An interesting book: sometimes a little hard going ....which purports to bring us up-to-date on what is going on in the world of brain research. I learned quite a lot. There are some massive projects proceeding which aim to map the brain in great detail...down to the individual neurons if they are able to do that. There is also a European project which is aiming to be able to build a model of the brain ...which can be used to model the various processes, chemical signalling etc.
Of course there are critics who say that even if we have this detailed model or map of the brain without the equivalent of "software" for the brain we will not have much insight.
New tools have been developed which can change the colour of neurons when they are behaving in a particular way...and a transparent fish is being used to observe multiple neurons at work simultaneously.
I also learned that there are many types of neurons....not just one. There may be as many as 1000 different types.....presumably each playing a different role. And whereas with a computer, the power supply is kept separate from computing and computing separate from memory but, with nervous systems, these things are interdigitated (interlocked). Scientists are already moving-on from single neuron studies to working with networks of neurons and it is now possible to work with hundreds or indeed thousands on neurons at the same time.
I was interested to note the names of Ned Block and Hilary Putnam cropping up ....I recall them from my studies on the Philosophy of Mind. My overall impression is of a relatively new field of research which is powering ahead in multiple ways. As somebody said we might now be at the end of the beginning ....but we are still a very long way from understanding how the brain works. We have glimpses but the role of the glial cells is not well understood, and brains do not operate in isolation but are embedded in a body ...often containing specialised sensory receptor arrays....and genes are not everything; epigenetic variation comes into play....maybe triggered by alterations in nutrition or early stress and maternal care..which can generate functional changes to the brain and body. The psychiatric diagnoses of illness are labels of similar sorts of behaviour.....unrelated to any medical test. But it is now clear that schizophrenia and autism is largely due to mutation in genes...and particular mutations may manifest as schizophrenia in one person, autism in another, and intellectual disability or epilepsy in another (the same gene mutation). This is not exceptional. This is the rule. And psychiatric states can arise from mutations in many genes...maybe as many as one thousand. Not all these conditions are inherited. And most of these mutations are also found in people who exhibit no psychiatric conditions.
The authors indulge themselves with some speculation about the future in their last chapter. The main issue that I have with this is that they are kind of constrained by the technology of today and really don't know what break-throughs (or obstacles) might lie just around the corner. Nevertheless a really interesting book and I've learned a lot. I give it 5 stars. ( )