Making up the Mind E-Book

Chris Frith

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 385

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Written by one of the world’s leading neuroscientists, Making Up the Mind is the first accessible account of experimental studies showing how the brain creates our mental world.

• 
  
• Uses evidence from brain imaging, psychological experiments and studies of patients to explore the relationship between the mind and the brain
  
• Demonstrates that our knowledge of both the mental and physical comes to us through models created by our brain
  
• Shows how the brain makes communication of ideas from one mind to another possible

Leseprobe

Contents

Abbreviations

Preface

Acknowledgments

Prologue: Real Scientists Don’t Study the Mind

The Psychologist’s Fear of the Party

Hard Science and Soft Science

Hard Science – Objective; Soft Science – Subjective

Can Big Science Save Soft Science?

Measuring Mental Activity

How Can the Mental Emerge from the Physical?

I Can Read Your Mind

How the Brain Creates the World

Part I Seeing through the Brain’s Illusions

Chapter 1 Clues from a Damaged Brain

Sensing the Physical World

The Mind and the Brain

When the Brain Doesn’t Know

When the Brain Knows, But Doesn’t Tell

When the Brain Tells Lies

How Brain Activity Creates False Knowledge

How to Make Your Brain Lie to You

Checking the Reality of Our Experiences

How Do We Know What’s Real?

Chapter 2 What a Normal Brain Tells Us about the World

Illusions of Awareness

Our Secretive Brain

Our Distorting Brain

Our Creative Brain

Chapter 3 What the Brain Tells Us about Our Bodies

Privileged Access?

Where’s the Border?

We Don’t Know What We Are Doing

Who’s in Control?

My Brain Can Act Perfectly Well without Me

Phantoms in the Brain

There’s Nothing Wrong with Me

Who’s Doing It?

Where Is the “You”?

Part II How the Brain Does It

Chapter 4 Getting Ahead by Prediction

Patterns of Reward and Punishment

How the Brain Embeds Us in the World and Then Hides Us

The Feeling of Being in Control

When the System Fails

The Invisible Actor at the Center of the World

Chapter 5 Our Perception of the World Is a Fantasy That Coincides with Reality

Our Brain Creates an Effortless Perception of the Physical World

The Information Revolution

What Can Clever Machines Really Do?

A Problem with Information Theory

The Reverend Thomas Bayes

The Ideal Bayesian Observer

How a Bayesian Brain Can Make Models of the World

Is There a Rhinoceros in the Room?

Where Does Prior Knowledge Come From?

How Action Tells Us about the World

My Perception Is Not of the World, But of My Brain’s Model of the World

Color Is in the Brain, Not in the World

Perception Is a Fantasy That Coincides with Reality

We Are Not the Slaves of Our Senses

So How Do We Know What’s Real?

Imagination Is Extremely Boring

Chapter 6 How Brains Model Minds

Biological Motion: The Way Living Things Move

How Movements Can Reveal Intentions

Imitation

Imitation: Perceiving the Goals of Others

Humans and Robots

Empathy

The Experience of Agency

The Problem with Privileged Access

Illusions of Agency

Hallucinating Other Agents

Part III Culture and the Brain

Chapter 7 Sharing Minds – How the Brain Creates Culture

The Problem with Translation

Meanings and Goals

Solving the Inverse Problem

Prior Knowledge and Prejudice

What Will He Do Next?

Other People Are Contagious

Communication Is More Than Just Speaking

Teaching Is Not Just a Demonstration To Be Imitated

Closing the Loop

Fork Handles: The Two Ronnies Close the Loop (Eventually)

Fully Closing the Loop

Knowledge Can Be Shared

Knowledge Is Power

The Truth

Epilogue: Me and My Brain

Chris Frith and I

Searching for the Will in the Brain

Where Is the Top in Top-Down Control?.

The Homunculus

This Book Is Not About Consciousness

Why Are People So Nice (as Long as They Are Treated Fairly)?

Even an Illusion Has Responsibilities

The Evidence

Illustrations and Text Credits

Index

Praise for Making up the Mind

“Chris Frith is well known for his extremely clear thinking on very complex psychological matters, such as agency, social intelligence, and the minds of people with autism and schizophrenia. And it is precisely such questions, along with the understanding of how we perceive, act, choose, remember, and feel, which are now being revolutionized by brain imaging. In Making up the Mind, he brings all this together in a most accessible and engaging way.”

Oliver Sacks, MD

“Making up the Mind is a fascinating guided tour through the elusive interface between mind and brain written by a pioneer in the field. The author’s obvious passion for the subject shines through every page.”

V.S. Ramachandran, MD

“I soon made up my mind that this is an excellent, most readable and stimulating book. The author is a distinguished neuroscientist working especially on brain imaging.”

R.L. Gregory, University of Bristol

“Chris Frith, one of the pioneers in applying brain imaging to study mental processes, has written a brilliant introduction to the biology of mental processes for the general reader. This superb book describes how we recreate in our brains a representation of the external world. Clearly and beautifully written, this book is for all who want to learn about how the brain gives rise to the mental phenomenon of our lives. A must read!”

Eric R. Kandel, Nobel Laureate

“Important and surprising. The brain will never seem the same again.”

Lewis Wolpert, University College London

© 2007 by Chris D. Frith

BLACKWELL PUBLISHING

350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA

9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK

550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

The right of Chris D. Frith to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

First published 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd

1 2007

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Frith, Christopher D.

Making up the mind : how the brain creates our mental world / Chris Frith.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978–1–4051–3694–5 (hardcover : alk. paper)—

ISBN 978–1–4051–6022–3 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Brain—Popular works.

2. Human behavior—Physiological aspects. 3. Neuropsychiatry—Popular works. 4. Neuropsychology—Popular works. I. Title.

QP376.F686 2007

612.8'2—dc22

2006038336

A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-free practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board used have met acceptable environmental accreditation standards.

For further information on

Blackwell Publishing, visit our website:

www.blackwellpublishing.com

Abbreviations

BOLD

blood oxygenation level dependent

CAT

computerized axial tomography

EEG

electroencephalogram

FFA

fusiform face area

fMRI

functional magnetic resonance imaging

MRI

magnetic resonance imaging

PET

positron emission tomography

PPA

parahippocampal place area

REM

rapid eye movement

TD

temporal difference

Preface

Inside my head there is an amazing labor-saving device. Better even than a dishwasher or a calculator, my brain releases me from the dull, repetitive task of recognizing the things in the world around me, and even saves me from needing to think about how to control my movements. I can concentrate on the important things in life: making friends and sharing ideas. But, of course, my brain doesn’t just save me from tedious chores. My brain creates the “me” that is released into the social world. Moreover, it is my brain that enables me to share my mental life with my friends and thereby allows us to create something bigger than any of us are capable of on our own. This book describes how the brain makes this magic.

Acknowledgments

My work on the mind and the brain has been possible through funding from the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. The MRC enabled my work on the neuropsychology of schizophrenia through its support of Tim Crow’s psychiatry unit in the Clinical Research Centre at Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow, Middlesex. At that time we could only make indirect inferences about relationships between the mind and the brain, but this all changed in the 1980s with the development of brain scanners. The Wellcome Trust enabled Richard Frackowiak to create the Functional Imaging Laboratory and supported my investigations there into the neural correlates of consciousness and social interactions. The study of the mind and the brain cuts across traditional disciplines, from anatomy and computational neurobiology to philosophy and anthropology. I have been fortunate that I have always worked in multidisciplinary – and multinational – groups.

I have benefited greatly from my interactions with my colleagues and friends at University College London, in particular Ray Dolan, Dick Passingham, Daniel Wolpert, Tim Shallice, Jon Driver, Paul Burgess, and Patrick Haggard. At the early stages of this book I had many fruitful discussions on the brain and the mind with my friends at Aarhus, Jakob Hohwy and Andreas Roepstorff, and at Salzburg, Josef Perner and Heinz Wimmer. Martin Frith and John Law have argued with me about many of the topics covered in this book for as long as I can remember. Eve Johnstone and Sean Spence generously gave me expert advice on psychiatric phenomena and their significance for brain science.

Perhaps the most important impetus for writing this book came from my weekly discussions with the breakfast group, past and present. Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Davina Bristow, Thierry Chaminade, Jenny Coull, Andrew Duggins, Chloë Farrer, Helen Gallagher, Tony Jack, James Kilner, Hakwan Lau, Emiliano Macaluso, Eleanor Maguire, Pierre Maquet, Jen Marchant, Dean Mobbs, Mathias Pessiglione, Chiara Portas, Geraint Rees, Johannes Schultz, Sukhi Shergill, and Tania Singer all have helped to shape this book. I am deeply grateful to them.

Karl Friston and Richard Gregory read sections of the book and have given me much help and useful advice. I am grateful to Paul Fletcher for his encouragement at an early stage to create the Professor of English and the other characters who argue with the narrator.

Philip Carpenter went well beyond the call of duty to provide incisive comments.

Most of all I am grateful to those who read all the chapters and provided detailed comments. Shaun Gallagher and two anonymous readers made many useful suggestions. Rosalind Ridley caused me to think more carefully about my claims and to be more precise in my terminology. Alex Frith helped me to eliminate jargon and failures of continuity.

Uta Frith was closely involved in all stages of the development of the project. Without her example and guidance this book would not exist.

Prologue: Real Scientists Don’t Study the Mind

The Psychologist’s Fear of the Party

Just like any other tribe, scientists have a hierarchy. Psychologists are somewhere near the bottom. I discovered this in my first year at university, where I was studying natural sciences. It was announced that, for the first time, students would be able to study psychology in part 1 of the natural sciences tripos. I went eagerly to my college tutor to ask him if he knew anything about this new possibility. “Yes,” he replied. “But I didn’t think any of my students would be crass enough to want to study psychology.” He was a physicist.

Possibly because I was not entirely sure what “crass” meant, I was undeterred by this remark. I switched from physics to psychology. I have continued to study psychology ever since, but I have never forgotten about my place in the hierarchy. Inevitably the question will come up at academic parties, “so what do you do?” and I think twice about replying, “I’m a psychologist.”

Of course, much has changed in psychology over the last 30 years. We have borrowed many skills and concepts from other disciplines. We study the brain as well as behavior. We use computers extensively to analyze our data and to provide metaphors for how the mind works.1 My university identity badge doesn’t say “Psychologist,” but “Cognitive Neuroscientist.”

“So what do you do?” someone asks. I think she’s the new Head of Physics. Unfortunately the reply, “I’m a cognitive neuroscientist” to the question simply delays matters. After I have tried to explain what I actually do, she says, “Ah, you’re a psychologist!” with that characteristic look which I translate to mean, “Wouldn’t you rather be doing real science?”