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The Three-Pound Enigma: The Human Brain and the Quest to Unlock Its Mysteries By Shannon Moffett ( Algonquin Books )
Release Date: 2006-01-20
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Product Description
Can we know something without being aware that we know it? How does someone with severe amnesia still recognize himself in the mirror? How are we able to erase a traumatic event from our memory? And, how, at only three pounds (80 percent of which is only water), does the human brain give rise to consciousness? How is it capable of outstripping the computational and storage capacities of the most complex computer?
To many of us, the human brain is a mystery. To Shannon Moffett, a Stanford medical student, and to the experts she’s interviewed, it is an irresistible enigma. Moffett takes us down the halls of neuroscience to the front lines of cutting-edge research and medicine to meet some of today’s most extraordinary minds, including
• Dr. Roberta Glick, a neurosurgeon who takes us into the operating room to remove a bullet lodged in a patient’s skull;
• Dr. John Gabrieli, a cognitive neuroscientist who illustrates how and where in the brain we experience emotion;
• neuroscientist Dr. Christof Koch, who worked with the late Nobel Laureate Francis Crick and is on a quest to find the cellular basis of consciousness by studying how we see;
• Dr. Robert Stickgold, a pioneer in dream research who shows how waking life influences dreaming life and vice versa.
With illustrations and extraordinary case histories, The Three-Pound Enigma is engaging, enlightening, and thought-provoking.
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 Exploring the Brain -and mind- with Shannon Moffett in The Three Pound Enigma
Moffett's book takes the reader on two simultaneous journeys: a textbook presentation of the development of the human brain from conception to death, and a series of meetings with some of the world's most prominent neuroscientists and neurosurgeons. Intersected in the chapters profiling the scientists are interesting anecdotes and humorous quotes, providing the reader with a sense of the scientist's personality, not just their research.
Moffett begins by describing her fascination with the mind and the brain. During a medical school gross anatomy dissection, Moffett begins to wonder about the brain before her. What is the connection between the brain, a physical lump of tissue, and the mind, the theoretical seat of human personality? Moffett's book explores this connection during meetings with scholars and scientists who are seeking the answers to neuroscience's biggest questions.
After the introduction, a textbook-like chapter describes the early development of a human embryonic brain. Chapters describing brain development are alternated with chapters describing scientists and their research.
Dr. Roberta Glick is the first portrait featured in Moffett's book. Glick, a female neurosurgeon, works in a busy county hospital. Glick specializes in brain tumors and her research focuses on new ways to fight brain cancer. Moffett describes a day in Glick's life: Glick visits her patients, which include a man who had a pituitary tumor removed and a baby who had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke, picking up her children, operating on a man with a bullet lodged in his skull, and attending temple. Glick describes sexism in the field of neurosurgery, and describes the way she has personally integrated her scientific profession with her personal religious convictions.
After another textbook chapter describing the mapping of the cerebral cortex, Moffett profiles Dr. John Gabrieli. Gabrieli is professor of neuroscience and psychology at Stanford University, and is considered an expert on memory. Gabrieli's lab (Gab Lab) is devoted to the field of cognitive neuroscience - the study of how and where we think and feel. The Gab Lab investigates memory, olfaction, and learning disorders. Gabrieli describes a famous patient known as HM, who, upon having his hippocampus removed in an attempt to cure his epilepsy, cannot remember a new event for longer than a few seconds. One of the most interesting phenomena that Gabrieli describes is the ability of amnesiacs like HM to acquire new skills without remembering their acquisition. Gabrieli states that, "we might be moving around daily, driven by these kinds of memories all the time, but we don't realize it's a memory that's driving us to do something or believe something or say something... we're operating on a system that doesn't even know where we learned something, just like HM."
Next, Moffett describes her encounters with Dr. Christof Koch and his research partner, Francis Crick, of Watson and Crick fame. Koch and Crick seek to discover the soul, or the root of human consciousness. Crick believes that consciousness arises solely from the interactions in the brain's nerve cells. Koch, Crick, and Moffett discuss qualia. Koch defines qualia to Moffett as "the elements of consciousness: the texture, the feel, the pain, the pleasure." Koch, Crick, and Moffett also describe a number of illusions. One of the most enjoyable aspects of the book is that many of the illusions are available for the reader to try on Moffett's internet webpage.
Dr. Bob Stickgold is a sleep researcher that Moffett meets with next. Stickgold's lab uses video games as a primary means of research. Moffett herself describes her experience testing Stickgold's virtual skiing tool. Stickgold started researching dreams and sleep after wondering why images and hallucinations of the day's events replay as we fall asleep. One of the greatest examples is the common experience of phantom Tetris pieces falling before your eyes after a day of playing the addictive 80's video game. Stickgold uses these experiences to theorize about why we sleep and why we dream.
One of the most fascinating chapters of the book details Moffett's encounter with Judy Castelli. Castelli has dissociative identity disorder, the disease once known as multiple personality disorder. Castelli discusses her different personalities. Are these personalities the manifestation of multiple minds, or consciousnesses, within one brain? After meeting Castelli, Moffett meets Dr. David Spiegel. Spiegel is a professor at Stanford University who was on the panel of psychiatrists who changed the name of Castelli's disease from Multiple Personality Disorder to Dissociative Identity Disorder. DID is described as a controversial diagnosis, but Spiegel believes the disease is real. After interviewing Spiegel, Moffett returns the focus to Castelli, who has learned to live with her disease.
Another extremely interesting chapter details Moffett's meeting with famed philosopher Dr. Daniel Dennett. Dennett is interested in the problem of consciousness. A favorite topic of Dennett's is how and when consciousness arose in living creatures. This topic is discussed over dinner with a Dr. Ned Block. Moffett describes an interesting experiment of Block's involving the ability of the brain to focus on one piece of visual input while actively overlooking another. This is demonstrated by a room full of students watching a video of people passing a basketball around. The students, so focused on the basketball, do not notice when a man in a gorilla suit wanders across the court. Says Bennett, "Philosophy is the mother. When you don't yet know the right questions to ask, you're doing philosophy. As soon as you pose the right questions, you can go off and try to answer them - and that's a new discipline: mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology."
Moffett's book is both thought-provoking and funny. Additionally, enough information is presented in the textbook chapters that a person with no prior knowledge of neurology could read and understand the book. Because Moffett profiles many people with different areas of expertise, the reader is granted a peek into current research, experiments, and problems within the field of neuroscience. Moffett's book is highly entertaining and I recommend it to anyone with a curiosity about the mind, especially if those curiosities lean towards the philosophical side of science.
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Insightful
I read this book about a year ago. I was recently found it again on my bookshelf and, after rereading it, decided to write a review. For anyone who has an interest in medicine of any kind, this is a great book.
Even for the lay person without any medical knowledge, it will prove to be thought provoking and inspiring. I myself found this in a library and decided to check it out on a whim. After this, I have developed an interest in neuroscience and have read many books on the topic. Still, this remains my favorite out of all of them. The reader friendly and occasionally humourous style of writing is appealing to readers of many ages and backgrounds.
The book covers different topics such as consciousness, dissociative identity disorder (DID), the mystery of sleep and dreaming, neuroethics and even neuromarketing. I really enjoyed how the author went into detail about each person she met with and talked to.
If you've ever had questions about your own mind and wish to dig deeper into how your brain works, I suggest reading this book.
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 A Good Start ( bpekkala )
This is an excellent overview of current mainstream research and a balanced look at
other views. The link to her website for demonstrations was novel and make the book
a better than average read. For those interested in further study I would suggest:
The Field and The Intention Experiment by Lynne McTaggart; The Biology of Belief by
Bruce Lippton and Edgar Cayce: On Mysteries of the Mind by Henry Reed.
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An excellent research-and-literature-review on the problem of brain and consciousness
This is a most readable review of the work and praxis of front line researchers and writers on the subject of the relationship between brain and consciousness. It was a great experience to read this book especially while trying to read simultaneuously the much more detailed and specific book by Christopher Koch. Both readings illuminated each other. The recently deceased Francis Crick comes into a splendid light.
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a guided tour of tomorrow's brain science, for beginners and experts alike ( chchatham )
How does "the mind" emerge from the brain? We are closer to a coherent answer than ever before, thanks to accumulating evidence from a variety of fields - including cognitive neuroscience, clinical psychology, internal medicine, somnology, and even modern philosophy. In "The Three Pound Enigma", Shannon Moffett explores the cutting-edge of these disciplines, literally: from the risky operation by neurosurgeon Roberta Glick described in the first chapter, to penetrating theoretical discussions with the sharpest researchers around (including vision scientist Christof Koch and philosopher Daniel Dennett), this book provides a cross-section of current brain research.
Unlike so many popular science books, "The Three Pound Enigma" has something for novices and experts alike. Clear explanations of everything from fMRI technology & K-complexes to anterograde amnesia & dissociative identity disorders will dazzle the layperson, and yet Moffett also provides something for the professional audience: a glimpse into the personalities of some of the field's most successful scholars, sufficiently detailed to give additional insight on their (in)famous theoretical perspectives.
For example, although many can lay claim to having late-night conversations about consciousness, very few (other than Moffett, and her readers) have had such a conversation in a crowded Memphis nightclub with renowned consciousness philosopher Daniel Dennett. Or, perhaps a better example may be the anecdotes related by somnologist Robert Stickgold, who traces his career from undergraduate neurobiology research at Harvard, to a stint as a computer programmer, first on Wall Street ... and then in one of the country's preeminent sleep labs. Or, better yet, Moffett gives fascinating context to one of the most unlikely collaborations in modern neuroscience: that between red-haired iconoclast Christof Koch and the late Francis Crick, a 1962 Nobel Laureate and the co-discoverer of DNA's double-helix structure.
Between clever quips (e.g., cognitive neuroscience: the expensive branch of philosophy) and penetrating insights about the current state of brain research, Moffett also includes "interludes," each of which documents a different stage in cognitive development, from conception to death. Although these sections are not tightly integrated with the text, they're useful grounding for both neuro-novices and experts alike. There's even a good deal of freely available web content, available for those who want to delve a little deeper into the topics discussed in the book.
In summary, Shannon Moffett's book is a wonderful introduction to the ideas underlying modern brain research, as well as a revealing portrait of several of the individuals driving these developments. The book comes highly recommended to laypeople with an interest in learning more about major players in brain research, and even to more experienced readers who desire a more personal view of the biggest names in the field.
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