The Biological Mind: How Brain, Body, and Environment Collaborate to Make Us Who We Are

A pioneering neuroscientist argues that we are more than our brains
To many, the brain is the seat of personal identity and autonomy. But the way we talk about the brain is often rooted more in mystical conceptions of the soul than in scientific fact. This blinds us to the physical realities of mental function. We ignore bodily influences on our psychology, from chemicals in the blood to bacteria in the gut, and overlook the ways that the environment affects our behavior, via factors varying from subconscious sights and sounds to the weather. As a result, we alternately overestimate our capacity for free will or equate brains to inorganic machines like computers. But a brain is neither a soul nor an electrical network: it is a bodily organ, and it cannot be separated from its surroundings. Our selves aren't just inside our heads--they're spread throughout our bodies and beyond. Only once we come to terms with this can we grasp the true nature of our humanity.

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• The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind
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• The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life
• Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny
• Elastic: Flexible Thinking in a Time of Change
• Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are
• Minds Make Societies: How Cognition Explains the World Humans Create
• When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought
• The Equations of Life: How Physics Shapes Evolution