Big Brain: The Origins and Future of Human Intelligence | 
| Authors: Gary Lynch, Richard Granger
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
Buy New: $13.38
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Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 22312
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 1403979782
Dewey Decimal Number: 612.82
EAN: 9781403979780
ASIN: 1403979782
Publication Date: March 4, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New Book! Free Tracking Number emailed immediately upon shipment. Not a book club edition.
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Product Description
Our big brains, our language ability, and our intelligence make us uniquely human.
But barely 10,000 years ago (a mere blip in evolutionary time) human-like creatures called "Boskops" flourished in South Africa. They possessed extraordinary features: forebrains roughly 50% larger than ours, and estimated IQs to match--far surpassing our own. Many of these huge fossil skulls have been discovered over the last century, but most of us have never heard of this scientific marvel.
Prominent neuroscientists Gary Lynch and Richard Granger compare the contents of the Boskop brain and our own brains today, and arrive at startling conclusions about our intelligence and creativity. Connecting cutting-edge theories of genetics, evolution, language, memory, learning, and intelligence, Lynch and Granger show the implications of large brains for a broad array of fields, from the current state of the art in Alzheimer's and other brain disorders, to new advances in brain-based robots that see and converse with us, and the means by which neural prosthetics-- replacement parts for the brain--are being designed and tested. The authors demystify the complexities of our brains in this fascinating and accessible book, and give us tantalizing insights into our humanity--its past, and its future.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Brain Theories May 9, 2008
People had to have significant intelligence to survive
nature in earlier times. Brains are known to learn from
past experience. In fact, each body part has its
command and control center in some part of the brain.
Each brain area has inputs. The Hippocampus
is central to controlling memory. The cortical
circuits generate forward projections to downstream
areas and back to the inputs. Synaptic changes cause the
responding neurons to respond identically to changes
in inputs. Organizing precepts are arranged into
groups and subgroups. Slight genetic changes give rise
to differences in brain path connectivity.
Humans have a language critical zone called Broca's area
on the left side frontal area but not on the right.
Big brains have a significant capability to store
arbitrary information according to the author.
The book goes on ad infinitum with facts about the brain.
It is an interesting read for the scientifically inclined
readership. This work would be perfect for a science project.
Exciting and relevant April 8, 2008
The past few years have seen prodigious leaps forward in knowledge about our species. This book lays out the development of our brains, presents an exciting theory about how we grew those very special organs, and hints at our future. At first I skipped over the heavy duty explanation of how brains function, and went for the gossipy stuff. Then I went back and reread the science. I love this book; it captures my imagination and makes me think about evolutionary process.
 BIG Problem April 5, 2008
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
Granger & Lynch are both accomplished neurobiologists, but they clearly didn't do their homework on evolutionary biology & evolutionary anthropology. How so? The "Boskop" race of humans that are a central point of discussion in this book only existed for about 40 years, after researchers started digging up ancient crania in South Africa, & before they started analyzing them with modern science. Google the topic, & you'll find that in the professional literature, the Boskops were dismissed as artifacts of shoddy scholarship over 50 years ago! To make a long story short, geological & archeological contextual affinities are a bit more important than similarities of morphology in identifying populations. Are Shaquille O'Neal & Yao Ming from the same population because they're both extremely tall? This is basically how the Boskops were created by early 20th century scientists...
An illuminating essay on brain and its evolution March 28, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
One cannot praise enough science writers that are both clear and profound, as the Authors of this brilliant essay are. They describe the evolution of our cognitive abilities, disoensing with the notion that intelligence was expecially selected for. But the most shocking discovery for me were the Boskops, those VERY big brained humans who may well have surpassed us in intelligence, but maybe with a childbirth death rate too high to survive. Think of what could have been!
Fascinating Read. March 21, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Professors Gary Lynch and Richard Granger have put forth a strong body of work in support of why we humans have big brains and the implications for the future of our species, doing so in the context of anthropological and neuroscientific evidence.
As a neuroscience student who is interested in anthropology, it certainly was interesting to read of a species that had brains which were spectacularly larger than ours per body size. While explaining the development of brains in the context of evolution, Lynch & Granger make an effort to confront, as they refer to it, the ultimate "irresistable fallacy"-- that evolution favors us precisely because of our intelligence--strongly arguing why our intellectual capacity differs from other species (our big brains, as well as minute qualitative differences), and how this came about over millions of years. Lynch & Granger also portend, based on the tenets of their argument, what lies ahead for species with bigger brains--or in the case of the Boskops, what lies in the past.
This is a must read for anyone who believes they have evolution 'figured out', and/or for anthropological fans intrigued as to differences between primates based on neuroscientific knowledge.
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