Friday's Footprint

A psychiatrist who has received international recognition for her research on the neural basis of primate social cognition Leslie Brothers M.D. offers here a major argument about the social dimension of the human brain drawing on both her own work and a wealth of information from research laboratories neurosurgical clinics and psychiatric wards. Brothers offers the tale of Robinson Crusoe as a metaphor for neuroscience's classic (and flawed) notion of the brain: a starkly isolated figure working praying writing alone. But the famous castaway of literature she notes came from society and returned to society. So too with our brains: they have evolved a specialized capacity for exchanging signals with other brains--they are designed to be social. This can be seen in the brain's sensitive attunement to the meanings of facial expressions and physical gestures and the way it assigns mental lives to physical bodies--a feat we too often take for granted. Brothers describes fascinating case studies that show thatcertain kinds of brain damage can destroy a patient'sability to interpret faces leaving him or her with thesense that they are surrounded by zombies. She takes us downto the level of the individual neuron exploring theresponse of brain cells to social events. Perhaps mostimportant she connects neuroscience psychiatry andsociology as never before showing how our daily interactioncreates an organized social world--a network of brains thatgenerates meaningful behavior and thought. Our emotions andour sense of self have no existence outside of a socialcontext. Brothers conducts her argument with grace and style.By broadening our approach to the brain this groundbreakingbook makes an important contribution to our understanding ofthe human mind.