Mapping the Mind (中文書名 : 大腦的秘密檔案)

大體說來,這篇讀者是認為作者身為記者,並非來自腦科學的專業學者, 在文字上的遣詞運用,還有某些神經科學的基礎認知,出現內行人不會犯的錯誤和疏漏, 且流於武斷，並且提出一個該領域專業作者的書寫風格和態度。但也有著快速帶領外行人入門的可讀性與切題性，足量的圖片也使大眾更易了解。 這是根據讀者自己跨足專業期刊編輯、學術工作、報紙文章發表三種工作的個人經驗，以及對神經科學領域有一定程度的認識所做的判斷。相當好的書評, 而且他的看法也同樣適用其他專業學門有外行人執筆專業內容產生的流弊；只是這種評點，很少在台灣網路書店上，或者一般部落格，看到這種專業領域的從事者兼讀者，對該領域的大眾化書籍提出類似的批判 (但也可能是我不夠鄉民，看不夠多XD )

I just got and read this book because of some of the more recent and enthusiastic reader reviews. But I beg to differ with their assessment, since this is not the first book on the subject I have read. The author, a journalist, is over her head in this subject matter and apparently does not realize it. This becomes apparent in the context of other neuroscience literature.

Compared to serious works on the subject written by neuroscientists who actually do some of the research upon which their books are based, this is a quick read. I zipped through it in a few hours. By comparison, it takes me days to get through a work of the same length by Drs. LeDoux or Damasio, who are both absolute authorities. The quick overview can of course be most helpful, but be aware that the real scientists are harder to read for a reason. It's because they have very deep subject-matter knowledge coupled with fine sensitivity to what can be claimed without distortion. They know *all* of the pertinent studies on their topic, not just a small subset. They're cautious, and thorough in their explanations. The journalist tends to wish to make sweeping statements on the basis of insufficient knowledge, since she doesn't have years to master such a complex discipline and the summary style is more digestible for a broad audience. I am a scholar-researcher and academic journal editor myself, and have also done quite a bit of newspaper writing, so I know intimately both sides of the writing spectrum. In Ms. Carter's case, after not too many pages I began not to trust her pronouncements. Too many are simply too glib.

Carter treats too many aspects unevenly and incompletely. Music, for instance, gets only about two pages of text, over half of which is devoted to the tingle-thrill sensation, probably because the author found a catchy anecdote in an experiment about chickens and music. It's a cute story for a newspaper, but if you wish to understand music and the brain, this is not even a bare introduction. See instead any publication by Isabelle Peretz, a psychologist-neuroscientist specializing in music at the University of Montreal (she has lots of PDFs on her departmental website), who is very authoritative yet writes accessibly. Carter does not mention Peretz anywhere in the book.

I was surprised when Carter identified the amygdala as the "source of negative emotions of anger, fear and sadness" (p. 103). And she writes: "the amygdala, as we have seen, does not convey concepts, it simply creates emotional feelings." These are misleading formulations that you'd never read in anything written by Antonio Damasio. While it is strongly implicated in the fear reflex, I have not read elsewhere that the amygdala is so clearly involved in sadness or anger. And a neurologist would not say "creates emotional feelings" -- rather, it contributes to a piece of the process of feeling. In his books, Damasio is always careful to point out that any one small area of the brain is rarely completely responsible for anything. Rather, brain functions are typically distributed over networks of brain regions that work together in complex processes and pathways that are still mostly imperfectly understood. Damasio conscientiously presents his entire books as hypotheses in need of further research, whereas the journalist is not nearly so hesitant. The occupational hazard of every journalist is the impossible obligation to get up to speed on a new topic quickly, without any of the formal training that topic experts have, yet present a lucid and balanced explication to a wide readership. In this instance, as happens daily in the newspaper, the summary simplifies the story but often twists the facts and their implications.

On the plus side, the illustrations are numerous, pertinent, and quite helpful in assisting the reader to visualize many of the abstract and difficult concepts in this book.