Christopher frit brain and soul pdf. Brain and soul

The famous British neurophysiologist Chris Frith is well known for his ability to talk simply about very complex problems in psychology - such as mental activity, social behavior, autism and schizophrenia.

It is in this area, along with the study of how we perceive the world, act, make a choice, remember and feel, today is happening scientific revolution associated with the introduction of neuroimaging methods. In Brain and Soul, Chris Frith talks about all this in the most accessible and entertaining way.

Foreword

I have an amazing labor-saving device in my head. My brain - better than a dishwasher or a calculator - frees me from the boring, repetitive work of recognizing things around me and even saves me from having to think about how to control the movements of my body. This gives me the opportunity to focus on what is really important to me: friendship and the exchange of ideas. But, of course, my brain doesn't just save me from tedious daily work. It is he who forms the me, whose life takes place in the society of other people. In addition, it is my brain that allows me to share with my friends the fruits of my inner world. So the brain makes us capable of something more than what each of us is capable of individually. This book is about how the brain performs these miracles.

Why psychologists are afraid of parties

Like any other tribe, scientists have their own hierarchy. The place of psychologists in this hierarchy is at the very bottom. I discovered this in my freshman year at university where I was studying science. It was announced to us that college students - for the first time - would have the opportunity in the first part of the science course to study psychology. Inspired by this news, I went to the head of our group to ask what he knew about this new opportunity. “Yes,” he replied. “But it never occurred to me that one of my students would be so stupid that they would want to study psychology.” He himself was a physicist.

Because, probably, I was not quite sure what "stupid" means, this remark did not stop me. I left physics and took up psychology. From then until now, I have continued to study psychology, but I have not forgotten my place in the scientific hierarchy. At parties where scientists gather, from time to time the question inevitably pops up: “What do you do?” - and I tend to think twice before answering, "I'm a psychologist."

Of course, much has changed in psychology in the last 30 years. We borrowed a lot of methods and concepts from other disciplines. We study not only behavior, but also the brain. We use computers to analyze our data and model mental processes. My university badge doesn't say "psychologist" but "cognitive neuroscientist."

And they ask me: “What do you do?” It seems to be the new head of the physics department. Unfortunately, my response “I am a cognitive neuroscientist” only delays the denouement. After my attempts to explain what, in fact, my work consists, she says: “Ah, so you are a psychologist!” - with that characteristic facial expression in which I read: “If only you could do real science!”.

Professor joins the conversation in English and raises the topic of psychoanalysis. She has a new student who "doesn't agree with Freud in many ways." In order not to spoil my evening, I refrain from suggesting that Freud was an inventor, and that his discussions about the human psyche are of little relevance to the case.

A few years ago, the editor of the British Psychiatric Journal ( British Journal of Psychiatry), apparently by mistake, asked me to write a review of a Freudian paper. I was immediately struck by one subtle difference from the articles I usually review. As in any scientific article, there were many references to the literature. Basically, these are links to works on the same topic, published earlier. We refer to them partly in order to pay tribute to the achievements of their predecessors, but mainly in order to support certain assertions contained in our article. own work. “You don't have to take my word for it. You can read a detailed rationale for the methods I used in Box and Cox (Box, Cox, 1964)." But the authors of this Freudian article did not at all try to back up the cited facts with references. References to the literature were not about facts, but about ideas. Using references, it was possible to trace the development of these ideas in the writings of various followers of Freud up to the original words of the teacher himself. At the same time, no facts were cited by which it would be possible to judge whether his ideas were fair.

“Freud may have had a great influence on literary criticism,” I tell the professor of English, “but he was not a real scientist. He was not interested in facts. I study psychology by scientific methods.”

“So,” she replies, “you are using a monster of machine intelligence to kill the human in us.” On both sides of the gulf that separates our views, I hear the same thing: "Science cannot investigate consciousness." Why can't?

You can download an introductory fragment of the book (~20%) at the link:

Brain and Soul - Chris Frith (download)

Read the full version of the book in the best online library Runet - Litres.

Rated the book

A rather simple and unpretentious book "about the brain", quite advanced, but at the same time very lightweight. The author seems to be such a clumsy bum, afraid of his imaginary opponents - the bearer of the humanitarian consciousness of the professor of literature (for sure, that still spectacular little thing) and the aggressive professor of physics, responsible for the attack on the conclusions of all these neuropsychologies from the exact sciences. In principle, this can be understood - this area is really severely interdisciplinary (that is, it is lame on both legs, my inner skeptic tells me), and few people like the results of its activities, since they are very inconvenient. So the author has to literally crawl on the ground on his own, dodging humanitarian howls and caustic attacks (alas, often justified) and trying to lure a not very educated reader into his science. If you have already read something like that about the brain or are generally interested in the current state of affairs in brain science, you will not see interesting new discoveries here. But if you are a beginner and your ideas about how hard the body can deceive itself are limited to simple optical illusions, then you are here. Well, a brief summary: our life is just a dream, but 16 hours a day its content is quite close to objective reality.

Rated the book

I knew! I knew, I knew, I knew! I have always known that my brain and I are completely different personalities and often with opposite desires. If you also thought that you and someone inside your skull were different personalities, don't worry. This is not schizophrenia, but a well-proven scientific fact.

For three hundred pages, the author explains with references to Scientific research that every person has a "gray cardinal" in his skull. He paints a picture of the world for us, and with great reluctance admits the mistakes he made in the process, he decides what we will do and convinces us that we did just that, even if this is obviously not the case. The author will give a sufficient number of examples from scientific practice showing that even if we are aware of the fallacy of the picture real world, which our "manager" drew for us, we will need to spend a lot of time and make certain efforts to prove it to our own brain.

Fritt will quite colorfully prove that everything we know about the reality around us is nothing more than an illusion drawn for us by our brain. And not even always based on signals from the senses. The brain follows the path of the greatest acceleration of the work performed and often finishes the picture simply on the principle of the greatest probability, based on previous experience. So if you suddenly see a flying lilac giraffe outside the window, you will have to argue for a long time with those who are sitting inside the skull and prove that consciousness and vision have not gone crazy. The brain, by the way, will resist and impose on you own point perspective on these issues. As about the lilac giraffe, and about your own sanity.

Of course, it's not that bad. After all, the brain solves more tasks every second than modern computers could ever dream of. Few people think about the fact that absolutely every movement, even the smallest, up to microscopic changes that allow you not to fall when walking, is sanctioned by the brain. A constant stream of information is processed, analyzed and transformed into signals for the rest of the body. And only a few percent of this our brain considers it necessary to bring to the attention of our consciousness. If we were to receive this data in full, we would go crazy pretty quickly.

This book is not exactly about psychology, as most people understand it, but rather about neuroscience. The author, although he calls himself a psychologist, is much more interested in the physiology of the brain and the processes that occur in it during any activity, both intellectual and physical. That area of science, which most readers call psychology, the author passes over in silence. Although he does not do without some digressions into the history of psychology and psychiatry, and quite regularly goes to Sigmund Freud and his theory. Obviously, Chris Frith dislikes both Freud's theory and Freud himself with all his followers, up to the modern ones. He goes to great lengths to prove that Freudianism is unscientific, erroneous, based solely on assumptions, and generally has nothing to do with psychology in general and Chris Fritt in particular. Well, everyone can have their own opinion on this issue.

The area of scientific interests of Fritt himself lies in the field of higher nervous activity. The book contains many cross-sectional pictures of the brain, in which the reader is shown exactly where the cells will be activated when performing this or that activity, during reflections, fantasies, and the like. Moreover, he brings a large number of case studies showing the different effects of brain damage or damage to different areas of the brain.

This book is a good way to understand a little better how the organ of our body works and functions, which, in fact, makes a person a person. Realize how much work he does non-stop throughout his life. But still, if you see a flying lilac giraffe outside the window, do not rush to call an ambulance, even if the brain has already given the hands the command to grab the phone.

G37gka3 02/11/2013

Making up the mind.

Absolutely crazy translation of the title of the book, has nothing to do with either the content or the title of the original.
But the book is wonderful - conveys the idea that psychology can also be a science. The author on a variety of experiments shows the need for a skeptical approach to the perception of the world and oneself.

Metmor 22.02.2011

13.02.2011

on page 33, figure 5, they mixed up all the parts of the brain, how can you continue to read this book?!??

ulanenko 08.02.2011

Experimental psychology, or where is the soul?

Initially, I was a little confused by the translation of the title ... when, after reading the book, I began to recommend it to others, many were alarmed by it. "The word 'soul' in a non-fiction book?". But let's leave the name ... as they called it, they called it, because the main thing is not the cover, right?
What I wanted to pay attention to ... after reading the first chapters, I stopped believing my brain. A magnificent illustration of his activities, mistakes and "thinking out" leads to the idea that the world is not the way we see it, feel it, know it. Particularly pleasing are the illustrations of the experiments of neurophysiologists - how sophisticated they are! What amazing conclusions can be reached by manipulating human attention and perception, putting it in a tomograph.
For those who want to forever change their picture of the world and themselves.

All Rights Reserved. Authorized translation from the English language edition published by Blackwell Publishing Limited. Responsibility for the accuracy of the translation rests solely with The Dynasty Foundation and is not the responsibility of John Blackwell Publishing Limited. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the original copyright holder, Blackwell Publishing Limited.

CORPUS® Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet and corporate networks, for private and public use, without the written permission of the copyright owner.

* * *

Dedicated to Uta

List of abbreviations

ACT - axial computed tomography

MRI - magnetic resonance imaging

PET - positron emission tomography

fMRI - functional magnetic resonance imaging

EEG - electroencephalogram

BOLD (blood oxygenation level dependent)

Foreword

I have an amazing labor-saving device in my head. My brain - better than a dishwasher or a calculator - frees me from the boring, repetitive work of recognizing things around me and even saves me from having to think about how to control the movements of my body. This gives me the opportunity to focus on what is really important to me: friendship and the exchange of ideas. But, of course, my brain doesn't just save me from tedious daily work. It is he who forms me who lives in the company of other people. In addition, it is my brain that allows me to share with my friends the fruits of my inner world. So the brain makes us capable of something more than what each of us is capable of individually. This book is about how the brain performs these miracles.

Thanks

The Wellcome Trust enabled Richard Frackowiak to set up the Functional Imaging Laboratory and financially supported my work in that laboratory on the neurophysiological basis of consciousness and social interactions. The study of mind and brain is at the intersection of many traditional disciplines, from anatomy and computational neuroscience to philosophy and anthropology. I have been very fortunate to have always worked in interdisciplinary – and multinational – research groups.

I have benefited a lot from my colleagues and friends at University College London, especially Ray Dolan, Dick Passingham, Daniel Wolpert, Tim Shallis, John Driver, Paul Burgess and Patrick Haggard. In the early stages of writing this book, I was aided by many fruitful discussions about the brain and psyche with my friends in Aarhus, Jakob Howu and Andreas Röpstorf, and in Salzburg with Josef Perner and Heinz Wimmer. Martin Frith and John Law have been arguing with me for as long as I can remember about everything in this book. Eva Johnstone and Sean Spence generously shared with me their professional knowledge about psychiatric phenomena and their implications for brain science.

Perhaps the most important impetus for writing this book came from my weekly conversations with past and present breakfast parties. Sarah-Jane Blakemore, Davina Bristow Thierry Chaminade, Jenny Kull, Andrew Duggins, Chloe Farrer, Helen Gallagher, Tony Jack, James Kilner, Haguan Lau, Emiliano Macaluso, Eleanor Maguire, Pierre Maquet, Jen Marchant, Dean Mobbs, Matthias Pessillone, Chiara Portas, Geraint Rees, Johannes Schultz, Suchi Shergill and Tanya Singer helped shape this book. I am deeply grateful to all of them.

To Karl Friston and Richard Gregory, who have read portions of this book, I am grateful for their invaluable help and valuable advice. I am also grateful to Paul Fletcher for supporting the idea of introducing an English professor and other characters who argue with the narrator early on in the book.

Philip Carpenter selflessly contributed to the improvement of this book with his critical remarks.

I am especially grateful to those who read all the chapters and commented in detail on my manuscript. Sean Gallagher and two anonymous readers had a lot to say valuable suggestions how to improve the text of this book. Rosalind Ridley made me think carefully about my statements and be careful with terminology. Alex Frith helped me get rid of professional jargon and lack of coherence.

Uta Frith actively participated in this project at all its stages. If she had not set an example and guided me, this book would never have seen the light of day.

Prologue: Real Scientists Don't Study Consciousness

Why psychologists are afraid of parties

Like any other tribe, scientists have their own hierarchy. The place of psychologists in this hierarchy is at the very bottom. I discovered this in my freshman year at university where I was studying science. We were told that college students would, for the first time, have the opportunity to study psychology in the first part of the science course. Encouraged by this news, I went to our group leader to ask him what he knew about this new opportunity. “Yes,” he replied. “But it never crossed my mind that one of my students would be so dumb as to want to study psychology.” He himself was a physicist.

Because, probably, that I was not quite sure what "stupid" meant, this remark did not stop me. I left physics and took up psychology. From then until now, I have continued to study psychology, but I have not forgotten my place in the scientific hierarchy. At parties where scientists gather, from time to time the question inevitably pops up: “What do you do?” - and I tend to think twice before answering, "I'm a psychologist."

Of course, much has changed in psychology in the last 30 years. We borrowed a lot of methods and concepts from other disciplines. We study not only behavior, but also the brain. We use computers to analyze our data and model mental processes. 1
Although I must admit that there are some retrogrades who generally deny that the study of the brain or computers can tell us anything about our psyche. - Note. ed.

My university badge doesn't say "psychologist" but "cognitive neuroscientist."

Rice. item 1.General form and a slice of the human brain

Human brain, side view (top). The arrow marks the place where the cut shown in Fig. bottom photo. The outer layer of the brain (cortex) consists of gray matter and forms many folds that allow you to fit a large surface area in a small volume. The cortex contains about 10 billion nerve cells.

A professor of English joins the conversation and raises the topic of psychoanalysis. She has a new student who "doesn't agree with Freud in many ways." In order not to spoil my evening, I refrain from suggesting that Freud was an inventor, and that his discussions about the human psyche are of little relevance to the case.

A few years ago, the editor of the British Psychiatric Journal ( British Journal of Psychiatry), apparently by mistake, asked me to write a review of a Freudian paper. I was immediately struck by one subtle difference from the articles I usually review. As with any scientific article, there were many references to the literature. Basically, these are links to works on the same topic, published earlier. We refer to them partly in order to pay tribute to the achievements of their predecessors, but mainly in order to support certain statements that are contained in our own work. “You don't have to take my word for it. You can read a detailed rationale for the methods I used in Box and Cox (Box and Cox, 1964).” 2
Believe it or not, this is a reference to a genuine work that substantiates an important statistical method. Bibliographic data of this work can be found in the bibliography at the end of the book. - Note. ed.

But the authors of this Freudian article did not at all try to back up the cited facts with references. References to the literature were not about facts, but about ideas. Using references, it was possible to trace the development of these ideas in the writings of various followers of Freud up to the original words of the teacher himself. At the same time, no facts were cited by which it would be possible to judge whether his ideas were fair.

“So,” she replies, “you are using a monster of machine intelligence to kill the human in us.” 3
She is a specialist in the work of Australian writer Elizabeth Costello. - Note. ed.(Australian writer Elizabeth Costello is a fictional character in the book of the same name by South African writer John Maxwell Coetzee. – Note. transl.)

On both sides of the abyss that separates our views, I hear the same thing: "Science cannot investigate consciousness." Why can't?

Exact and inexact sciences

In the system of scientific hierarchy, "exact" sciences occupy a high position, and "inexact" - low. The subjects studied by the exact sciences are like a cut diamond, which has a strictly defined shape, and all parameters can be measured with high accuracy. "Inexact" sciences study objects that look like an ice cream ball, the shape of which is far from being so definite, and the parameters can change from measurement to measurement. The exact sciences, such as physics and chemistry, study tangible objects that can be measured very accurately. For example, the speed of light (in a vacuum) is exactly 299,792,458 meters per second. A phosphorus atom weighs 31 times more than a hydrogen atom. These are very important numbers. Based on the atomic weight of various elements, it is possible to compile a periodic table, which once made it possible to draw the first conclusions about the structure of matter at the subatomic level.

Once biology was not such an exact science as physics and chemistry. This state of affairs changed dramatically after scientists discovered that genes consist of strictly defined sequences of nucleotides in DNA molecules. For example, the sheep prion gene 4
sheep prion- a protein, a modified configuration of the molecules of which causes the development of a disease in sheep, similar to the disease of a mad cow. - Note. transl.

It consists of 960 nucleotides and begins like this:

I must admit that in the face of such precision and rigor, psychology looks like a very imprecise science. Most known number in psychology, 7, the number of items that can be simultaneously held in working memory. 5
working memory It is a type of active short-term memory. This is the memory that we use when we try to remember a phone number without writing it down. Psychologists and neuroscientists are actively researching working memory, but there is still no agreement on what exactly they are researching. - Note. ed.

But even this figure needs to be clarified. George Miller's 1956 paper on this discovery was titled "The Magic Number Seven - Plus or Minus Two." That is, best result measurements obtained by psychologists can vary in one direction or another by almost 30%. The number of items we can hold in working memory varies from time to time and from person to person. In a state of fatigue or anxiety, I will remember fewer numbers. I speak English and therefore can remember more numbers than those who speak Welsh. 6
This statement is not at all a manifestation of some kind of prejudice against the Welsh. It is about one of important discoveries made by psychologists who have studied working memory. Welsh speakers remember fewer numbers because it takes longer to say the names of a series of numbers in Welsh than it does to say the names of the same numbers in English. - Note. ed.

“What did you expect? says the professor of English. - human soul cannot be straightened like a butterfly in a window. Each of us is unique.”

This remark is not entirely appropriate. Of course, each of us is unique. But we all have general properties psyche. It is these fundamental properties that psychologists are looking for. Chemists had exactly the same problem with the substances they investigated before the discovery. chemical elements in the 18th century. Each substance is unique. Psychology, compared to the "exact" sciences, had little time to find what to measure and figure out how to measure. Psychology as scientific discipline only existed for a little over 100 years. I am sure that in time psychologists will find what to measure and develop devices that will help us make these measurements very accurate.

Exact sciences are objective, inexact sciences are subjective

These optimistic words are based on my belief in the unstoppable progress of science. 7
The professor of English does not share this belief. - Note. auth.

But, unfortunately, in the case of psychology, there are no solid grounds for such optimism. What we are trying to measure is qualitatively different from what is measured in the exact sciences.

In the exact sciences, the results of measurements are objective. They can be checked. “Don't believe that the speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second? Here's your equipment. Measure yourself!” When we use this measurement equipment, the results will appear on dials, printouts and computer screens where anyone can read them. And psychologists use themselves or their voluntary assistants as measuring instruments. The results of such measurements are subjective. You can't check them.

Here is a simple psychological experiment. I run a program on my computer that shows a field of black dots continuously moving down from the top of the screen to the bottom. I stare at the screen for a minute or two. Then I press "Escape" and the dots stop moving. Objectively, they no longer move. If I put the tip of a pencil on one of them, I can make sure that this point is definitely not moving. But I still have a very strong subjective feeling that the dots are slowly moving up. 8
This phenomenon is known as the waterfall effect or motion aftereffect. If we look at the waterfall for a minute or two and then look at the bushes on the side of it, there is a distinct feeling that the bushes are moving upwards, despite the fact that we clearly see that they remain in place. - Note. ed.

If at that moment you were to enter my room, you would see fixed points on the screen. I would tell you that it seems to me that the dots are moving up, but how do you check this? After all, their movement occurs only in my head.

A real scientist wants to independently and independently verify the results of measurements reported by others. Nullius in verba 9
Literally: "No one's words" (lat.). – Note. transl.

- this is the motto of the Royal Society of London: "Do not believe what others tell you, no matter how high their authority is." 10
“Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri” - “Without swearing allegiance to the words of any teacher” (Horace, “Messages”). - Note. ed.

If I followed this principle, I would have to agree that a scientific investigation of your inner world is impossible for me, because for this I have to rely on what you tell me about your inner experience.

For a while, psychologists pretended to be real scientists by only studying behavior—taking objective measurements of things like movements, button presses, reaction times. 11
These were followers of behaviorism, a trend whose most famous representatives were John Watson and Burres Frederick Skinner. The zeal with which they promoted their approach indirectly indicates that all is not well with him. One of the professors I studied with in college was a passionate behaviorist who later became a psychoanalyst. - Note. ed.

But behavioral research is by no means enough. Such studies leave out all the most interesting in our personal experience. We all know that our inner world is no less real than our life in the material world. Unrequited love brings no less suffering than a burn from touching a hot stove. 12
Moreover, judging by the results of tomographic studies, the same part of the brain is involved in the reactions of physical pain and suffering of a rejected person. - Note. ed.

The work of consciousness can influence the results of physical actions that can be objectively measured. For example, if you imagine that you are playing the piano, the quality of your performance may improve. So why shouldn't I take your word for it that you imagined playing the piano? Now we psychologists have returned to the study of subjective experience: sensations, memories, intentions. But the problem has not gone away: the mental phenomena that we study have a completely different status than the material phenomena that other scientists study. Only from your words can I learn about what is going on in your mind. You press a button to let me know you've seen a red light. Can you tell me what shade that red was. But there is no way I can get into your mind and check for myself how red was the light that you saw.

For my friend Rosalind, each number has a specific position in space, and each day of the week has its own color (see Fig. CV1 in the color inset). But maybe these are just metaphors? I have never experienced anything like it. Why should I believe her when she says that these are her immediate, uncontrollable sensations? Her sensations relate to the phenomena of the inner world, which I can not verify in any way.

Will big science help inexact science?

Exact science becomes “big science” 13
“big science” (big science) - expensive scientific research involving large scientific teams (a colloquial term in modern English). - Note. transl.

When he starts using very expensive measuring instruments. The science of the brain went big when CT scanners were developed to scan the brain in the last quarter of the 20th century. One such scanner usually costs more than a million pounds. By sheer luck, being in the right place at the right time, I was able to use these devices when they first appeared, in the mid-eighties 14
Decision of the Medical Research Council to close the Center clinical research, in which I had been working on the problem of schizophrenia for many years, prompted me to take a risk and significantly change the direction of my psychological research. Subsequently, both the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust have shown a high degree of foresight in providing financial support for new encephalographic research. - Note. ed.

The first such devices were based on the long-established principle of fluoroscopy. An x-ray machine can show bones inside your body because bones are much harder (dense) than skin and soft tissue. Similar density differences are observed in the brain. The skull surrounding the brain has a very high density, while the density of the tissues of the brain itself is much less. In the depths of the brain are cavities (ventricles) filled with fluid, they have the lowest density. A breakthrough in this field came with the development of axial computed tomography (ACT) technology and the construction of the ACT scanner. This machine uses X-rays to measure density, then solves a huge number of equations (which requires a powerful computer) and builds a three-dimensional image of the brain (or any other part of the body) reflecting differences in density. Such a device for the first time made it possible to see the internal structure of the brain of a living person - a voluntary participant in the experiment.

A few years later, another method was developed, even better than the previous one - magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRI does not use X-rays, but radio waves and a very strong magnetic field. 15
Don't think I really understand how MRI works, but here's one physicist who does: J.P. Hornak, The Basics of MRI(“Fundamentals of MRI”), http://www.cis.rit.edu/htbooks/mri/index.html. – Note. ed.

Unlike fluoroscopy, this procedure is not at all dangerous to health. An MRI scanner is much more sensitive to density differences than an ACT scanner. On images of the brain of a living person, obtained with its help, different types of tissues are distinguishable. The quality of such images is not lower than the quality of photographs of the brain, after death, removed from the skull, preserved with chemicals and cut into thin layers.

Rice. item 2. An example of an MRI structural image of the brain and a section of the brain removed from a corpse

Above is a photograph of one of the sections of the brain, removed from the skull after death and cut into thin layers. Below is an image of one of the layers of the brain of a living person, obtained by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Structural tomography of the brain has played a huge role in the development of medicine. Brain injuries from road traffic accidents, strokes, or tumor growth can have a profound effect on behavior. They can lead to severe memory loss or serious personality changes. Before the advent of CT scanners, the only way to find out exactly where an injury occurred was to remove the skull cap and look. Usually this was done after death, but sometimes in a living patient - when a neurosurgical operation was required. Now tomographs allow you to accurately determine the location of the injury. All that is required of the patient is to lie motionless inside the tomograph for 15 minutes.

Rice. item 3. An example of an MRI scan showing brain damage

This patient suffered two strokes in a row, as a result of which the auditory cortex of the right and left hemispheres was destroyed. The injury is clearly visible on the MRI image.

Structural tomography of the brain is both an exact and a big science. Measurements of the structural parameters of the brain, carried out using these methods, can be very accurate and objective. But what do these measurements have to do with the problem of psychology as an "inexact" science?

Dedicated to Uta

List of abbreviations

ACT– axial computed tomography

MRI- Magnetic resonance imaging

PAT– positron emission tomography

fMRI– functional magnetic resonance imaging

EEG- electroencephalogram

BOLD(blood oxygenation level dependent) - depending on the level of oxygen in the blood

Foreword

Thanks

My work on the mind and brain was made possible by funding from the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. The Medical Research Council gave me the opportunity to work in the neurophysiology of schizophrenia through the financial support of the Tim Crow Psychiatric Unit at the Northwick Park Hospital Clinical Research Center in London, Harrow, Middlesex. At that time, we could judge the relationship between the psyche and the brain only on the basis of indirect data, but everything changed in the eighties, when tomographs were invented to scan the working brain. The Wellcome Trust enabled Richard Frackowiak to set up the Functional Imaging Laboratory and financially supported my work in that laboratory on the neurophysiological basis of consciousness and social interactions. The study of mind and brain is at the intersection of many traditional disciplines, from anatomy and computational neuroscience to philosophy and anthropology. I have been very fortunate to have always worked in interdisciplinary – and multinational – research groups.

I have benefited a lot from my colleagues and friends at University College London, especially Ray Dolan, Dick Passingham, Daniel Wolpert, Tim Shallis, John Driver, Paul Burgess and Patrick Haggard. In the early stages of writing this book, I was aided by many fruitful discussions about the brain and psyche with my friends in Aarhus, Jakob Howu and Andreas Röpstorf, and in Salzburg with Josef Perner and Heinz Wimmer. Martin Frith and John Law have been arguing with me for as long as I can remember about everything in this book. Eva Johnstone and Sean Spence generously shared with me their professional knowledge of psychiatric phenomena and their implications for brain science.

Philip Carpenter selflessly contributed to the improvement of this book with his critical remarks.

I am especially grateful to those who read all the chapters and commented in detail on my manuscript. Sean Gallagher and two anonymous readers have made many valuable suggestions for improving the text of this book. Rosalind Ridley made me think carefully about my statements and be careful with terminology. Alex Frith helped me get rid of professional jargon and lack of coherence.

Uta Frith actively participated in this project at all its stages. If she had not set an example and guided me, this book would never have seen the light of day.

Prologue: Real Scientists Don't Study Consciousness

Why psychologists are afraid of parties

Like any other tribe, scientists have their own hierarchy. The place of psychologists in this hierarchy is at the very bottom. I discovered this in my freshman year at university where I was studying science. We were told that college students would, for the first time, have the opportunity to study psychology in the first part of the science course. Encouraged by this news, I went to our group leader to ask him what he knew about this new opportunity. "Yes," he replied. "But it never occurred to me that one of my students would be so clueless as to want to study psychology." He himself was a physicist.

Because, probably, that I was not quite sure what "stupid" meant, this remark did not stop me. I left physics and took up psychology. From then until now, I have continued to study psychology, but I have not forgotten my place in the scientific hierarchy. At parties where scientists gather, from time to time the question inevitably pops up: "What do you do?" - and I tend to think twice before answering, "I'm a psychologist."

Rice. item 1. General view and section of the human brain.

Human brain, side view (top). The arrow marks the place where the cut shown in the bottom photo passed. The outer layer of the brain (cortex) is composed of gray matter and forms many folds to fit large area surfaces on a small scale. The cortex contains about 10 billion nerve cells.

And so they ask me: "What do you do?" It seems to be the new head of the physics department. Unfortunately, my response "I'm a cognitive neuroscientist" only delays the denouement. After my attempts to explain what, in fact, my work consists, she says: "Ah, so you are a psychologist!" - with that characteristic facial expression in which I read: "You shouldn't do real science!"

A few years ago, the editor of the British Psychiatric Journal ( British Journal of Psychiatry), apparently by mistake, asked me to write a review of a Freudian paper. I was immediately struck by one subtle difference from the articles I usually review. As with any scientific article, there were many references to the literature. Basically, these are links to works on the same topic, published earlier. We refer to them partly in order to pay tribute to the achievements of their predecessors, but mainly in order to support certain statements that are contained in our own work. "You don't have to take my word for it. You can read a detailed rationale for the methods I used in Box and Cox (Box, Cox, 1964)." But the authors of this Freudian article did not at all try to back up the cited facts with references. References to the literature were not about facts, but about ideas. Using references, it was possible to trace the development of these ideas in the writings of various followers of Freud up to the original words of the teacher himself. At the same time, no facts were cited by which it would be possible to judge whether his ideas were fair.

“Freud may have had a great influence on literary criticism,” I tell the English professor, “but he was not a real scientist. He was not interested in facts. I study psychology by scientific methods.”