Susan A Greenfield

Penguin, £18.99, pp 258 

ISBN 0 713 99192 5

Rating:

The nature and seat of consciousnessthe faculty that, above all, distinguishes humans from other animalsis at the forefront of brain research, attracting scientists of every persuasion, from geneticists to psychologists. Susan Greenfield, the internationally renowned director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, is rightly acclaimed for the many years she has spent successfully chipping away at the coal-face of brain research. One of her most valuable achievements has been to include the wider public in her lucid explanations of neuronal networking while never ignoring her more technically advanced readers.

Her infectious smile, in contrast to the glum expression on the dust jacket of The Private Life of the Brain, shone out encouragingly during her television series last year. The book has the touch of a dedicated specialist steeped in up to the minute technical details, but is always humble ("I suggest," "I have tried to show," "I'll stick my neck out and say") and never forgets the wider humanitarian view.

Like Antonio Damasio, author of the recent The Feeling of What Happens, Greenfield believes that human consciousness emerged out of the development of emotion, in Anthony Clare's words, through the formation of the autobiographical self, identity, and personhood. Throughout the book, she nods towards the history of ideas in brain studies, referring to Euripides, Freud, and MacLean. However, she is largely concerned with the brain's geography, structure ("weighing only some three pounds with the consistency of a soft boiled egg"), and function. She discusses emotion, memory, will, and the many mental variations caused by depression, drugs, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer's disease. She concludes categorically that, for her, whether discussing fear or pleasure, she finds it impossible to distinguish the mindthe personalisation of the brainfrom the concept of self.

She answers the many questions posed in her text with this stirring conclusion: "Consciousness will blossom into self-consciousness only when enough associations are in place . . . to provide a common referent to myriad experiences . . . The idea is that the young child is swamped with emotions that are gradually diluted by a growing retaliatory sense of Self and, most important, with a concomitant sense of inner control. I think this increasingly interactive and ever-changing dialogue between Self and outside world is important because it highlights the basic issues of how we see ourselves and, indeed, how we choose to live our lives." (See Personal view p 937.)

Barbara Godlee, social anthropologist. 

Cambridge