Aimed at the general public, highly readable, and more than a little provocative.
A rousing, straight-from-the shoulder call for a new approach to treating depression.
Mental disorders, writes Bullmore (Psychiatry/Univ. of Cambridge; co-author: The Diagnosis of Psychosis, 2011), the head of the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre, can have their origin in the immune system. In a book previously published to acclaim in England, he makes the case for a link between inflammation and depression, delineating his argument with a “pioneering new field of research…called immuno-psychiatry or neuro-immunology.” This new field “exists at the boundaries between immunology, neuroscience, psychology and psychiatry.” Forcefully rejecting the Cartesian divide between body and mind—the immune system is now known to communicate across the blood-brain barrier, which was once thought to prevent this communication—the author outlines how the immune system triggers an inflammatory response to stress and how inflammation can cause changes in how the brain works, often leading to changes in mood and behavior. To illustrate, Bullmore refers repeatedly to a former patient with rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune and inflammatory condition, and depression, and he adds a personal touch with references to his own temporarily depressed mental state after undergoing a stressful root canal procedure. Besides explaining the biological mechanisms linking stress, inflammation, and depression, the author provides a lesson in medical history that likens present-day thinking about serotonin to the Hippocratic notion of black bile and concludes with the statement, “in short, depression after Descartes is in a sorry state.” Bullmore’s involvement with a research program at the pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline, an arrangement he is quick to acknowledge, may raise questions about his interest in the development of new anti-inflammatory drugs to treat depression, but his insights into depression and its treatments are impressive and valuable. The black-and-white illustrations vary widely in quality, from woodcuts and engravings to some rather amateurish original drawings.
Aimed at the general public, highly readable, and more than a little provocative.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31814-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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