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Tales from Both Sides of the Brain
- A Life in Neuroscience
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
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Publisher's summary
Michael S. Gazzaniga, "the father of cognitive neuroscience", gives us an exciting behind-the-scenes look at his seminal work on the enigmatic coupling of the right and left brain.
In the mid-20th century, Michael S. Gazzaniga made one of the great discoveries in the history of neuroscience: split-brain theory, the notion that the right and left hemispheres of the brain can act independently from each other and have different strengths.
In Tales from Both Sides of the Brain, Gazzaniga tells the story of his passionate, entrepreneurial life in science and his decades-long journey to understand how the separate spheres of our brains communicate and miscommunicate their separate agendas. From his time as an ambitious undergraduate at Dartmouth, as a member of its now famed "Animal House" fraternity, and his life as a diligent graduate student in California to the first experiments he conducted in his own lab; from meeting his first split-brain patients to his collaboration with esteemed intellectuals across disciplines, Gazzaniga recounts the trajectory of his discoveries. In his engaging and accessible style, he paints a vivid portrait not only of his discovery of split-brain theory, but also of his comrades in arms - the many patients, friends, and family members who have accompanied him on this wild ride of intellectual discovery.
By turns humorous and moving, Tales from Both Sides of the Brain uses an extraordinary discovery about the nature of human consciousness to tell an enthralling story of how science gets done.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.
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Permanent Present Tense tells the incredible story of Henry Gustav Molaison, known only as H. M. until his death in 2008. In 1953, at the age of 27, Molaison underwent a dangerous "psychosurgical" procedure intended to alleviate his debilitating epilepsy. The surgery went horribly wrong, and when Molaison awoke he was unable to store new experiences. For the rest of his life, he would be trapped in the moment. But Molaison’s tragedy would prove a gift to humanity.
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Read Luke Dittrich's "Patient H.M." first...
- By Douglas on 11-07-16
By: Suzanne Corkin
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Mind Wide Open
- Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
- By: Steven Johnson
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Brilliantly exploring today's cutting edge brain research, Mind Wide Open allows readers to understand themselves and the people in their lives as never before. Using a mix of experiential reportage, personal storytelling, and fresh scientific discovery, Steven Johnson describes how the brain works and how its systems connect to the day-to-day realities of individual lives.
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A totally new perspective on life
- By Jonathan on 09-16-04
By: Steven Johnson
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The Friendly Orange Glow
- The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture
- By: Brian Dear
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 21 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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At a time when Steve Jobs was only a teenager and Mark Zuckerberg wasn't even born, a group of visionary engineers and designers - some of them only high school students - in the late 1960s and 1970s created a computer system called PLATO, which was not only years but light-years ahead in experimenting with how people would learn, engage, communicate, and play through connected computers.
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Memory lane for the cyberist.
- By Robert C. Hickcox on 08-08-18
By: Brian Dear
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The Brain Electric
- The Dramatic High-Tech Race to Merge Minds and Machines
- By: Malcolm Gay
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Leading neuroscience researchers are racing to unlock the secrets of the mind. On the cusp of decoding brain signals that govern motor skills, they are developing miraculous technologies to enable paraplegics and wounded soldiers to move prosthetic limbs, and the rest of us to manipulate computers and other objects through thought alone. These fiercely competitive scientists are vying for Defense Department and venture capital funding, prestige, and great wealth.
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Refreshingly not pop-neuro or pseudoscience
- By Jordon on 06-28-16
By: Malcolm Gay
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The Performance Cortex
- How Neuroscience Is Redefining Athletic Genius
- By: Zach Schonbrun
- Narrated by: Thomas Vincent Kelly
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Why couldn't Michael Jordan, master athlete that he was, hit a baseball? Why can't modern robotics come close to replicating the dexterity of a five-year-old? Why do good quarterbacks always seem to know where their receivers are?In this deeply researched book, sports and business reporter Zach Schonbrun explores what actually drives human movement and its spectacular potential. The groundbreaking work of two neuroscientists in Major League Baseball is only the beginning.
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Excellent!
- By MD on 07-01-23
By: Zach Schonbrun
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On Intelligence
- By: Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakeslee
- Narrated by: Jeff Hawkins, Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Jeff Hawkins, the man who created the PalmPilot, Treo smart phone, and other handheld devices, has reshaped our relationship to computers. Now he stands ready to revolutionize both neuroscience and computing in one stroke, with a new understanding of intelligence itself.
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Epiphany
- By James on 03-14-05
By: Jeff Hawkins, and others
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The Ravenous Brain
- How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning
- By: Daniel Bor
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Consciousness is our gateway to experience: it enables us to recognize Van Gogh’s starry skies, be enraptured by Beethoven’s Fifth, and stand in awe of a snowcapped mountain. Yet consciousness is subjective, personal, and famously difficult to examine: philosophers have for centuries declared this mental entity so mysterious as to be impenetrable to science. In The Ravenous Brain, neuroscientist Daniel Bor departs sharply from this historical view, and proposes a new model for how consciousness works.
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Effectively demystifies consciousness
- By Gary on 11-18-12
By: Daniel Bor
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Now You See It
- How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn
- By: Cathy N. Davidson
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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When Duke University gave free iPods to the freshman class in 2003, critics said they were wasting their money. Yet when the students in practically every discipline invented academic uses for the music players, suddenly the idea could be seen in a new light - as an innovative way to turn learning on its head. Using cutting-edge research on the brain, Cathy N. Davidson show how attention blindness has produced one of our society's greatest challenges.
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3 Reasons to Read
- By Joshua Kim on 05-06-12
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Before You Know It
- The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do
- By: John Bargh PhD
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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For more than three decades, Dr. John Bargh has been responsible for the revolutionary research into the unconscious mind, research that informed best sellers like Blink and Thinking Fast and Slow. Now, in what Dr. John Gottman said "will be the most important and exciting book in psychology that has been written in the past 20 years", Dr. Bargh takes us on an entertaining and enlightening tour of the forces that affect everyday behavior while transforming our understanding of ourselves in profound ways.
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Political jab
- By Brad on 10-20-17
By: John Bargh PhD
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Thinking Machines
- The Quest for Artificial Intelligence - and Where It's Taking Us Next
- By: Luke Dormehl
- Narrated by: Gus Brown
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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When most of us think about artificial intelligence, our minds go straight to cyborgs, robots, and sci-fi thrillers where machines take over the world. But the truth is that artificial intelligence is already among us. It exists in our smartphones, fitness trackers, and refrigerators that tell us when the milk will expire. In some ways the future people dreamed of at the World's Fair in the 1960s is already here. We're teaching our machines how to think like humans, and they're learning at an incredible rate.
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Mostly platitudes with no depth
- By Gary on 03-24-17
By: Luke Dormehl
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Brief Candle in the Dark
- My Life in Science
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In this hugely entertaining sequel to the New York Times best-selling memoir An Appetite for Wonder, Richard Dawkins delves deeply into his intellectual life spent kick-starting new conversations about science, culture, and religion and writing yet another of the most audacious and widely read books of the 20th century - The God Delusion.
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I'm a Dawkins Groupie but...
- By Anne on 10-18-15
By: Richard Dawkins
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- Free Will and the Science of the Brain
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The father of cognitive neuroscience and author of Human offers a provocative argument against the common belief that our lives are wholly determined by physical processes and we are therefore not responsible for our actions.
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Not recommended
- By PMonaco on 01-19-19
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The Ethical Brain
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Will increased scientific understanding of our brains overturn our beliefs about moral and ethical behavior? How will increasingly powerful brain imaging technologies affect the ideas of privacy and of self-incrimination? Such thought-provoking questions are rapidly emerging as new discoveries in neuroscience have raised difficult legal and ethical dilemmas. Michael Gazzaniga, widely considered to be the father of cognitive neuroscience, investigates with an expert eye some of these controversial and complex issues.
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interesting stuff
- By Derek on 05-07-09
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Consciousness and the Brain
- Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts
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How does the brain generate a conscious thought? And why does so much of our knowledge remain unconscious? Thanks to clever psychological and brain-imaging experiments, scientists are closer to cracking this mystery than ever before. In this lively book, Stanislas Dehaene describes the pioneering work his lab and the labs of other cognitive neuroscientists worldwide have accomplished in defining, testing, and explaining the brain events behind a conscious state.
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I had no idea we knew this much.
- By Tristan on 01-18-16
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Being You
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What does it mean to “be you” - that is, to have a specific, conscious experience of the world around you and yourself within it? There may be no more elusive or fascinating question. Historically, humanity has considered the nature of consciousness to be a primarily spiritual or philosophical inquiry, but scientific research is now mapping out compelling biological theories and explanations for consciousness and selfhood.
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Not engaging, nothing new
- By Tristan on 11-22-21
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How Emotions Are Made
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The science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology. Leading the charge is psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, whose research overturns the long-standing belief that emotions are automatic, universal, and hardwired in different brain regions. Instead, Barrett shows, we construct each instance of emotion through a unique interplay of brain, body, and culture.
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Emotions are not things!!!!!!
- By Gary on 03-14-17
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The father of cognitive neuroscience and author of Human offers a provocative argument against the common belief that our lives are wholly determined by physical processes and we are therefore not responsible for our actions.
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How do neurons turn into minds? The problem of consciousness has gnawed at us for millennia. In the last century there have been massive breakthroughs that have rewritten the science of the brain, and yet the puzzles faced by the ancient Greeks are still present. In The Consciousness Instinct, the neuroscience pioneer Michael S. Gazzaniga puts the latest research in conversation with the history of human thinking about the mind, giving a big-picture view of what science has revealed about consciousness.
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Not recommended
- By PMonaco on 01-19-19
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Will increased scientific understanding of our brains overturn our beliefs about moral and ethical behavior? How will increasingly powerful brain imaging technologies affect the ideas of privacy and of self-incrimination? Such thought-provoking questions are rapidly emerging as new discoveries in neuroscience have raised difficult legal and ethical dilemmas. Michael Gazzaniga, widely considered to be the father of cognitive neuroscience, investigates with an expert eye some of these controversial and complex issues.
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interesting stuff
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Emotions are not things!!!!!!
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What listeners say about Tales from Both Sides of the Brain
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kristen S.
- 07-10-17
good, but...
very easy to tune out of. just not all that engaging, although some moments were great
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- Martina
- 03-07-18
Not what I was expecting
This book was more of a memoir of his life and times. It did have many interesting tidbits and his life was pretty amazing. I certainly agree that in many ways scientific research isn’t as fun as it used to be (too much administration). But I know that some had abused the system and that is why we have what we have today. Overall a good book
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- Zinzuni Jurado Chichay
- 01-17-16
Evolution of a branch of science
If you could sum up Tales from Both Sides of the Brain in three words, what would they be?
Interesting. Entertaining.informative.
Who was your favorite character and why?
The author. He tells the story with ease.
Have you listened to any of Johnny Heller’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
No
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The final chapter. It is exciting to see were we are now in the field.
Any additional comments?
A wonderful story that takes you through the birth and evolution of a new branch in science as well as the role of the players that made it happen.
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- Patti Harada
- 07-11-15
Gazzaniga is brilliant and inspiring
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Unfortunately, I have no friends interested in brain science. I discovered Michael Gazzaniga's work in 1996, and was so excited my heart pounded and I nearly passed out from hyperventilating.
What did you like best about this story?
I am aways astounded by the construction of scientific research, and Gazzaniga's research is made all the more thrilling by his own excitement about his work. His articles and this book bleed his thrill at this work. One reviewer made the comment that he liked the science, but that was all. For me, seeing the whole picture of his life, his fellow scientists and the wildly painful decisions made as opportunities arose which required moving away from his wonderful homes and their histories of friends and fellow scientists, helped me place his work and life in context. That might be because I fell madly in love him with during my 1996 reading of an article he wrote, but for me, they are inseparable. He is loved, admired, trusted and respected. I join the crowd with joy.
What about Johnny Heller’s performance did you like?
Well, I really have never heard Michael Gazzaniga's voice. But Johnny Heller reads this book like it was his own work and life he was describing. Beautifully narrated. And it's okay of Michael Gazzaniga has a little squeaky voice. I still love him.Heller could read to me from a phone book (do we still have those?) and I'd be thrilled.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
More than one, but all the same. He drew me deeply into his work and the amazing opportunities that he created (and that fell in his lap) and being deeply immersed (vicariously) in his work, the opportunities and painful changes that accompanied the opportunities of switching sides of our continent moved me deeply. It speaks of dedication and shows his family's devotion to him and to his work.
Oh, and he loves tractors.
Any additional comments?
I am so lucky to have stumbled onto Dr. Gazzaniga. I'm glad I got to be on this planet at the same time as he.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Yael
- 02-24-15
Insightful.
Provides a great insider's perspective on how science is done and the life dedication required to discover and own the conversation.
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- Michael D. Busch
- 03-07-15
Interesting but tedious
This book offers some interesting insights into the workings of the human brain, but those insights are needles buried in a huge haystack of autobiographical anecdotes that I found I particularly interesting or relevant and often quite tedious.
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7 people found this helpful
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- S. Yates
- 12-22-16
Better science than memoir
Any additional comments?
3.5 stars. Interesting memoir and tour through the history of split brain studies. Gazzaniga has an engaging manner and appears to have been blessed with a career filled with willing patients/subjects, high quality collaborators, and wonderful academic institutions. His high praise sometimes feels excessive, but one could not call him ungracious nor accuse him of the hubris and egotism that sometimes feels prerequisite to high achievers in the medical sciences (fairly or unfairly). The book is at its best when describing the function of the brain and how quirks in those who have undergone split brain procedures illuminates the workings therein. The vignettes about his life are fine, but don't add all that much (especially when they have little to do with his actual work). A few complaints in that he makes some statements that involve related fields (animal cognition and theory of mind; effectiveness of punishment) that make clear he is not well-versed in those areas (some of his statements on animal cognition go counter to the most excellent Frans de Waal book, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?; and his discussion of criminal punishment seems completely unaware of research into how early life trauma impacts decision making and brain wiring). Nonetheless, while it is merely OK as a memoir, it is very good as a science book.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Vernon Stinebaker
- 11-14-18
Great book mixing science with personalities
From my book reviews you’ll find a pattern of bias against verbosity. This book, for me at least, is an exception to that bias. The author could have been more concise, but the book would be lesser for it. Professor Gazzaniga’s descriptions of the personalities involved and his interactions with them within the context of events in his life added flavor to what could be delivered as a very dry set of materials. This is the book I’ve enjoyed the most this year. I’m going out and looking for other books written by Professor Gazzaniga.
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- Roger rabbit
- 11-21-21
awful
probably the worst book I've listened to so far. it is braggadocio bravado garbage.
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- 964a5
- 03-25-15
The brain science was all that was interesting
If this author had stuck to the brain science, the book would have been terrific. The personal and endless academic stories were boring and tiresome. I don't care what or where you ate when you were with another brilliant friend at another spectacular restaurant. If I had heard the word Dartmouth one more time, I would have gagged. How many times can one write about moving to another academic location and planning another meeting at some "special" location? The hyperbole drips at every turn. The authors friends and students were ALL brilliant and awesome and smart and well, just plain phenomenal. Much of the book was a giant self-directed pat on the back. I don't think I read one word about the author ever using their discoveries to help mankind suffering from neurological disease. The brain is interesting. The authors personal life and pretentious attitude was not.
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15 people found this helpful