The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars | 287 ratings

Price: 15.75

Last update: 07-30-2024


Top reviews from the United States

YON - Jan C. Hardenbergh
5.0 out of 5 stars Deeply enlightening book on Consciousness
Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2022
This is a great book! LeDoux presents a coherent and detailed model of how conscious emotional experience (consciousness) is the product of a hierarchy of brain networks regions with the Frontal Pole acting as the conductor. He does not declare it as a Theory of Consciousness (ToC) but rather as extra constraints to supplement the theory of Higher Order Thought to make it a multistate hierarchical model.

LeDoux specifically describes schemas (mental models) in the context of working memory and how these are used in predictive coding and to inform the prefrontal higher-order network. "pattern completion" is the aha moment when prediction/input match the model.

LeDoux describes a hierarchy of consciousness consisting of phenomenal, noetic, and auotnoetic consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness is the representation of phenomena in the brain. Noetic consciousness is subjective experience. And...

p.372 - "Autonoetic consciousness (the ability to mentally model one's self in relation to time) is the essence of who each of us is, or at least of what we consciously know about ourselves. It is the basis of the conceptions that underlie our greatest achievements as a species—art, music, architecture, literature, science—and our ability to appreciate them."

p.231 - "Schema work their magic by taking advantage of the ability of the brain to complete patterns from partial information, a process called pattern completion. For example, the opening phrase of a piece of music is sufficient to bring to mind the overall sound of the song, the genre of music, the artist, where you were when you heard it first, and so on."

p.366 - "Recent studies by Lisa Barrett and others have begun to demonstrate the importance of top-down control, predictive coding, and active inference in emotional processing and experience. And, as I have noted previously, the idea that top-down predictions and inferences influence conscious emotions can be viewed as compatible with a higher-order view. For example, in a higher-order account, especially a HOROR account, missing body feedback representations can be thought of as absent lower-order states that are made up for by a top-down nonconscious conceptualization in the form of a mental model/schema."

The first half is the deep history part and is well written and interesting, but the real feast of fascinating info begins about 1/2 through.

This definitely gave me a much more robust understanding of consciousness.
Robert F. DeVellis
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating perspective on neural development and evolution
Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2019
I very much enjoyed reading this book that traces a connection from the earliest, simplest life forms to the complex cognitive and emotional creatures that are humanity. For me, the tone was spot on. It isn't dumbed down, yet things are explained well enough and with clarity. I've had some prior exposure to these topics but it's been a while and I found this summary of the evolutionary steps leading to our advanced, brain-based nervous systems to be clear and fascinating.

A potentially controversial point is the authors' ascription of true emotion exclusively to humans. He doesn't assert this as an incontrovertible fact but as a working theory supported by the available evidence. That seems fair. Those of us with pets might be put off by this suggestion, as he acknowledges, but his argument is merely that there is no rigorous evidence to support the assertion that, say, dogs have the same kind of complex thoughts and feelings that we humans do. It's easy to believe otherwise if you spend time with a loyal, affectionate pooch, to be sure; but the differences in our brains, as the author suggests, may yield very different emotional experiences despite seemingly similar outward manifestations. Environmental cues can produce the same patterns of behavior across species without the same degree of inward, reflective, self-aware contemplation of the meaning of those cues. Behavior may be shaped over a very long, evolutionary time scale by its impact on survival in a way analogous to how it's shaped by reinforcement and punishment over a brief time scale. We really don't know whether other mammals think and feel and contemplate the future in the same ways that humans do and the areas of our brains that seem to be where some of those processes take place are not the same in other mammalian brains as in humans. Prefrontal areas involved in thinking about feelings and assigning them more abstract meaning are pretty much exclusive to our species, he argues. This implies that we have different emotional experiences than other species. I'm not all-in with his argument but I understand its basis and the need for more definitive knowledge to resolve it. In the meantime, his suggestions seem valid.

Irrespective of where you may stand on that specific issue, it's likely that you'll learn a lot from this book and find it fascinating. As the author points out, there are continuities between ourselves and the simplest single-cell organisms while, at the same time, there are arguably important cognitive differences between us and our closest biological "relations." It's quite a story.
Claire Smith
4.0 out of 5 stars Book accelerates at the end
Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2023
Overall I loved this book. I'm personally interested in the content. I felt like the pace was great for most of the book and it was geared to a general audience. However, once we got into the thick of the author's field of work it shifted into a faster pace with additional complexity, shifting his audience to his scientific peers. I had a hard time keeping up. I found it ironic that the end of the book we find out - that just how consciousness arises is still an open question!

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