Gazzaniga is one of the most brilliant experimental neuroscientists in the world. --Tom Wolfe

Michael S. Gazzaniga has been called the father of cognitive neuroscience. In his remarkable book, Who's in Charge?, he makes a powerful and provocative argument that counters the common wisdom that our lives are wholly determined by physical processes we cannot control.

There is no you consciously making decisions. So how do we make decisions? How can we have free will if we don't pull the levers of our own behavior?

What moral and legal implications follow if we don't have free well? Who's in Charge is a primer for a new era in the understanding of human behavior that ranges across neuroscience, psychology, ethics, and the law with a light touch but profound implications.

His well-reasoned case against the idea that we live in a determined world is fascinating and liberating, solidifying his place among the likes of Oliver Sacks, Antonio Damasio, V.S. Ramachandran, and other bestselling science authors exploring the mysteries of the human brain.

The father of cognitive neuroscience illuminates the past, present, and future of the mind-brain problem

How do neurons turn into minds? How does physical stuff--atoms, molecules, chemicals, and cells--create the vivid and various worlds inside our heads? The problem of consciousness has gnawed at us for millennia. In the last century there have been massive breakthroughs that have rewritten the science of the brain, and yet the puzzles faced by the ancient Greeks are still present. In The Consciousness Instinct, the neuroscience pioneer Michael S. Gazzaniga puts the latest research in conversation with the history of human thinking about the mind, giving a big-picture view of what science has revealed about consciousness.

The idea of the brain as a machine, first proposed centuries ago, has led to assumptions about the relationship between mind and brain that dog scientists and philosophers to this day. Gazzaniga asserts that this model has it backward--brains make machines, but they cannot be reduced to one. New research suggests the brain is actually a confederation of independent modules working together. Understanding how consciousness could emanate from such an organization will help define the future of brain science and artificial intelligence, and close the gap between brain and mind.

Captivating and accessible, with insights drawn from a lifetime at the forefront of the field, The Consciousness Instinct sets the course for the neuroscience of tomorrow.

A provocative and fascinating look at new discoveries about the brain that challenge our ethics

The rapid advance of scientific knowledge has raised ethical dilemmas that humankind has never before had to address. Questions about the moment when life technically begins and ends or about the morality of genetically designing babies are now relevant and timely. Our ever-increasing knowledge of the workings of the human brain can guide us in the formation of new moral principles in the twenty-first century. In The Ethical Brain, preeminent neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga presents the emerging social and ethical issues arising out of modern-day brain science and challenges the way we look at them. Courageous and thought-provoking -- a work of enormous intelligence, insight, and importance -- this book explores the hitherto uncharted landscape where science and society intersect.

What happened along the evolutionary trail that made humans so unique? In his accessible style, Michael Gazzaniga pinpoints the change that made us thinking, sentient humans different from our predecessors. He explores what makes human brains special, the importance of language and art in defining the human condition, the nature of human consciousness, and even artificial intelligence.

Michael S. Gazzaniga, one of the most important neuroscientists of the twentieth century, gives us an exciting behind-the-scenes look at his seminal work on that unlikely couple, the right and left brain. Foreword by Steven Pinker.

In the mid-twentieth century, Michael S. Gazzaniga, the father of cognitive neuroscience, was part of a team of pioneering neuroscientists who developed the now foundational split-brain brain theory: the notion that the right and left hemispheres of the brain can act independently from one another and have different strengths.

In Tales from Both Sides of the Brain, Gazzaniga tells the impassioned story of his life in science and his decades-long journey to understand how the separate spheres of our brains communicate and miscommunicate with their separate agendas. By turns humorous and moving, Tales from Both Sides of the Brain interweaves Gazzaniga's scientific achievements with his reflections on the challenges and thrills of working as a scientist. In his engaging and accessible style, he paints a vivid portrait not only of his discovery of split-brain theory, but also of his comrades in arms--the many patients, friends, and family who have accompanied him on this wild ride of intellectual discovery.

Why does the human brain insist on interpreting the world and constructing a narrative? In this ground-breaking work, Michael S. Gazzaniga, one of the world's foremost cognitive neuroscientists, shows how our mind and brain accomplish the amazing feat of constructing our past-a process clearly fraught with errors of perception, memory, and judgment. By showing that the specific systems built into our brain do their work automatically and largely outside of our conscious awareness, Gazzaniga calls into question our everyday notions of self and reality. The implications of his ideas reach deeply into the nature of perception and memory, the profundity of human instinct, and the ways we construct who we are and how we fit into the world around us.

Over the past thirty years, the mind sciences have developed a picture not only of how our brains are built but also of what they were built to do. The emerging picture is wonderfully clear and pointed, underlining William James's notion that humans have far more instincts than other animals. Every baby is born with circuits that compute information enabling it to function in the physical world. Even what helps us to establish our understanding of social relations may have grown out of perceptual laws delivered to an infant's brain. Indeed, the ability to transmit culture-an act that is only part of the human repertoire-may stem from our many automatic and unique perceptual-motor processes that give rise to mental capacities such as belief and culture.

Gazzaniga explains how the mind interprets data the brain has already processed, making us the last to know. He shows how what we see is frequently an illusion and not at all what our brain is perceiving. False memories become a part of our experience; autobiography is fiction. In exploring how the brain enables the mind, Gazzaniga points us toward one of the greatest mysteries of human evolution: how we become who we are.

Michael S. Gazzaniga, one of the most important neuroscientists of the twentieth century, gives us an exciting behind-the-scenes look at his seminal work on that unlikely couple, the right and left brain. Foreword by Steven Pinker.

In the mid-twentieth century, Michael S. Gazzaniga, the father of cognitive neuroscience, was part of a team of pioneering neuroscientists who developed the now foundational split-brain brain theory: the notion that the right and left hemispheres of the brain can act independently from one another and have different strengths.

In Tales from Both Sides of the Brain, Gazzaniga tells the impassioned story of his life in science and his decades-long journey to understand how the separate spheres of our brains communicate and miscommunicate with their separate agendas. By turns humorous and moving, Tales from Both Sides of the Brain interweaves Gazzaniga's scientific achievements with his reflections on the challenges and thrills of working as a scientist. In his engaging and accessible style, he paints a vivid portrait not only of his discovery of split-brain theory, but also of his comrades in arms--the many patients, friends, and family who have accompanied him on this wild ride of intellectual discovery.

Written by world-renowned researchers, including Michael Gazzaniga, Cognitive Neuroscience remains the gold standard in its field, showcasing the latest discoveries and clinical applications. In its new Fifth Edition, updated material is woven into the narrative of each chapter and featured in new Hot Science and Lessons from the Clinic sections. The presentation is also more accessible and focused as the result of Anatomical Orientation figures, Take-Home Message features, and streamlined chapter openers.

Recent, stunning discoveries suggest that natural selection affects not only physical characteristics but also mental processes, from learning to substance abuse. Michael S. Gazzaniga reveals that just as the environment selects those organisms most likely to survive, within the brain the environment selects pre-existing capacities from a massive inventory of possibilities.

One of the world's leading neuroscientists explores how best to understand the human condition by examining the biological, psychological, and highly social nature of our species within the social context of our lives.

What happened along the evolutionary trail that made humans so unique? In his widely accessible style, Michael Gazzaniga looks to a broad range of studies to pinpoint the change that made us thinking, sentient humans, different from our predecessors.

Neuroscience has been fixated on the life of the psychological self for the past fifty years, focusing on the brain systems underlying language, memory, emotion, and perception. What it has not done is consider the stark reality that most of the time we humans are thinking about social processes, comparing ourselves to and estimating the intentions of others. In Human, Gazzaniga explores a number of related issues, including what makes human brains unique, the importance of language and art in defining the human condition, the nature of human consciousness, and even artificial intelligence.

Cognitive Neuroscience: A Reader provides the first definitive collection of readings in this burgeoning area of study.

In this book we are trying to illuminate the persistent and nag- ging questions of how mind, life, and the essence of being relate to brain mechanisms. We do that not because we have a commit- ment to bear witness to the boring issue of reductionism but be- cause we want to know more about what it's all about. How, in- deed, does the brain work? How does it allow us to love, hate, see, cry, suffer, and ultimately understand Kepler's laws? We try to uncover clues to these staggering questions by con- sidering the results of our studies on the bisected brain. Several years back, one of us wrote a book with that title, and the ap- proach was to describe how brain and behavior are affected when one takes the brain apart. In the present book, we are ready to put it back together, and go beyond, for we feel that split-brain studies are now at the point of contributing to an understanding of the workings of the integrated mind. We are grateful to Dr. Donald Wilson of the Dartmouth Medi- cal School for allowing us to test his patients. We would also like to thank our past and present colleagues, including Richard Naka- mura, Gail Risse, Pamela Greenwood, Andy Francis, Andrea El- berger, Nick Brecha, Lynn Bengston, and Sally Springer, who have been involved in various facets of the experimental studies on the bisected brain described in this book.

In this book we are trying to illuminate the persistent and nag- ging questions of how mind, life, and the essence of being relate to brain mechanisms. We do that not because we have a commit- ment to bear witness to the boring issue of reductionism but be- cause we want to know more about what it's all about. How, in- deed, does the brain work? How does it allow us to love, hate, see, cry, suffer, and ultimately understand Kepler's laws? We try to uncover clues to these staggering questions by con- sidering the results of our studies on the bisected brain. Several years back, one of us wrote a book with that title, and the ap- proach was to describe how brain and behavior are affected when one takes the brain apart. In the present book, we are ready to put it back together, and go beyond, for we feel that split-brain studies are now at the point of contributing to an understanding of the workings of the integrated mind. We are grateful to Dr. Donald Wilson of the Dartmouth Medi- cal School for allowing us to test his patients. We would also like to thank our past and present colleagues, including Richard Naka- mura, Gail Risse, Pamela Greenwood, Andy Francis, Andrea El- berger, Nick Brecha, Lynn Bengston, and Sally Springer, who have been involved in various facets of the experimental studies on the bisected brain described in this book.

As the Handbook of Behavioral Neurobiology moves into a second volume, it is appropriate to take into general account the scope and content of this series. In its broadest sense, behavioral neurobiology is the study of the behaviors of animal organisms with reference to their neurological bases. The overall objective of this handbook series is to assemble, in ten volumes, a comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of the major areas that comprise behavioral neurobiology. Within such a framework, it is possible to provide the fundamental concepts, methods, and substantive advancements in these fields in a manner that will be useful to and that will also serve as a reference source for researchers educational programs who desire a well-balanced overview of the component areas of neurobiology. The intent in each volume has been to bring together a spectrum of approaches and disciplines that focuses upon the topic at hand. The first volume presented and discussed the problems of sensory integration; the present work is concerned with the neurobiology of cognitive processes; and forthcoming volumes will include the topics of motor coordination, learning and memory, biological rhythms, motivation, sexual behavior, social behavior and communication, and the evolution of nervous systems and behavior. Thus the purpose of the editors in planning this series has been to offer a distinct handbook, employing the many varied and prevailing avenues of attack upon current problems in behavior and neurological processes, that should prove of unique value and usefulness to professionals and students alike.

The fifth edition of a work that defines the field of cognitive neuroscience, with entirely new material that reflects recent advances in the field.

Each edition of this classic reference has proved to be a benchmark in the developing field of cognitive neuroscience. The fifth edition of The Cognitive Neurosciences continues to chart new directions in the study of the biological underpinnings of complex cognition--the relationship between the structural and physiological mechanisms of the nervous system and the psychological reality of the mind. It offers entirely new material, reflecting recent advances in the field.

Many of the developments in cognitive neuroscience have been shaped by the introduction of novel tools and methodologies, and a new section is devoted to methods that promise to guide the field into the future--from sophisticated models of causality in brain function to the application of network theory to massive data sets. Another new section treats neuroscience and society, considering some of the moral and political quandaries posed by current neuroscientific methods.

Other sections describe, among other things, new research that draws on developmental imaging to study the changing structure and function of the brain over the lifespan; progress in establishing increasingly precise models of memory; research that confirms the study of emotion and social cognition as a core area in cognitive neuroscience; and new findings that cast doubt on the so-called neural correlates of consciousness.