Liars, Lovers, and Heroes: What the New Brain Science Reveals About How We Become Who We Are

by Steven R. Quartz, Terrence J. Sejnowski

Overview

Two neuroscientists share a cutting-edge thesis on how biology, culture, and the environment contribute to our impulses, behaviors, and selves.

This book combines cutting-edge findings in neuroscience with examples from history and the headlines to introduce the new science of cultural biology, born of advances in brain imaging, computer modeling, and genetics. Doctors Quartz and Sejnowski show how both our noblest and darkest traits are rooted in brain systems so ancient that we share them with insects. They then demystify the dynamic engagement between brain and world that makes us something far beyond the sum of our parts.

The authors show how our humanity unfolds through increasingly complex interactions between brain and world. They investigate shaping forces both ancient and contemporary, from thousands of years of climate change to the tragic events of September 11, 2001. And they offer intriguing answers to some of our most enduring questions, including why we live together, love, kill—and sometimes lay down our lives for others.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062028662
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	12/15/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	364
Sales rank:	157,411
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Steven R. Quartz, Ph.D., is director of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology and an associate professor in the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Computation and Neural Systems Program. He was a fellow of the Sloan Center for Theoretical Neurobiology at the Salk Institute and a recipient of the National Science Foundation's CAREER award, its most prestigious award for young faculty. He lives in Topanga, California.
Terrence J. Sejnowski, Ph.D., is regarded as the world's foremost theoretical brain scientist. His demonstration of NETtalk, a neural network that learned to read English words, helped spark the 1980s neural network revolution for which he received the IEEE Neural Network Pioneer Award in 2002. He received his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University before studying neurobiology at Harvard University School of Medicine. He is an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and directs the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute. At the University of California at San Diego he is a professor of biology, physics, and neurosciences and directs the Institute for Neural Computation. He has published more than two hundred scientific articles and has been featured in the national media. He lives in Solana Beach, California.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Preface	xiii
1	Our Brains, Ourselves	1
2	Making Connections	21
3	How to Make a Human: The 1.6 Percent Solution	32
4	Life on the Far Shore: Crossing the Mental Rubicon	61
5	Between Thought and Feeling: The Mystery of Emotions	88
6	Becoming You: Genes, Parenting, and Personality	123
7	Friend, Lover, Citizen: The Mystery of Life Together	148
8	The Killer Within: From the Solitary Killer to the Killing Crowd	189
9	Inside Intelligence: Rethinking What Makes Us Smart	216
10	The Search for Happiness	252
	Afterword: After September 11	278
	Notes	285
	Index	329

What People are Saying About This

Sandra Blakeslee

“An evocative solution to a classic problem: which is more important in shaping the human brain, nature or nurture?”

V. S. Ramachandran

“A superb book … a breath of fresh air.”

Editorial Reviews

According to Quartz and Sejnowski, we aren't what we eat; we're what we encounter. Describing the new science of cultural biology, these two renowned neuroscientists explain how immersion in culture excites our brain chemistry and activates deeper engagement, which further shapes our culture and, we hope, ensures our prospects for species survival. Liars, Lovers and Heroes probes Homo sapiens' deepest nature, offering provocative ideas about how changing our culture may affect human development.

bn.com

Why do humans fall in love, create art, make war? Quartz, director of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at Cal Tech, and Sejnowski, director of the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute, argue that these and other capabilities are the result of biology and culture working together. Challenging the view that human brains are hardwired for certain behaviors, they believe instead that "[y]our experience with the world literally helps build your brain." In this wide-ranging and relatively nontechnical overview, the authors show how the human brain evolved to maximize flexibility, enabling us to thrive in a wide variety of circumstances. They discuss intelligence and learning, emotions, motivation, violence, and the importance of social bonds, linking cutting-edge neuroscience with social history and popular culture. Starting each chapter with an intriguing case history and spinning off into fascinating, if sometimes sketchily developed, presentations of related material, the book reads a bit like a made-for-TV serial documentary that concedes to short attention spans by highlighting the dramatic. As a result, some topics among them the discussion of violence receive useful but less than thorough treatment. Quartz and Sejnowski conclude with a thought-provoking chapter on the challenges of postmodern culture and globalization, suggesting that the findings of cultural biology can point the way toward creating societies that better meet our basic needs for positive social engagement. Their views, engagingly presented if sometimes controversial, will open up a hitherto specialized subject for a wider audience. (Nov. 12) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

What makes us human? A combination of genes and developmental programs interacting with an environment that shapes the brain across the life span, declare two California neuroscientists.

Dubbing their study of these complex interactions "cultural biology," Quartz (director of Caltech’s Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab) and Sejnowski (director of the Salk Institute’s Computational Neurobiology Lab) condemn evolutionary psychology’s argument that we are cast adrift in modern society with our old hunter-gatherer savannah lifestyle. Neither naturists nor nurturists, the authors defend their not-unreasonable thesis by pointing to a detailed geological record showing rapid climate change. This called for maximum flexibility in adaptation, they contend, and probably helped build bigger brains, tools, and a habit of living in groups. Quartz and Sejnowski describe an infant’s survival mechanisms as an "internal guidance system" that will endure even as that individual’s "user’s guide to life" comes online as a result of the sociocultural shaping of the slow-to-mature prefrontal cortex and its anterior cingulate. These brain parts are key to planning, judging, and decision-making and are also linked to emotion and motivation. A derailment in these areas, specifically a hyperarousal of the orbitofrontal cortex, may be responsible for the mass suicide of cultists, group violence, and killings by high-school misfits, the authors conjecture. While they admit that the brain is more complex than we can fathom, they are ready to discourse on learning, love, intelligence, personality, and happiness, often pointing to anatomical pathways and neurochemicals as clues: low serotonin in depression andsuicide, oxytocin in love, and so on. They are also quite prescriptive in later chapters. What should we to do to achieve "successful aging" and rescue American society from increasing depression and isolation? Leave the TV and Net, go out and work in the community.

Smart authors with a lot of hot stuff to report on, but they should cool it a bit.

Kirkus Reviews

An entertaining and startling survey of what it means to be human.

Discover magazine

An evocative solution to a classic problem: which is more important in shaping the human brain, nature or nurture?

Sandra Blakeslee

A superb book … a breath of fresh air.

V. S. Ramachandran

"An entertaining and startling survey of what it means to be human."

Discover Magazine