A provocative and fascinating look at new discoveries about the brain that challenge our ethics

The rapid advance of scientific knowledge has raised ethical dilemmas that humankind has never before had to address. Questions about the moment when life technically begins and ends or about the morality of genetically designing babies are now relevant and timely. Our ever-increasing knowledge of the workings of the human brain can guide us in the formation of new moral principles in the twenty-first century. In The Ethical Brain, preeminent neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga presents the emerging social and ethical issues arising out of modern-day brain science and challenges the way we look at them. Courageous and thought-provoking -- a work of enormous intelligence, insight, and importance -- this book explores the hitherto uncharted landscape where science and society intersect.

What happened along the evolutionary trail that made humans so unique? In his accessible style, Michael Gazzaniga pinpoints the change that made us thinking, sentient humans different from our predecessors. He explores what makes human brains special, the importance of language and art in defining the human condition, the nature of human consciousness, and even artificial intelligence.

In this book we are trying to illuminate the persistent and nag ging questions of how mind, life, and the essence of being relate to brain mechanisms. We do that not because we have a commit ment to bear witness to the boring issue of reductionism but be cause we want to know more about what it's all about. How, in deed, does the brain work? How does it allow us to love, hate, see, cry, suffer, and ultimately understand Kepler's laws? We try to uncover clues to these staggering questions by con sidering the results of our studies on the bisected brain. Several years back, one of us wrote a book with that title, and the ap proach was to describe how brain and behavior are affected when one takes the brain apart. In the present book, we are ready to put it back together, and go beyond, for we feel that split-brain studies are now at the point of contributing to an understanding of the workings of the integrated mind. We are grateful to Dr. Donald Wilson of the Dartmouth Medi cal School for allowing us to test his patients. We would also like to thank our past and present colleagues, including Richard Naka mura, Gail Risse, Pamela Greenwood, Andy Francis, Andrea El berger, Nick Brecha, Lynn Bengston, and Sally Springer, who have been involved in various facets of the experimental studies on the bisected brain described in this book."

In this book we are trying to illuminate the persistent and nag ging questions of how mind, life, and the essence of being relate to brain mechanisms. We do that not because we have a commit ment to bear witness to the boring issue of reductionism but be cause we want to know more about what it's all about. How, in deed, does the brain work? How does it allow us to love, hate, see, cry, suffer, and ultimately understand Kepler's laws? We try to uncover clues to these staggering questions by con sidering the results of our studies on the bisected brain. Several years back, one of us wrote a book with that title, and the ap proach was to describe how brain and behavior are affected when one takes the brain apart. In the present book, we are ready to put it back together, and go beyond, for we feel that split-brain studies are now at the point of contributing to an understanding of the workings of the integrated mind. We are grateful to Dr. Donald Wilson of the Dartmouth Medi cal School for allowing us to test his patients. We would also like to thank our past and present colleagues, including Richard Naka mura, Gail Risse, Pamela Greenwood, Andy Francis, Andrea El berger, Nick Brecha, Lynn Bengston, and Sally Springer, who have been involved in various facets of the experimental studies on the bisected brain described in this book."

As the Handbook of Behavioral Neurobiology moves into a second volume, it is appropriate to take into general account the scope and content of this series. In its broadest sense, behavioral neurobiology is the study of the behaviors of animal organisms with reference to their neurological bases. The overall objective of this handbook series is to assemble, in ten volumes, a comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of the major areas that comprise behavioral neurobiology. Within such a framework, it is possible to provide the fundamental concepts, methods, and substantive advancements in these fields in a manner that will be useful to and that will also serve as a reference source for researchers educational programs who desire a well-balanced overview of the component areas of neurobiology. The intent in each volume has been to bring together a spectrum of approaches and disciplines that focuses upon the topic at hand. The first volume presented and discussed the problems of sensory integration; the present work is concerned with the neurobiology of cognitive processes; and forthcoming volumes will include the topics of motor coordination, learning and memory, biological rhythms, motivation, sexual behavior, social behavior and communication, and the evolution of nervous systems and behavior. Thus the purpose of the editors in planning this series has been to offer a distinct handbook, employing the many varied and prevailing avenues of attack upon current problems in behavior and neurological processes, that should prove of unique value and usefulness to professionals and students alike.

There is no "you" consciously making decisions. So how do we make decisions? How can we have free will if we don't pull the levers on our own behavior? What moral and legal implications follow if we don't have free will? Who's in Charge? is a primer for a new era in the understanding of human behavior that ranges across neuroscience, psychology, ethics, and the law with a light touch but profound implications.

The fifth edition of a work that defines the field of cognitive neuroscience, with entirely new material that reflects recent advances in the field. Each edition of this classic reference has proved to be a benchmark in the developing field of cognitive neuroscience. The fifth edition of The Cognitive Neurosciences continues to chart new directions in the study of the biological underpinnings of complex cognition-the relationship between the structural and physiological mechanisms of the nervous system and the psychological reality of the mind. It offers entirely new material, reflecting recent advances in the field. Many of the developments in cognitive neuroscience have been shaped by the introduction of novel tools and methodologies, and a new section is devoted to methods that promise to guide the field into the future-from sophisticated models of causality in brain function to the application of network theory to massive data sets. Another new section treats neuroscience and society, considering some of the moral and political quandaries posed by current neuroscientific methods. Other sections describe, among other things, new research that draws on developmental imaging to study the changing structure and function of the brain over the lifespan; progress in establishing increasingly precise models of memory; research that confirms the study of emotion and social cognition as a core area in cognitive neuroscience; and new findings that cast doubt on the so-called neural correlates of consciousness.

Experts discuss the wide variety of investigative tools available to cognitive neuroscience, including transcranial magnetic stimulation, neuroscience computation, fMRI, imaging genetics, and neuropharmacology, with particular emphasis on convergence of techniques and innovative uses. The evolution of cognitive neuroscience has been spurred by the development of increasingly sophisticated investigative techniques to study human cognition. In Methods in Mind, experts examine the wide variety of tools available to cognitive neuroscientists, paying particular attention to the ways in which different methods can be integrated to strengthen empirical findings and how innovative uses for established techniques can be developed. The book will be a uniquely valuable resource for the researcher seeking to expand his or her repertoire of investigative techniques. Each chapter explores a different approach. These include transcranial magnetic stimulation, cognitive neuropsychiatry, lesion studies in nonhuman primates, computational modeling, psychophysiology, single neurons and primate behavior, grid computing, eye movements, fMRI, electroencephalography, imaging genetics, magnetoencephalography, neuropharmacology, and neuroendocrinology. As mandated, authors focus on convergence and innovation in their fields; chapters highlight such cross-method innovations as the use of the fMRI signal to constrain magnetoencephalography, the use of electroencephalography (EEG) to guide rapid transcranial magnetic stimulation at a specific frequency, and the successful integration of neuroimaging and genetic analysis. Computational approaches depend on increased computing power, and one chapter describes the use of distributed or grid computing to analyze massive datasets in cyberspace. Each chapter author is a leading authority in the technique discussed. Contributors: Peyman Adjamian, Peter A. Bandettini, Mark Baxter, Anthony S. David, James Dobson, Ian Foster, Michael Gazzaniga, Dietmar G. Heinke, Stephen Hall, John M. Henderson, Glyn W. Humphreys, Andreas Meyer-Lindenburg, Venkata Mattay, Elisabeth A. Murray, Gina Rippon, Tamara Russell, Carl Senior, Philip Shaw, Krish D. Singh, Marc A. Sommer, Lauren Stewart, John D. Van Horn, Jens Voeckler, Vincent Walsh, Daniel R. Weinberger, Michael Wilde, Jeffrey Woodward, Robert H. Wurtz, Eun Young Yoon, Yong Zhao Carl Senior, Tamara Russell and Michael S. Gazzaniga

The sixth edition of the foundational reference on cognitive neuroscience, with entirely new material that covers the latest research, experimental approaches, and measurement methodologies. Each edition of this classic reference has proved to be a benchmark in the developing field of cognitive neuroscience. The sixth edition of The Cognitive Neurosciences continues to chart new directions in the study of the biological underpinnings of complex cognition-the relationship between the structural and physiological mechanisms of the nervous system and the psychological reality of the mind. It offers entirely new material, reflecting recent advances in the field, covering the latest research, experimental approaches, and measurement methodologies. This sixth edition treats such foundational topics as memory, attention, and language, as well as other areas, including computational models of cognition, reward and decision making, social neuroscience, scientific ethics, and methods advances. Over the last twenty-five years, the cognitive neurosciences have seen the development of sophisticated tools and methods, including computational approaches that generate enormous data sets. This volume deploys these exciting new instruments but also emphasizes the value of theory, behavior, observation, and other time-tested scientific habits. Section editors Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Ulman Lindenberger, Kalanit Grill-Spector and Maria Chait, Tomas Ryan and Charan Ranganath, Sabine Kastner and Steven Luck, Stanislas Dehaene and Josh McDermott, Rich Ivry and John Krakauer, Daphna Shohamy and Wolfram Schultz, Danielle Bassett and Nikolaus Kriegeskorte, Marina Bedny and Alfonso Caramazza, Liina Pylkkanen and Karen Emmorey, Mauricio Delgado and Elizabeth Phelps, Anjan Chatterjee and Adina Roskies

Why does the human brain insist on interpreting the world and constructing a narrative? In this ground-breaking work, Michael S. Gazzaniga, one of the world's foremost cognitive neuroscientists, shows how our mind and brain accomplish the amazing feat of constructing our past - a process clearly fraught with errors of perception, memory, and judgment. By showing that the specific systems built into our brain do their work automatically and largely outside of our conscious awareness, Gazzaniga calls into question our everyday notions of self and reality. The implications of his ideas reach deeply into the nature of perception and memory, the profundity of human instinct, and the ways we construct who we are and how we fit into the world around us. Over the past thirty years, the mind sciences have developed a picture not only of how our brains are built but also of what they were built to do. The emerging picture is wonderfully clear and pointed, underlining William James' notion that humans have far more instincts than other animals. Every baby is born with circuits that compute information enabling it to function in the physical world. Even what helps us to establish our understanding of social relations may have grown out of perceptual laws delivered to an infant's brain. Indeed, the ability to transmit culture - an act that is only part of the human repertoire - may stem from our many automatic and unique perceptual-motor processes that give rise to mental capacities such as belief and culture. Gazzaniga explains how the mind interprets data the brain has already processed, making 'us' the last to know. He shows how what 'we' see is frequently an illusion and not at all what our brain is perceiving. False memories become a part of our experience; autobiography is fiction. In exploring how the brain enables the mind, Gazzaniga points us toward one of the greatest mysteries of human evolution: how we become who we are.