The Ravenous Brain

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Consciousness is our gateway to experience: it enables us to recognize Van Gogh's starry skies, be enraptured by Beethoven's Fifth, and stand in awe of a snowcapped mountain. Yet consciousness is subjective, personal, and famously difficult to examine: philosophers have for centuries declared this mental entity so mysterious as to be impenetrable to science.In The Ravenous Brain , neuroscientist Daniel Bor departs sharply from this historical view, and builds on the latest research to propose a new model for how consciousness works. Bor argues that this brain-based faculty evolved as an accelerated knowledge gathering tool. Consciousness is effectively an idea factory -- that choice mental space dedicated to innovation, a key component of which is the discovery of deep structures within the contents of our awareness.This model explains our brains"; ravenous appetite for information -- and in particular, its constant search for patterns. Why, for instance, after all our physical needs have been met, do we recreationally solve crossword or Sudoku puzzles? Such behavior may appear biologically wasteful, but, according to Bor, this search for structure can yield immense evolutionary benefits -- it led our ancestors to discover fire and farming, pushed modern society to forge ahead in science and technology, and guides each one of us to understand and control the world around us. But the sheer innovative power of human consciousness carries with it the heavy cost of mental fragility.Bor discusses the medical implications of his theory of consciousness, and what it means for the origins and treatment of psychiatric ailments, including attention-deficit disorder, schizophrenia, manic depression, and autism. All mental illnesses, he argues, can be reformulated as disorders of consciousness -- a perspective that opens up new avenues of treatment for alleviating mental suffering.A controversial view of consciousness, The Ravenous Brain links cognition to creativity in an ingenious solution to one of science's biggest mysteries.

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Publishers Weekly Review

Human consciousness, as described by Bor, a neuroscientist and research fellow at the University of Sussex, is an evolutionary outgrowth of the brain's search for information and uncovering patterns in the world around us. He argues compellingly that this confers an evolutionary advantage and that "it evolved, like almost everything else in nature, in an incremental way." He goes on to explain the mechanisms the brain uses to increase its efficacy at this task, focusing most on the concept of chunking, or finding ways to bring coherence to a large amount of data. Though others have capably presented the relationship between brain and mind, and the functions of various portions of the brain, Bor does it so effectively that the material remains fresh. He explores how our brains differ both from computer programs and from other animals (such as apes, crows, and octopi) that are also self-aware. "Perhaps what most distinguishes us humans from the rest of the animal kingdom is our ravenous desire to find structure in the information we pick up in the world." Bor balances neuroscience with comparative biology, and philosophy with psychology while writing in a fully engaging conversational style. Agent: Peter Tallack, the Science Factory (U.K.). (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

CHOICE Review

The Ravenous Brain tackles the subject of consciousness through a combination of the latest research, thought experiments, and extremely personal anecdotes from cognitive neuroscientist Bor (Univ. of Sussex, UK). This thought-provoking book proposes that the brain exhibits a voracious appetite for information and searches for structure through pattern identification and "chunking" (compressing data to maximize information). Bor lays the groundwork for his theory by first addressing philosophical considerations of consciousness before moving onto its evolutionary background. The line between consciousness and unconsciousness is next examined, followed by the neuroscience of awareness. The author then delves into nonhuman animal consciousness as well as disorders of consciousness due to profound brain injury and mental illness. Bor concludes with an epilogue that proclaims "the science of consciousness is coming of age" both generally and individually. The book contains numerous notes and references and nine questionably useful figures. Bor's conversational style is likely to intrigue scientists and nonscientists alike. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; general readers. C. L. Iwema University of Pittsburgh