 500,000 years ago, when "brain size ballooned in humans"), and artificial intelligence (some neuroscientists posit it may evolve in a way similar to the human brain). While he argues effectively that "to study the brain is to study the essence of what makes us human," his frequent jumps in topic and timeline distract, and his most provocative claims—"Were we to understand the brain better than we currently do, we could predict a person's future behaviour with astonishing accuracy," and "Our autistic ancestors probably played a fundamental role in shaping early human societies due to their unique strengths and special abilities"—are presented without enough supporting evidence. This one doesn't quite come together.
