Product Description
A leading neuroscientist offers an intriguing scientific journey to understanding the neurobiology of the self. What can dementia, delusions, and other neurological disorders teach us about how the brain creates personal identity and a unified sense of self? Here, a leading neurobiologist offers an intriguing scientific approach to understanding the neurobiology of the self. Drawing on both the latest neuroscientific research, as well as the author's decades of experience with neurological patients, From Axons to Identity examines the link between brain and identity in fascinating new ways. Dr. Feinberg presents case studies of individuals with brain pathologies and unusual psychiatric syndromes that cause them to deny parts of their bodies or believe in the presence of mysterious imposters or imaginary friends, and then presents a groundbreaking new theory of these conditions that relates them to the normal course of psychological development. By examining what goes wrong in individuals with these conditions, Dr. Feinberg presents an engaging new theory with far-reaching implications for the link between brain and identity. From Axons to Identity proposes a new view of the processes of the brain and the self that is unique and revelatory. .

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.0 based on 1 review)

Thoughtful case reviews and brisk overview of popular neuroscience. by Kenneth J. Garcia (Baltimore, Maryland United States)

3 Stars
November 03, 2009
Although not as literary than Oliver Sachs in its discussion of these unusual neuropsychiatric cases, the book benefits from an extensive, albeit cursory, survey and lively debate of more current neuroscience literature. It is a valuable effort at bridging the language and conceptual chasm between psychiatry and neurology. The books strength relies upon Dr. Feinberg's breath of clinical experience and the thoughtfulness he applies to case formulation. My criticism of the work regards it's seemingly over-ambitious attempt to resolve too many issues within too few pages. That a hierarchical arrangement in the neural architecture is critical to the work the brain does is not news, nor that prefrontal lesions lead to disinhibition. Admirably, the work attempts to popularize difficult areas of the neuroscience and psychiatric literature. More scientific formalism and less casualness would have reduced some confusion, as when the author meanders between lesioned and non-lesioned cases in his efforts to consider the neuroanatomical underpinnings for the clinical phenomena. In the end, I have concerns with such phrenological musings, as the literature to which the author refers, draws me in the opposite direction from attempting to centralize the seat of the self to the right frontal area, but to view self as a more diffuse and distributed event. While bottom-up convergence construct increasingly complex feature representations, top-down oscillatory processes are believed to bind broad distributions of interconnected neurons, referred to as ensembles, to resonate cooperatively across the brain's entire expanse to extend our capacity for meaningful representation of the world. Any CNS injury leads to some imprecision in our sense of ourselves, our capacity to effectively represent the world through the dynamic interconnectivity of neurons, and, in turn, upon our capacity to act upon our relationship with the external world based upon these internal designs to produce desirable change. The challenge remains to conceptualize and translate psychiatric concepts, such as the defense mechanisms, into terms that relate to our current neuroscience understanding, as such integration will lead to our greater effectiveness as psychiatrist armed with a clearer sense of our self(s).

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