PositiveNatureClearly and concisely, he leads us through recent findings and hypotheses on various disorders. Some are neurological, such as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Some have been interpreted as psychiatric, such as depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The modern perspective, he asserts, is that these are ultimately brain disorders ... Kandel is right about the importance of new tools—the methods, instruments and theories now available that might open promising avenues into psychiatric disorders ... At times, he proposes a less-than-convincing reframing ... Bold propositions such as Kandel’s in The Disordered Mind blur the distinction between therapies involving medication or surgery and those that use behavioral and cognitive means. Still, one should appreciate Kandel’s humanistic aims: knowing more about disorders makes us less likely to stigmatize those who think or act differently.
Michael S. Gazzaniga
PositiveNatureThe tour yields a couple of useful lessons. With theoretical biologist Howard Pattee, Gazzaniga emphasizes that we should resist the lure of the 'single-explanation fallacy' — the idea that one theory can cover everything, from our introspective sense of awareness down to the subatomic particles of brain tissue. Explanations, he asserts, should be thought of as context-dependent, just as light in quantum physics sometimes behaves like waves and sometimes like particles ... Gazzaniga defines consciousness as 'the subjective feeling of a number of instincts and/or memories playing out in time in an organism' ... Nor is it straightforward to link consciousness to parts of the brain ... Gazzaniga ends by reflecting that the ultimate explanation for how mind emerges from meat might not prove 'warm and cuddly'. Instead, it might vie with quantum mechanics for sheer counter-intuitive weirdness, hovering 'way beyond our intuitions and imaginations'.
