9780062373410
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Tales from Both Sides of the Brain audiobook

  • By: Michael S. Gazzaniga
  • Narrator: Johnny Heller
  • Length: 12 hours 1 minutes
  • Publisher: HarperAudio
  • Publish date: February 03, 2015
  • Language: English
  • (561 ratings)
(561 ratings)
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Tales from Both Sides of the Brain Audiobook Summary

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.

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Tales from Both Sides of the Brain Audiobook Narrator

Johnny Heller is the narrator of Tales from Both Sides of the Brain audiobook that was written by Michael S. Gazzaniga

Michael S. Gazzaniga is internationally recognized in the field of neuroscience and a pioneer in cognitive research. He is the director of the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of many popular science books, including Who’s in Charge? (Ecco, 2011). He has six children and lives in California with his wife.

About the Author(s) of Tales from Both Sides of the Brain

Michael S. Gazzaniga is the author of Tales from Both Sides of the Brain

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Tales from Both Sides of the Brain Full Details

Narrator Johnny Heller
Length 12 hours 1 minutes
Author Michael S. Gazzaniga
Publisher HarperAudio
Release date February 03, 2015
ISBN 9780062373410

Additional info

The publisher of the Tales from Both Sides of the Brain is HarperAudio. The imprint is HarperAudio. It is supplied by HarperAudio. The ISBN-13 is 9780062373410.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

Charlene

May 06, 2016

The elitism in this book is palpable. If that is a deal breaker for you, then this book won't be your cup of tea, as it only gets worse in the later chapters. For my own reading pleasure, I chose to simply take it in an see it as a gift. In the end Gazzaniga did little to hide the power of being well connected. He didn't even hide how blatant the exclusion was in his field. As a result, I felt this book conveyed what it's really like in academic institutions. If he had glossed over the elitism, he would not have provided the reader with an accurate understanding of what goes on behind the scenes. I have such mixed feelings about this book. Gazzaniga is on of my heroes and is larger than life to me. It was his work that motivated me to study cognitive neuroscience. I will never forget taking an intro to psych course and reading a bit about his split brain procedure. From that day onward, I was absolutely hooked. If I had to pick a topic (for any class that would allow independent picks), I chose Gazzaniga's work. When I finally declared and took a cognitive neuroscience heavy course load, I learned not only about the strange and wonderful ways in which the brain works, I also found out that it was a very young field, founded by none other than Gazzaniga. His pride in his accomplishments is certainly commiserate with his education, experience, and success. It is just that I have seen equally successful people pull off at least attempting to signal a modicum of humility. In many ways, this book was magical. Gazzaniga's work paved the way for so many wonderful studies that continue, to this day, shedding light on human behavior -- for example, the wonderful work by Josh Greene, which shows how opposing forces in 2 areas of the prefrontal cortex helped humans come to a single moral decision; Martha Farah's work on the FFA, which helped society understand how we recognize faces; work with magnets that shut down the specific parts of the brain, which helps us understand where behaviors originate so researchers can develop treatments. Gazzaniga explains one of his earliest experiments in which he isolated an artery that only fed blood to one side of the brain (so freaking amazing!!!). That was his foray into split brain research. After spending years studying everything Gazzaniga has published, I wasn't sure there would be anything new for me in this book. For so many years I have devoured Gazzaniga's articles. Some of our cognitive neuroscience courses used Gazzaniga's textbooks, and we discussed just about every concept included. But he brought new information to every topic. Even if I was very familiar with a certain concept, his way of explaining his thinking, the funding, the hurdles to conducting studies, and his interactions with the patients provided me with novel information. It made the book extremely exciting for me because I was able to listen to familiar topics but learn about them in a new way. Hugely satisfying. I felt like I was there with him as cognitive neuroscience was born. Gazzaniga not only explained all of his research throughout his career from naive student to professor and from professor to distinguished chair, and so on, he also shared what he was thinking personally, who his friends were, what politics were involved in getting funding or remaining at a particular institution. Thanks to his style choice of part science, part biography, I got to know things about Gazzaniga and his work I never learned in the classroom! This is the man who put cognitive neuroscience on the map! And I got to hear about every detail of how that happened from his own lips. For this reason, this book was fantastic. Also worth noting is that, when speaking about events that unfolded decades ago (even 40 years or more), Gazzaniga seem to remember everything in great detail. It really painted a very clear picture for the reader. If the bragging had been toned down even a little, this would have been one of my favorite books of all time. It was so thrilling. Update: Also to Gazzaniga's credit, he was raised catholic and was educated in the "good genes" era when Dawkins gene-centric view reigned supreme. Despite that, he was able to study the data on stem cells and go against his own religious convictions (he wisely said any scientist worth their salt should always be ready to update views based on evidence and not beliefs- a very Charles Darwin thing to say), and he could appreciate the Dawkins et al. view of life while also allowing his mind to synthesize the new information about emergence and environmental control. He never remained stuck in one mindset.

Stetson

July 22, 2021

This was a revelatory read for several reasons: interesting neuroscience, science history, and personal memoir. The last aspect was really the most compelling aspect of Gazzaniga's book. I was completely unaware that Bill Buckley was a close personal friend to an eminent neuroscience. Gazzaniga's reflections on their relationship reveal a lively and close-knit community of intellectuals in the latter half of 20th century America, including relationships that spanned political, philosophical, and professional differences. In some ways this provoked a twinge of melancholy as it feels like a lost world. We'd be so much better off with luminaries like Gazzaniga shaping the elite social sphere than say the NYT op-ed page and various corners of Twitter. The actual scientific insights in the work are well described in terms of providing a lot of context and rationale for the experiments, including details of the lives of the actual subjects of the experiment. However, there is some repetitions, especially of the observation that consciousness is not a unitary phenomenon individually as in both hemispheres can or do have separate conscientiousness. It would have been great if this book contained more of Gazzaniga's thoughts on the deeper implications of his findings and other findings in neuroscience on the nature of consciousness and on the question of human agency. Overall, I heartily recommend this work.

Lil

January 22, 2020

An incredibly insightful book that delightfully spotlights scientists desire to pursue knowledge and the spirit of experimenting. The many characters are beautifully portrayed.

Nathan

September 19, 2019

Although I have sometimes been critical about the author's approach in terms of neuroscience and his lack of awareness about the disconnect that exists between his appreciation of design elements to the human mind and brains in general and his formal adoption of a misguided evolutionary framework to science, this book manages to avoid most of what I find problematic about his unwillingness to follow the evidence where it leads.  Instead, this book is a very enjoyable memoir of the author's life as a neurologist, which shows a great deal of humanity and graciousness in the author's own efforts to deal with competition in his field.  This is precisely the sort of book I would like to see more of, memoirs from illustrious scientists that discuss the way they went about their careers and the places they lived and the jobs they had and the people they worked with and interacted with.  This book shows the human side of scientists in a way that is winning and charming, and certainly does more to advance the cause of scientific research than the pettiness that often exists by those who present science as something divorced from humanity and human frailty as is often the case.This particular book is a bit more than 350 pages and is divided into four parts and nine large chapters.  The book begins with a foreword from Steven Pinker and a preface.  After that the author discusses discovering the brain (I) with chapters on how the author dived into science (1), including some information about his parents and how they got together, as well as the way that the author discovered split-brain research (2) and sought to understand the code by which the brain sends signals within itself (3).  AFter that the author discusses his own research with split and whole brains (II), with chapters on the modularity of the brain that the author discovered (4), as well as the results of split-brain surgery on the brains of various people (5) and the way that this research spread from the West coast to the East coast with the author moving there for work (6).  After that the author discusses further aspects of his research (III), including what the right brain has to say (7) and his own lifestyle and call to serve (8).  Finally, the book concludes with a discussion about brain layers (IV, 9), an epilogue, acknowledgements, two appendices that deal graciously with other neuroscientists, notes, figure credits, video figures, and an index.The author's research is something that is of genuine and larger cultural interest.  We tend to think of people and tasks as being dominated by the left and right brain, but unless both sides of the brain are acting well, and unless there is some legitimacy for the insights the right side of the brain has, we will be harmed by the way that we think of the mind.  Of particular interest here is the author's almost-gossipy discussion of the student and academic life of CalTech and other institutions and the way that he was able to parlay his personal friendships into a thoughtful discussion of neuroscience and political debates between different people and William F. Buckley Jr.  Overall, this book provides a look at the scientist as a human being involved in institutional and societal politics, seeking to do research that requires working with people and dealing with competition over others seeking credit in the same realms of science.  Obviously, if science is to have a secure place within culture the humanity of the people involved in it needs to be recognized, which will do much at shrinking the gap between scientists and the larger audience that is required to legitimate it.

John

December 07, 2015

This autobiography from the discoverer of the hemispheric brain"split mind" is very readable. I lack technical knowledge, yet, was able to follow along to the audio book. Gazzaniga must have been exciting and interesting in person, based on his writing. He was intellectually curious and enjoyed thinking about completely different areas. A Republican, he lived for intellectual discussion, not only among scientists but with his other friends. He writes of his close, 50-year friendship with the conservative intellectual William F. Buckley, yet, was close friends with Hollywood liberal activist Steve Allen. Early in his academic life, Gazzaniga organized a friendly, packed house political debate between Buckley and Allen. The scientist would continue to organize scientific conferences, start academic journals, write, teach, and research. He served on President George W. Bush's expert panel on human cloning and tackled the topic in a serious, thoughtful way, ultimately deciding to green light cloning with regulation. Gazzaniga also writes charitably of his mentors- such as Nobel Laureate Sperry- and other colleagues and research assistants. If he has axes to grind, he keeps them hidden in this work. His life was rich and varied, making this an intriguing audio book.

Sue

January 20, 2019

This is not always an easy read for the non-scientist, but is such an interesting challenge that almost anyone will be compelled along. The reader will learn how the two hemispheres of the brain work together, and how they work when they have been surgically separated in treatment of severe epilepsy.It is a look-in, too, at how a research lab works, how the scientists choose and work up their experiments, and how they work together. Gazzaniga's studies will intrigue the reader into trying , for example, to draw a circle with one hand and a square with the other, at the same time. Gazzaniga touches on his personal life as it bears on the work he is doing. Troubling are the mentions of the use of animals in the research, but necessary if the full story is to be told; these mentions are not too graphic.

Troy

December 28, 2015

A science autobiography, the work on split brain patients that has typified Gazzaniga's career is told in context of the man's professional and personal life. I always like these science autobiographies, and you should be able to tell what you're getting into from the subtitle. An accomplished and interesting man, with a unique life. Worth a read.

Geo

October 31, 2018

Very long, very interesting! If you want a happy life this is the field to go into. There are no nerds in his life only brilliant people!I never knew so many people had split brains! There were other topics talked about in the book, all about the brain, I learned so much Anything that is WAY too Sciencey He just defines so you don't have to look it up. How nice is that?

Evelyn

November 13, 2019

The Amazing BrainI picked this book because As an educator, i am curious about what is known about how our brains work. Why do some students excel at math but can't spell to save their life? While I still have these questions, the story relating the effects of splitting brains and what that has revealed to scientists was very Interesting.

Jim

August 11, 2021

I’m split the on this review. My left brain feels cheated a bit for lack of scientific detail and depth being a science nerd. Yet my right brain thought it was a well composed and quite lovely story of the life of a highly successful person of science. Though my fingers are fighting it out for the final score, my cued in brain will give it a good recommendation overall.

Scott G

June 23, 2017

Enjoyable and enlighteningLeft brain, right brain. Everyone is talking about them. If you want the real story then read this. You will find the story woven together with the science makes for a fun and pleasant down to earth read. You also get to learn about the homogeneous nature of ivy league science.

Gerald McLaughlin

December 18, 2021

A Life Story of a NeuroscientistDr. Gazzaniga, following the zig zags of the nascent science of neuroscience as he zig zagged between academic appointments and its specialties, more effectively than most, does not inspire confidence in the future of the field.

Frankie

December 13, 2020

Extremely long, occasionally rambling, but totally worth the effort.

Sharang

December 25, 2022

Nice narrative autobiographical style, perfect for casual audio form

WT

June 17, 2020

This was a fascinating look at cognition and anatomical relevance.

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