Consciousness is weighty philosophical and scientific ground, yet Parks plots a chatty, accessible path through impenetrable academic papers and conferences on his quest to understand more about being human. So chatty, in fact, he often has conversations with himself, making Parks an even more likable guide to these lofty concepts ... Out of My Head often feels like a dinner party conversation about to go over the heads of nearly everyone in the room. For all his considerable restraint, even Parks ends up deep in theory by the end – although it sounds poetic in his hands...
Thinking about consciousness can be hard and frustrating, and Parks may well have been happier if he’d spent recent years focusing instead on something like football...although one doesn’t get that impression. He is a terrific ambassador for curiosity, and greets each step in his intellectual journey with dogged insistence ... Parks’s approach of picking one horse and sticking with it has its merits. It forces you to ask why radical ideas are resisted. Yes, the spread mind theory sounds crazy but, as political matters attest, what we take for normal can sometimes be completely insane.
...an at times captivating, at times bewildering inquiry into contemporary scientific thinking on the subject of human consciousness ... As he travels the circuitous path toward a better understanding of the human mind, Parks is a good-natured, self-effacing guide ... Parks's book becomes most challenging when it asks readers to join him in the deep end of neuroscience pool, as in a 35-page chapter describing in detail an experiment involving Gad67EGFP mice and GABAergic neurons. He's clearly steeped himself in the relevant scientific literature, and has spent a good bit of time grappling with this elusive subject matter, but for those who aren't technically inclined, portions of the book like that one may prove less appealing. Out of My Headdoes more to stimulate speculation about its central question than it does to provide any definitive answers. Parks is a thoughtful layman fully committed to his task, and anyone with a similar bent will find much grist for further reflection in this provocative book.
