A Very Short Tour of the Mind

May 20, 2013
Corballis (The Recursive Mind) goes for a long shot but falls far short: in attempting to pack nearly half a century of research on the human mind into just over a hundred pages, he gives each subject short shrift. The author, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Auckland, dives right into his discussion of some of the brain’s most interesting features and functions, addressing topics as far-ranging as left-handedness, “lies and bullshit,” the interstices of language and music, facial recognition, and the synesthetic title of a Nabokov novel (Ada). Each gets a two-to-four-page treatment—some accompanied by illustrations—and every entry is interesting. But Corballis isn’t kidding when he calls these “short walks.” Many chapters feel conspicuously incomplete; one entitled “Why Italians Gesticulate,” for example, suffers from a glaring lack of, well, Italians. Add another demerit for no discernible guiding principle. At the end, readers will fell less like tourists in the hands of a well-informed guide, and more like sheep behind a lost shepherd. Illus.

Starred review from June 1, 2013
A wise old psychologist collects a lifetime of neurological pearls. Corballis (Psychology, Emeritus/Univ. of Auckland; The Recursive Mind: The Origins of Human Language, Thought, and Civilization, 2011) writes a column for New Zealand Geographic: short, ingenious, four to five page essays on his specialty. Is our brain the largest? No; larger animals have larger brains. Is it the largest in relation to body size? No; mice and small birds do better. Corballis turns up measurements that place the human brain at No. 1 but admits that the most impressive fact is that we are the only species investigating the problem. The usual myths fall by the wayside. No one knows who first claimed that we use only 10 percent of our brain, but no imaging study detects areas that remain silent as if waiting to perform. The belief that our right brain governs creativity while the left sticks to boring rationality is not likely to disappear, despite Corballis' skepticism. He explains why humans are skilled at recognizing faces but not shoulders, feet or names. As for our vaunted memory, the author points out that nature designed it to plan future actions, not to record the past (which has no evolutionary value). As a result, accuracy has a low priority, and human memory is wildly unreliable. Swearing is more common in extroverts and the uneducated, less so in introverts and religious people. Often a mark of coolness today, religious, excretory and sexual obscenities have lost their impact; racial epithets remain the only major taboo. A thoroughly enjoyable exploration of questions even astute readers may not have thought worth asking.

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