Joseph Caubo 2008-10-25

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Steven Rose's The Future of The Brain: The Promise and Peril's of Tomorrow's Neuroscience does not tell so much about the future of the brain as it does tell how the past has shaped our understanding of the brain and what this might mean for new advances. It is not until the last two chapters that Rose really delves into future of the entire neuroscience industry and the ethical concerns that will arise from it.

Although I liked the history Rose covers for neuroscience, I am a bit disappointed that there was not much about the future of neuroscience. Considering the title, I was hoping there would be more of a focus on any advances that we have with technology interfacing with the brain, but Rose really constricts his focus towards the messing with the chemical physiology of the brain and the use of DNA to predict behavior - and only devotes three and a half pages to AI and the merging of the mind with machine. I also have a problem with Rose's bias towards work and theories that he does not agree with. Even from the first chapter, you can tell he has his sights on criticizing the likes of Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, obsessing over the words they use and not really criticizing their theories (pages 93 & 188).

The structure of this book is very simple, as it gives a very informative history of the neuroscience field. Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction to the topics covered in the book, giving a nice explanation of some of the concepts Rose discusses later in the book. The second and third chapters really discuss the evolution of species on Earth, and how the nervous systems came into being and what environmental factors helped to aid their evolution.

In Chapters 4 and 5, Rose starts to narrow the discussion of the evolution of the brain and the nervous system to humans. Beyond the environmental factors that guided evolution over a couple billion years, Rose really starts to bring in the social factors that guided our evolution, for instance our speech. His explanations from the biological standpoint pick up and begin to answer questions where religion and philosophy could not.

In Chapters 6 and 7, Rose further explores the human mind and how it works on a biological level. He goes to explain the biological workings of human brain, discussing how neurons and synapses work, and how this ties in to our conception of memory. Then, after setting the stage for the workings of the brain, he then discusses what happens as the brain age and gets to the limits of its life. I really enjoy his discussions between the brain, or the physiological part of the human, and the mind, or the conscious experience that we all have. Even though we acknowledge those who are older as being wiser, Rose discusses how as we age our brains begin to shut down and develop disorders like Parkinson's and Alzhiemer's. This is probably the most interesting chapter of the book, because Rose really lays out how ageing is not as beautiful and romantic as we make it out to be, instead he talks about how the ages we live today were not meant for the lifespan of the brain and how that has caused the many problems people get when they are older.

In Chapters 8 and 9, Rose brings in the discussion of philosophy and ethics and how recent history in neuroscience has brought together some good diagnosis and treatment, but it has developed its own ethical issues as well. Chapter 8 really goes over the philosophy of the mind, trying to discern between the biological functions and the ideas of consciousness. I really enjoyed how he talked about plasticity not only in terms of memory, but also how it has applied to the biological workings of the brain. From there he lays down the groundwork for the rise of the pharmaceutical industry and how it merges the use of drugs to control behavior, which he really goes in depth about in Chapter 9.

Chapters 10 and 11 finally discuss the future of the brain. He talks about how neuroscience is tackling the brain from different fronts - from the genetic side to the chemical side to the artificial intelligence side. In Chapter 11, he delves further into the ethical issues of the future, and goes into a bit of "tin foil hat" conspiracy theories about how governments will intend to use these neurotechnologies for thought control. I really did not find this to be the best and the most succinct endings to a really good book.

Out of the entire book, I have a couple of quotes that I just really enjoy:

"All babies, even those who have been born blind, and consequently never able to see a human face, nevertheless start to smile at around 5 weeks, perhaps enabled by the continuing myelination of crucial brain structures such as the basal ganglia." (135) - An interesting fact I never knew about.

"Ageing is emphatically not a disease, nor is it one specific process, any more than is early development; it is an all-embracing term for a long-drawn-out phase of the life cycle that in one sense begins at birth." (173) - Rose really hits the point home that ageing isn't a disease, its natural and that its something we all must go through.

Overall, I thought the book was very informative over the history of neuroscience and brain development, but the ending was very lackluster.

I would suggest picking up this book either from Amazon or at your local bookstore. It is a very informative read and a must for any budding neuroscientists. When you do get this book, read all chapters after Chapter 1 in pairs, because (like how this review is laid out), because the flow will really work best that way.

Andy Blunden 2006-07-17

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Steven Rose, a founding member of the Society for Social Responsibility in Science, has 40 years of publishing in neuroscience behind him. Since the 1960s he fought against "On Aggression," "The Territorial Imperative," "The Naked Ape" and has combated a whole succession of varieties of social Darwinism and biological determinism up to the current batch of snake oil salesmen marketing pharmaceutical solutions to social problems.
"The Future of the Brain" summarises the achievements and limitations of the great progress that neuroscience has made over recent decades, from one of the few neuroscientists who have appropriate modesty about what their science can tell us about the human condition and what it can't. If you have read any of the current crop of books on the mind, then you absolutely must read this book. If Rose is right, then we face grave dangers: not so much because neuroscience will enable a futuristic dystopia of thought-control or eugenic manufacture of super-brains, but rather that ill-advised and counter-productive medical intervention will enrich the pharmaceutical industry at the cost of increasing human suffering.
Rose gives a much more nuanced understanding of what the mind is, how it is enabled by our biology and shaped by our lives and those of our evolutionary and social forebears.

Chris Chatham 2006-01-06

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

Neurobiologist Steven Rose goes to great lengths to correct common misperceptions about the explanatory potential of current genetics, evolutionary psychology, and molecular neuroscience. Ultimately, only the last two chapters cover the "future" of the neurosciences, delving into topics like transcranial magnetic stimulation, pharmacological cognitive enhancement, and neuroethics. But before telling us where we're headed, Rose spends 10 chapters telling us where we've been, both in terms of cognitive change across the lifespan, the cascading processes of synaptogenesis and apoptosis seen in utero and in early childhood, and the changes in brains both across species and across evolutionary time. If "The Future of the Brain" could be said to have a central principle, it's that "the past is the key to the present," and it is here that Rose's talents as a writer truly shine: he integrates the histories of neurons, individuals, psychopharmacology, sociobiology, cognitive psychology and genetics into a coherent narrative, with both appropriate subtlety and engaging clarity.

Rose begins with theories of the origins of life, proto-cells, and nucleic acids. He uses this broad introduction to debunk the simplifications we often make without hesitation: thinking of humankind as the highest on some evolutionary scale of nature; considering organisms to be passive players in evolution; believing that evolution strives for increased complexity as time continues. As he writes, "all living forms on earth ... are more or less equally fit for the environment and life style they have chosen. I use the word chosen deliberately, for organisms are not merely the passive products of selection; in a very real sense they create their own environments ... The grand metaphor of natural selection suggers from its implication that organisms are passive, blown hither and thither by environment change as opposed to being active players in their own destiny." In this way, Rose complicates the popular notion of causality frequently seen in news articles, where researchers claim to have discovered a gene "for" this or that; to Rose, every result has multiple causes, both genetic and environmental.

After reviewing how neural nets may have initially developed in the first multicellular animals (Coelenterates), Rose describes the development of the mammalian cortex during gestation as autopoesis, the process of continual self-creation. The reader is whisked from fertilisation to the embryonic formation of the neural groove, to the birth of neurons and glia in the neural tube, to the migration of neurons as they follow concentration gradients of neural growth factors. We then follow changes in brain structure seen in hominins, then hominids, and finally homo sapiens.

The later chapters document the development of psychopharmacology and the rise of Big Pharma, from aspirin to valium and now Ritalin and Strattera. Rose winds up with fascinating predictions about the future of neurotechnology, all of them well-tempered by a thorough understanding of our past.

Rose's book is quite simply the best popular neuroscience writing I have read. It is hard to imagine another writer that could so seamlessly weave together the fields of genetics, cognitive science, neurophysiology, and pharmacology into such an entertaining yet informative book. Highly recommended...

Oliver C. Loson 2005-09-12

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

It is very well known that the brain is an incredibly complicated mass of tissue--not to mention a complicated and popular subject of today's trend sciences. Therefore to attempt to write anything concerning this feild would be considerably challenging, regardless of your educational and professional background...yet I believe that Steven Rose has done a great job for two very important reasons.

Firstly, Rose translates the subject and its ideas into a form that is digestible by all readers. Yet, the material is sometimes bland and redundant for those who have studied the subject in greater depth.

Secondly, Rose is honest. He not only critiques himself for past publications, but also comments how some of the material in the book has been illustrated in his own life. I believe that the latter is very important because it encourages the reader to do the same, and this type of learning, I personally believe, is awesome. Rose knows that although his entire audience are not experts, some of the ideas about the brain concerning memory, cognition and interpretation can be easily explored by experiences with one's surroundings; and this is what is so intriguing about biological sciences.

The book is a quick read and again, easy to understand. For those who have a background in the field, Rose presents the material well and gives a somewhat journalistic review of the current issues, fallacies and anticipations in the field.

algo41 2005-07-06

5 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

I got only half way through this book, so I am writing this review as a warning. This book is awful on two accounts. It is hastily written, and it isn't very informative. I would expect most readers to be either confused and/or bored, depending on their background (I cannot account for the other reviews). Rose has several schematics of the brain, but does not actually explain them except in the most cursory way. Rose emphasizes the interplay between genes and environment where environment must be interpreted in the broadest sense: for the unborn it includes not only the uterine environment but the signals from the other cells constituting the embryonic/fetal complex. This is fine, but well accepted, at least amongst the scientists I have read. Rose is impressed with Dimasio's work on consciousness, but he more refers to it than tries to make it clear, just as with his brain schematics. He raises some interesting questions about evolutionary psychology, but he is so dismissal of the field, that the reader must seek elsewhere for an objective analysis. Yes, I enjoy reading Richard Dawkins and even Steven Pinker, but I am not writing this review with an axe to grind.