Into the Silent Land: Travels in Neuropsychology

Rating:
Summary: The philosophic and human implications of neuropathology
Review: A blurb on the cover touts neuropsychology Professor Broks, author of this intriguing book, as "The new Oliver Sacks." While any writer on neuropathology would be flattered to be compared to the renowned Dr. Sacks, whose books include the fascinating The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and other clinical tales (1987), I don't think such a comparison is fair to either man.

While Broks and Sacks write about the sometimes bizarre consequences of neurological disorders, they do so from a different perspective. Sacks is more tightly focused on the patient and the pathology whereas Broks concentrates more on his personal experience as a neuropsychologist and the philosophic and emotional consequences of those experiences. Furthermore, while Sacks writes with an uncommon clarity and eloquence, Broks relies on a more literary style with excursions into memoir, story (sometimes reminding me distantly of Borges), Socratic dialogue, and dream sequence.

Each chapter in the book is a personal experience essay. Some chapters recall patients with disorders, some do not. Some chapters are intensely personal, as is the final chapter on the experience of his wife's breast cancer. Others are almost completely philosophical. What can pathology, especially neuropathology, teach us about what it means to be human and to be self-aware is what Broks is asking in all of the chapters, sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely. His answer is equivocal and meandering; in short he isn't sure. I respect that because I'm not sure either, and I don't know anyone who is.

Broks begins by experiencing the pulsating brain as raw meat. He is mesmerized by the "absolute conviction" that in the flesh "behind the face" being probed by the surgeon, "there's no one there." (p. 17) This leads him to reject the "Mysterian" position on consciousness and Cartesian dualism. He excises the ghost in the machine and comes to realize that the "I" of our experience is nowhere at all, but is an ever-changing, ever constructing presence among the modules of the brain.

"Thoughts, feelings, and intentions produce me, not the other way around," is how he expresses it on page 80. He sees the "I" that experiences and reflects upon experience as "not a single thing, or a thing at all," but as "a principle of biological organization." (p. 100)

This is a profound insight from modern neuroscience and philosophy as presented by people like Francis Crick and Daniel Dennett, whom Broks cites, and others. But Broks is neither completely satisfied with this unsettling point of view, nor is he complacent to leave it at that. In my favorite chapter of the book, "To Be Two or Not to Be," Broks presents a science fiction scenario in which one is teleported to Mars. One's body is exhaustively copied on Mars from information sent from Earth. Every single atom is replicated exactly as it appears in the original and then the original is destroyed, allowing one to travel at the speed of light.

In effect this is a thought experiment asking the question "Who are you?" Are you the original or the copy? The copy assures us that he is the same continuous being that was on Earth and is now on Mars. He is the father of his children, the husband of his wife, and is the man who was once the child. He has all this in his memory. He certainly did not die. And besides he has done this a dozen times and is still alive.

But Broks throws a monkey wrench into this scenario by having the original not destroyed. Now who is who? And if the original is now to be destroyed, how does he feel about that?

What is different from the man on Earth and his identical on Mars? Absolutely nothing (although because of their now different environments they are beginning to change). Yet the original prefers that he continue living, as does the copy.

This story really highlights the Buddhist idea that we do not exist as we think we do. There is no "self," no "ego-I"; we do not die because we were never living in the sense that we think we were. What exists is pure identification, so to speak, that everybody has identically. That does not die. It is always there in a sentient being.

Broks acknowledges this Buddhist perspective, admits that in some sense he is uneasy about it; admits that in some sense, at some times, he is a Mysterian, who does believe in something non-material in ourselves. (See "Right This Way, Smiles a Mermaid" beginning on page 132.)

Another point that Broks makes is that we do not exist in isolation. "The working brain has to be understood not only as part of a larger biological system (the rest of the body), but also as a component of the wider social system." (p. 102) I would add that we are also part of this planet and its systems, and in the most minute, but real sense, part of the cosmos.

Broks believes that the familiar soul-body dualism from Decartes is hard-wired into our brains by the process of evolution. (p. 138) He also believes that "phenomenal consciousness--the raw feel of experience--is invisible to conventional scientific scrutiny and will forever remain so." (p. 140)

I agree that the idea of a soul is adaptive in an evolutionary sense. It allows for us to have hope in many seemingly hopeless situations. It furthers the adaptiveness of the tribe which furthers the adaptiveness of the members of the tribe. I also agree that such phenomena as the taste of ice cream, the experience of the color red, etc., are not subject to scientific evaluation. Science is preeminently a social exercise in that, without peer review and confirming experiments by other scientists, would not exist as such. Consequently it is futile to expect something purely subjective to find scientific proof.

Rating:
Summary: A bit disappointed
Review: As other reviewers have said, this book is not an Oliver-Sacks type series of case studies, and should not be reviewed as if the author intended it to be. That said, the case studies that are presented are less interesting and raise less intriguing issues than do the case studies Sacks presents. Most of the book is the author's musings and speculations on various issues of personality, consciousness, and perception, but I found the points made to be a bit less original and thought-provoking than I have found in other books. The "science fiction" piece at the end that many reviewers praise is a variant of cloning or time-travel paradoxes used in other science fiction stories, in which multiple identical copies of the same person are in a position to meet each other and to meet the families of the "original." A somewhat similar conundrum is presented in the Schwarzennegger movie The 6th Day, where the mechanism is a kind of high-speed cloning that produces an exact duplicate of the original, same age and everything; and 30 years ago I read a science fiction story in which a time-travel machine was used to produce multiple copies of the same person in the same place (the original would jump back into his own past, thereby making two; then the two would jump back a little, making four, etc.) The mechanism here is a duplicator machine used to assemble an exact copy of a person on earth on a distant planet, who can then serve as an "original" on that planet and get copied back on earth, thereby making two copies on earth, etc. Sort of a Star Trek transporter except the original people stay behind in the transporter room, or wander around on the Enterprise, while their copies have adventures down on the planet. The author uses his scenario to discuss some interesting issues about the nature of personality and the sense of being an integrated person, focused by the issue of whether the "original" or the duplicate must be killed to avoid the proliferation of copies of people; but the points made were not so much more original than other similar discussions I have read elsewhere. Also, one part that bugged me was that his "original" man is someone who has gone "back and forth" between the planets 11 times already, so the "original" in the scenario is not really an original, he is himself an 11th generation copy. Thus the debate is not really whether the "born of a woman" human "original" or the "duplicate" should be killed, it is whether the 11th generation copy generated by the machine or the 12th generation copy generated by the machine should be killed. For me this kind of deflated the impact of the scenario. Another part that bothered me is that the scenario spends a lot of time considering the impact on the "original's" wife and children in case both copies of the man contact them, but the scenario never considers that the wife and children might also have "transported" a few times and thus might also be duplicates. (This could have permitted some fun digressions: If two people are married and then both are duplicated, are the two duplicates married? Are all four married -- the two originals and the two duplicates? Is it bigamy to be married to two copies of the same person? Hmmm, sounds like something for the Defense of Marriage Act!) More to the point, an elaboration along these lines would have allowed the author to develop and deepen his observations and thoughts about the true nature of person-hood and the relationships between persons, in ways that could have been really original. Too bad he missed or decided to omit it. Thus, if the subject of this book is something you have already pursued in other books or in movies, you are likely to feel like you've already heard before a good bit of what is presented here; but if you are new to the subject, you will probably find this book pretty interesting and thought-provoking. After all, if I had read this book first and then some others, it would be those books, not this one, that I would be criticizing for some lack of originality.

Rating:
Summary: A bit disappointed
Review: As other reviewers have said, this book is not an Oliver-Sacks type series of case studies, and should not be reviewed as if the author intended it to be. That said, the case studies that are presented are less interesting and raise less intriguing issues than do the case studies Sacks presents. Most of the book is the author's musings and speculations on various issues of personality, consciousness, and perception, but I found the points made to be a bit less original and thought-provoking than I have found in other books. The "science fiction" piece at the end that many reviewers praise is a variant of cloning or time-travel paradoxes used in other science fiction stories, in which multiple identical copies of the same person are in a position to meet each other and to meet the families of the "original." A somewhat similar conundrum is presented in the Schwarzennegger movie The 6th Day, where the mechanism is a kind of high-speed cloning that produces an exact duplicate of the original, same age and everything; and 30 years ago I read a science fiction story in which a time-travel machine was used to produce multiple copies of the same person in the same place (the original would jump back into his own past, thereby making two; then the two would jump back a little, making four, etc.) The mechanism here is a duplicator machine used to assemble an exact copy of a person on earth on a distant planet, who can then serve as an "original" on that planet and get copied back on earth, thereby making two copies on earth, etc. Sort of a Star Trek transporter except the original people stay behind in the transporter room, or wander around on the Enterprise, while their copies have adventures down on the planet. The author uses his scenario to discuss some interesting issues about the nature of personality and the sense of being an integrated person, focused by the issue of whether the "original" or the duplicate must be killed to avoid the proliferation of copies of people; but the points made were not so much more original than other similar discussions I have read elsewhere. Also, one part that bugged me was that his "original" man is someone who has gone "back and forth" between the planets 11 times already, so the "original" in the scenario is not really an original, he is himself an 11th generation copy. Thus the debate is not really whether the "born of a woman" human "original" or the "duplicate" should be killed, it is whether the 11th generation copy generated by the machine or the 12th generation copy generated by the machine should be killed. For me this kind of deflated the impact of the scenario. Another part that bothered me is that the scenario spends a lot of time considering the impact on the "original's" wife and children in case both copies of the man contact them, but the scenario never considers that the wife and children might also have "transported" a few times and thus might also be duplicates. (This could have permitted some fun digressions: If two people are married and then both are duplicated, are the two duplicates married? Are all four married -- the two originals and the two duplicates? Is it bigamy to be married to two copies of the same person? Hmmm, sounds like something for the Defense of Marriage Act!) More to the point, an elaboration along these lines would have allowed the author to develop and deepen his observations and thoughts about the true nature of person-hood and the relationships between persons, in ways that could have been really original. Too bad he missed or decided to omit it. Thus, if the subject of this book is something you have already pursued in other books or in movies, you are likely to feel like you've already heard before a good bit of what is presented here; but if you are new to the subject, you will probably find this book pretty interesting and thought-provoking. After all, if I had read this book first and then some others, it would be those books, not this one, that I would be criticizing for some lack of originality.

Rating:
Summary: More Puzzles Than Your Brain Can Handle
Review: Everything we know or think or feel is somehow processed within the contents of our craniums. Thoughts happen without our thinking about making them occur or about the incalculably complex neuronal interactions that would make them happen. How can it possibly happen that intracranial meat makes mentation? Check with an expert, like Paul Broks, who is a British lecturer and consultant in neuropsychology, the study of brain processes that produce thought and behavior. In _Into the Silent Land: Travels in Neuropsychology_ (Atlantic Monthly Press), he will bring you up short: "My area of supposed expertise, neuropsychology, is the subject about which I feel the most profound ignorance." He cannot satisfactorily account for how the brain generates conscious awareness. He reflects that this is something like finding out that your airplane pilot knows nothing of lift, drag, and so on. And yet, the patients he describes in his book, and his own introspection, and his fictional thought experiments are so strange that readers will be amazed that they could have ever taken themselves (or their _selves_) for granted.

The people Broks sees in his clinic are those with damaged brains of some sort, "thought experiments made flesh." This is the territory previously explored for us by Oliver Sacks, whom Broks names as an influence on his own thinking and writing. Especially illustrative are the split brain patients, those who have had the cables cut from right brain to left, usually to try to short circuit seizures. It is possible to get a sedative to one side of such brains and then to the other, so that clinicians can interview only one half-brain at a time. In such a patient, Naomi, Broks finds, "Ms Left-brain was talkative and cheerful. Ms Right-brain was unsettled, mute, morose." But Ms Left-brain afterwards was responsible for describing the entire session, and had no memory of Ms Right-brain's difficulties. This is the usual sort of sharing, and not just in patients with split brains. The left hemisphere not only is the spokesman for both, but also is "the brain's spin doctor," making odd events (such as the transient communicative ability of the right brain) comprehensible and acceptable. The left brain, quite simply, lies to make a palatable reality. We are all split up like this. Different wrinkles in the brain handle language, thoughts, memories, feelings. Broks worries: "There is no special point of convergence. No cockpit of the soul." Unity is an illusion. The brain is pretty well mapped, via MRI slices, and we have good ideas about what large parts of it do, but even if you look around a living brain, you will fine no self there; "... there is no ghost in the machine. It is time to grow up and accept this fact." But take heart; even if we exist in some mysterious emptiness between neurological components, this is itself a "... beautiful, liberating thought and nothing to be afraid of. The notion of a tethered soul is crude by comparison."

Though serious, Broks's book has a lot of fun with the paradoxes of consciousness. It is often a set of arguments for different sides of questions, with no firm answers. It is not just case studies, but includes reflections on the fate of Einstein's brain, and on the status of the "Little People" in Robert Louis Stevenson's dreams that gave the author his best work. Broks has written some whimsical stories to bring points home. Memorable is a sci-fi parable which summarizes many of the puzzling ideas Broks presents. It involves a teleporter, something like the famous one in Star Trek. For a trip to Mars, the machine scans every atom of the traveler, reduces the information to digital format, sends the data to Mars, where every atom is reconstructed. The rules of teleportation, however, decree that the sender has to be annihilated; this avoids duplication. But what happens when the machine malfunctions, sending the data for proper reconstruction, but doesn't do the vaporization of the original sender? Where is the person? How can one mind be in two places? How long before they become two different persons by having different experiences? Which one should the authorities, belatedly, vaporize? The witty story is titled "To Be Two or Not to Be". It climaxes an enigmatic and enlightening book that will give much contemplation to anyone with a brain.

Rating:
Summary: Questioning what we are
Review: In the first half of this book, Broks says of the philosopher Wittgenstein that for him 'philosophy was not so much about finding solutions to puzzles as about correcting fundamental misunderstandings.' This book could be described as following the same premise, in that it doesn't set out to give definitive answers. With its individual take on neuropsychology and what defines 'the self', this a book was by turns both fascinating and frustrating.

Broks has, inevitably, been compared to Oliver Sacks, and in many regards this book is in parts similar to books written by Sacks, in that it explores interesting cases of neurological diseases or injury. Broks has taken a more idiosyncratic path, choosing to intersperse his recalling of such cases with discourses on his own opinions on neuropsychology, anecdotes from his personal life, and some fictional episodes. Sometimes these work, sometimes they don't. My favourite part of the whole book is the futuristic story about teleportation - the book is worth the price for this section alone, as it is sure to have you thinking for long after you have finished. Yet other sections - including the parts where he takes part in a conversation with a disembodied brain - don't work for me. I think that the enjoyment of this book will be down to personal taste - some people will love some sections, which will be loathed by others, and vice versa.

This book is written in a very British style, both the type of humour (of which there is much) and its 'quirky' view on life. It is much less clinical in style than you would expect from a neuropsychologist writing about his own area of expertise. Broks' honest, admitting that sometimes he despairs, often he doesn't know, and that even as a professional there are times I hope that this book is bought and read by many, as it is the type of reading that is both entertaining and very thought provoking - it will have you questioning such fundamental issues as what am i? what is the basis of existence? While not as scientifically rigorous as some of the Oliver Sacks books, it is still an important contribution to the genre of 'popular neurology writing' if there is such a thing, and would be of appeal to anyone interested in how the brain works and/or the nature of being.

Rating:
Summary: Pitch-black nihilism about brain damage
Review: SILENT LAND has gotta be the most determinedly nihilistic thing ever written. Kingsley Amis & Philip Larkin (The Glimmer-of-death Twins) used to wake up in terror in the middle of the goddam night because they were terrified of death and the concomitant loss of self. Well, it's too bad they're not around to read Broks's book because it would've scared the absolute crap out of them. (Or then again, maybe SILENT LAND is required reading in Grumpy Old Fascist Curmudgeon Hell.)

Broks's nagging idee fixe is that there's no self to begin with: "At the same instant one understands that there is, of course, no ghostly self in the first place. When we see the brain we realize that we are, at one level, no more than meat; and, on another, no more than fiction." This is soul-denying reductionism with a vengence. Which almost leads me to suspect that SILENT LAND was written for the prime purpose of annoying The Pope.

Epilepsy. Amnesia. Neurologically-caused emotional dysfunction. Hippocampus damage. Amygdala damage. Brain tumors. It's all here. It's all bad. And leave it to Broks's wife to add insult to injury by confessing that she wouldn't wanna be reunited with Broks in an afterlife.

Rating:
Summary: The brain and the soul
Review: There's a certain morbid fascination with tales of brain disease and damage. The horror of the woman who lost 23 years in the blink of a stroke. The woman whose consciousness sometimes vanished while her body continued to go through the motions. The man who can no longer feel emotions. The man who feels too much. The man who relives the exact same emotion with every recall, like reliving a traffic accident over and over, yet can no longer read people's expressions or hear words other than literally.

British neuropsychologist Broks studies what happens to people when particular parts of their brain are damaged. He understands our morbid fascination and has made it his quest: where and what is, consciousness? And what makes us who we are? "But when it comes to understanding the relationship between the brain and the conscious mind, my ignorance is deep and there is nowhere to turn."

This is the theme of his first book of essays, a theme which deals with our worst fears - becoming someone else. Like the man who wearied of his boring suburban life and left his family and job to live a more bohemian existence. A few years later when his brain tumor was revealed and removed, he woke asking for his wife and kids.

In his pursuit of consciousness Broks also explores out-of-body experiences and dream imagery, like that which helped Robert Louis Stevenson create "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." He provides thought experiments and ends with a sci-fi story which aptly (and entertainingly) frames the dilemma of consciousness and body and where the "I" begins and ends.

Though Broks occasionally goes on at too great a length, his unanswerable question is posed from many though-provoking, and occasionally startling, directions. Those most interested in brain physiology and behavior should stick to Oliver Sacks, those with more philosophical inclinations will definitely enjoy Broks.

Rating:
Summary: Great Reading For Anyone, Especially For Psychology Buffs
Review: This is an extraordinarily interesting book. I say this as an average reader and not as someone with training in neuropsychology or neurosurgery.

This will be of interest to anyone who is curious about life in general, but it will be greatly appealing to psychology and philosophy buffs. The book will be of special interest to anyone interested in the so-called mind-body problem.

What is the nature of our identity as individuals? Do we have a soul? What is the difference between a soul and a mind? Are we nothing more than the grey matter encaged inside our skulls? The author, Paul Broks, does not provide new or even concrete answers to these questions. But he explores them in hugely entertaining ways. This is not a dreary, poorly written book on psychology, philosophy or personally identity theory. It is an exceptionally entertaining look at the brain and how its defects can affect our personality and sense of identity.

Broks is a British neuropsychologist. He makes the book enjoyable by telling incredibly interesting tales about his patients and their problems. I would recommend this book to just about anyone, not only those people who have a background in this field. It is a pleasure to read. Moreover, at only 242 pages, most readers will be able to finish the whole book in just a couple of days. But they may be sorry when it is finished.