I had great expectations of this book. But was rather disappointed. That's not unusual, I've discovered the same sort of thing with most (all?) books that purport to describe how the brain works. I recall spending many train-trips, on the way to school, as a 15 year old trying to digest a book about how the brain works....or it might have just focused on memory.....only to be bitterly disappointed. (It was all about the measurement of brain waves and the synchronisation of alpha waves etc. But really gave me no serious insights into the working of the brain).
And now 60 years later, I find a book that actually has a lot more data and knowledge behind it but it still seems to me that there is a lot of "hand waving' with descriptions that say things like "Regions like the prefrontal lobe and the limbic system figure dominantly in our cognitive capacities, our ability to reason etc." I guess I was looking for something that got down into the nitty gritty a little more with the biochemistry ironed out.
I didn't find this an easy book to read....but then nobody ever said neuroscience was easy. But I think it could have been a lot clearer with better diagrams. The two diagrams supplied are very superficial and the author keeps referring to parts of the brain that are not shown in the diagrams. I would like to have seen much more in the way of fMRI photographs which highlighted brain activity and so on. I would also have liked to see views of the brain from other than a longitudinal cross-section...maybe a 3d cut-away. And colour might have helped. Tancrdi, throws in a lot of neuro-anatomy which is confusing...especially as his diagrams are so poor.
I was also frustrated by the author's main "case study" the mass murderer, Ricky Green. Yes he was a "client" of the author but I found it very strange that all the author really did was to conclude that he had been the victim of violence and sexual abuse as a child; that he had an alcohol problem; and murders were associated with him drinking alcohol; and that he sometimes felt remorse. OK so far so good as a clinical psychiatrist. But he then extrapolates with (what are just surmises) that "He had bad role models in his primary family to imitate (mirror neutrons), augmented by a relatively ineffective inhibitory system (limbic structures, anterior cingulate cortex, orbital front cortex), which he dampened further by alcohol consumption, and an amygdala that had been conditioned by abuse...etc". In fact, Green was never subject to brain imaging technologies and there was no attempt made to actually measure any of these impacts. They are all assumptions. To be fair, he does quote numerous studies which shown the impact of violence to the child in their later behaviour and so on. But the best that can be said about his reasoning with Ricky Green's case that it is plausible but not demonstrated.
The other thing I find frustrating about the book is that we don't really get much closer to real understanding than knowing that certain areas of the brain might be involved in certain types of behaviour...for example..."parts of the pre-frontal lobe are essential for reasoning and executive functioning". I guess I was hoping for too much: that we might have narrowed this down more to the actual firing of neutrons sequences or something similar.
Having been rather critical up to now, it is only fair to say that Tancredi, actually does a reasonable job of convincing me that many of the behaviours that we now classify as bad or mad are probably due to genetic inheritance combined with environmental influences such as exposure to testosterone in utero, or sexual abuse as a child. And the brain is plastic and "free will" is more or less a bogus concept. He has an interesting section in the last chapter where he hypothesises about a future world where brain development is much better understood and most aberrant behaviour can be pinned down to specific causal factors and brain biology resulting from this. And techniques will be available for correcting the brain biology. (However, he doesn't expect that society, any time soon, is going to do away with the idea that individuals are responsible for their behaviour.
As a lawyer, Tancredi, points out that the standard now being applied to insanity is the inability to distinguish right from wrong. But he is also pointing out that many of the "bad" individuals being sentenced by the courts have dysfunctional brains.
Clearly, brain research has advanced a long way since I was reading about it as a 15 year old. We do know a lot more. But it is also very complex ...not only at the level of neutrons, and the biochemistry of the brain but also in the way that environmental influences interact with the genes to impact behaviour. The bottom line for me is that most of our morality is probably hard wired into the brain...maybe from birth (or pre-birth) but also later in life by significant events or exposure to chemicals or hormones. ( )