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Brain 2004 127(11):2558-2563; doi:10.1093/brain/awh311
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Brain Vol. 127 No. 11 © Guarantors of Brain 2004; all rights reserved

Book review

CONSCIOUSNESS. A USER'S GUIDE

Adam Zeman

2003. London: Yale University Press

Price £18.95.

ISBN 0-300-09280-6

WIDER THAN THE SKY. THE PHENOMENAL GIFT OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Gerald M. Edelman

2004. London: Allen Lane

Price £15.99.

ISBN 0-713-997-338

THE QUEST FOR CONSCIOUSNESS. A NEUROBIOLOGICAL APPROACH

Christof Koch

2004. Englewood: Roberts and Company and Bloxham: Scion Publishing

Price £29.99.

ISBN 0-974-707-708

Raymond Tallis

Manchester, UK

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

‘Trying to find consciousness in the brain’

That there is an intimate relationship between our consciousness and the functioning of our brains was not a novel idea even when Hippocrates famously asserted that ‘from the brain, and from the brain only, arise our pleasures, joys, laughter and jests, as well as our sorrows, pains, grief and tears’ (quoted in Spillane, 1981Go). The evidence—from everyday observations such as the effect of a bump on the head to the most sophisticated neuroscientific experiments—seems overwhelmingly to support the belief that the quantity, distribution and spatio-temporal patterns of neural activity in the brain are somehow connected with the level and content of consciousness. So much is clear. More opaque is the precise nature of the connexion.


There are different ways of interpreting the broad correlation between neural activity and consciousness. Nowadays, by far the most common view is that experiences are identical to the relevant activity. Unfortunately, this theory—which philosophers . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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