The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery in Science and Inquiry

Nov 15, 2015 Petra X rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2015-reviews, psycho-neurology-crime, dnf-or-never-read

I really like books on neurology. I like to know how our our behaviour changes when something goes wrong. I am a lot less interested in the normal working of the brain. I just can't get excited about glia, synapses, astrocytes and all the other bits that are of interest to neurologists. It is the telling of anecdotes about people that illustrate disorders, malfunctioning and occasionally extraordinary abilities and talents that I relate to.

I recently read Oliver Sacks Hallucinations and VS Ramc ...more

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May 13, 2019 David Rubenstein rated it really liked it

Shelves: medicine, audiobook, history

This is the fourth book I've read by Sam Kean, and they have all been excellent. This fascinating book describes the history of our understanding of the brain in the last couple hundred years. It is not a comprehensive treatment, but instead it is an in-depth look at a number of episodes that gave quantum jumps into our understanding. Often, these episodes are centered on some type of brain injury or illness.

One of the central questions about the brain is whether or not thought processes are dec This is the fourth book I've read by Sam Kean, and they have all been excellent. This fascinating book describes the history of our understanding of the brain in the last couple hundred years. It is not a comprehensive treatment, but instead it is an in-depth look at a number of episodes that gave quantum jumps into our understanding. Often, these episodes are centered on some type of brain injury or illness.

One of the central questions about the brain is whether or not thought processes are decentralized or localized. That is to say, the question is whether each type of thought process is localized in a specific area of the brain, or spread throughout the brain. Nowadays, we know that specific areas of the brain are responsible for specific thought processes, but it took a long time for sufficient evidence to pin this down with proof. The best proof was to have a specific area of the brain damaged by illness or injury, and to observe what types of thought processes were affected.

One of the most famous of these was the case of the rail supervisor Phineas Gage, who had a metal bar run through his skull and brain. Now, I have read about this case numerous times, in many different books. But Sam Kean's description is more detailed than any other that I have read.

Interestingly, Kean takes the reader through the history of two presidential assassinations; McKinley and Garfield. In both cases, the assassins were normal men with no violence in their past. But over a short period of time, the assassins became mad, and autopsies gave physical evidence (macroscopic in one case, microscopic in the other) that the assassins had damage to their brains.

The book is essentially a collection of anecdotal episodes. This made it very engaging, without going too deeply into jargon and technical detail. I was captivated by the description of the rare Capgras syndrome. A victim of this syndrome can see and recognize family members. But, as a result of two separate lesions in two different areas of the brain, the victim believes that despite recognizing the appearance of people he sees, he believes irrationally that they are not his family members, but are imposters!

I didn't read this book; I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Henry Leyva. His narration is very good, and helped me to enjoy the book.

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Dec 14, 2016 Susanna - Censored by GoodReads rated it really liked it

Another excellent science book from Sam Kean; this one looks at how we learn about the brain and how it works mostly from when things go wrong. Looks at cases ranging from Henri II of France (bashed in the head by a broken tournament lance in 1559) to Phineas Gage (a railway iron went in through one eye socket, and then out the top of his head) and the sufferers from kuru ("the world's rarest disease") in Papua New Guinea. ...more

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Oct 28, 2014 Erica rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2014

I love Kean' s writing and if I could have a re-do, I'd major in neuroscience. So the book was enjoyable, though it just didn't feel complete or deep enough. It felt like a Radiolab rehash, which I think a lot of it was. But, I really love Radiolab, so I can't complain, but there was something missing from this book--maybe just more pages.
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