Description

Do we have bigger brains than dolphins? Does your dog remember where it buried its bone? Why don't sheep laugh or gorillas lie? Why do we remember faces but not names? In 21 short walks around the human brain, acclaimed psychologist Michael Corballis answers these and other questions by introducing us to what we've learned about the human mind in the last fifty years. Corballis leads us through behavioural experiments and neuroscience, cognitive theory and Darwinian evolution, puncturing a few hot-air balloons ("You only use 10 per cent of your brain!" "Unleash the creativity of your right brain!") along the way. At one time or another, we've all wished that we could get inside someone else's head. Here's how.

Author description

Michael C. Corballis is Professor Emeritus in psychology at The University of Auckland. He has written widely in scientific journals and general market magazines and newspapers. He is the author, most recently, of The Recursive Mind: The Origins of Human Language, Thought and Civilization (Princeton University Press). An outstanding science communicator, reviewers have hailed Corballis for telling "a captivating story" (New York Times) with writing that is "informative and entertaining" (American Scientist).

Table of contents

Acknowledgments

1. Science of the mind

2. Swollen Heads

3. On being upright

4. Lost cousins

5. Attention!

6. On being right - or not

7. Split brain, split mind

8. About face

9. My oath

10. Small talk

11. Music

12. Remembrance of (some) things past

13. Coloured days

14. About time

15. I know what you're thinking

16. Mirror mirror on the brain

17. Laughing matters

18. Why Italians gesticulate

19. Telling left from right

20. The ten percent myth

21. Lies and bullshit

Further reading