Elkhonon Goldberg

Must we resign ourselves to brain power wasting away as we get older, or is there some truth to the concept of a wisdom gained with aging? Goldberg's book, clearly geared to a true beginner audience but with more content than many tomes of a similar level, promises to answer that question. This book is incredibly accessible; I feel confident that someone who has never heard of the hippocampus, a humanities-type rather than a scientist, could gain much knowledge and practical advice from this show more book. The beginnings of the book are quite basic, but the book doesn't stop with the same ground covered by a million other pop psychology books. Those who have read other popular authors such as Schacter, Damasio, and LeDoux will find that while Goldberg starts out simpler he still manages to add material not covered in those other books, including interesting research of his own.

The author not only busts the stereotypes to separate out the results of disease from normal aging of the brain, but he advances an intriguing mechanism for WHY normal aging and corresponding changes to the brain contribute to some of the behaviors we associate with wisdom. Goldberg is unashamedly honest when he admits that he was drawn to the topic by his own advancing age, and readers of a certain age will find the book both accessible and soothing. Stories of men who were successful despite age, even blatant cognitive disease, are described. Topics covered in many other books are covered here, including the neuroscience of language and of memory. Goldberg's unique contribution, however, is his theory on how the different hemispheres of the brain develop, how the use of each changes through the lifespan, and how these changes relate to the cognitive changes seen in normal aging. Although this is a book for a general audience, the author is careful not to oversimplify the "logical" versus "creative" or to imply that the left and right brain act in isolated fashion, as so many misguided accounts would have it. Because of his discussion, the book is informative in understanding many differences in the ways some "lefties" think as well as the aging.

Goldberg makes his case, and then he lets out the hopeful news. Much as with the rest of the body, "use it or lose it" applies to the brain. Neurogenesis, the growth of new brain cells, continues into late adulthood, and new synaptic connections continue to form well into old age. This idea, of course, rocketed the book into international bestseller status. Everyone wanted to read about the results of his cognitive health club, with each person assigned a mental trainer and given specific exercises to improve mental fitness.

Overall, I'd consider this an excellent introduction to neuroscience for a true novice, and a pleasant light read for those who have read about the brain before and are interested in development/aging of the brain or hemispheric differences in function. There is a decent but not huge set of references to both popular works and technical literature for those who may wish to pursue the ideas further. Enjoy! show less

My mother recommended this, and she normally doesn't read science books. I guess she's exercising the right side of her brain, keeping her ability to learn new material and patterns strong. I really don't know how to review this because some was 'um, yeah, no duh' and some was over my head - but let's just say I'm glad I read it and if you're interested enough to be reading reviews, I recommend you go for it. It took me a long time because I kept getting interrupted, not because it was all show more that challenging.

ETA - later the same day I found myself mentioning this book in a group here and saying something that might be helpful about it:

If you agree that our mind is integral with our brain which is integral with our body, and that our brain works better if one has a well-rounded 'exercise' program for it, and that intuition and wisdom are both aspects of good pattern-recognition abilities, you're pretty much all set."" show less

As I write this I'm listening to the Harvard Class Day on the day before their commencement ceremony. It's raining heavily. The undergraduates are making each other laugh, rehashing their high school valedictorian address by changing a line here and there, reviewing their experiences during the last four years, pumping themselves up to make something of their lives after Harvard.

What is that about? Showing they have healthy frontal lobes. Frankly, writing a review of a book about the frontal show more lobes and their extensive connection with other areas of the brain, using my frontal lobes, may be an oxymoron. Goldberg, an NYU Med School professor, other than his personal (read: self-serving) asides about his escape from the 'evil empire' which educated him (for free) to the doctoral level, which he repaid by leaving his homeland just as many third world professionals, gives us the benefit of his enormous knowledge of neuropychology. And enormous it is.

You may not think the same way about yourself or others after reading this book. If you can get through it. The chapters in the middle, unlike the pap at the beginning and end of most nonfiction books, will test your powers of concentration. But the reward is there. Exercise your magic marker on the remarkable nuggets of abstruse knowledge to which he treats us.

That doorknob on your shoulders is wired in the most remarkable way. Moreover, because our experiences in life are unique, each brain is 'programmed' in a unique manner. Your mind isn't out there in another dimension, let alone in the heavens, but is a function of the brain. Heretical, isn't it? Doesn't that make us just another animal, just a little smarter than a cocker spaniel?

Well, we're not just a little smarter, we are orders of magnitude more capable than any other creature on Earth. And our frontal lobes make it so. At some point in our evolution we passed a point of critical mass such that we had self awareness and awareness of others. Social competition and, according to one theory, the ability of the human brain to resist overheating during heavy exercise, allowed, nay, necessitated increased frontal lobe development of a Darwinian sort.

Well, get to the point! Should I get this book or not? Firstly, there is an intrinsically limiting factor: one needs great frontal lobes in order to appreciate this book about frontal lobes. Hmmm. If yours are already in decline, forget it. Let a bright relative or friend summarize it for you. However, if you want to subsidise Goldberg's next lunch at an expensive Russian restaurant in New York, Voila!

Secondly, there are some dangers: did you ever embrace Freudian/Jungian, Behavioral or other psychologies? I'm sorry, you will trash them. Are you a humanist? Literature, History, Religion, Art, Politics - are a function of the frontal lobes (and their pathologies). Are you mentally ill? This may tell you the mechanisms of that illness. Some trendy illnesses are a function of unhealthy frontal lobes.

Thirdly, will 'fair from fair sometimes declines' apply to you as you age: Sorry, again. Read Goldberg's other great book, The Wisdom Paradox. It's all about the baby boomer's worst nightmare: cognitive decline. Keep watching this space for my upcoming review of that.

Fourthly, don't get a dog or an orangutang, did I spell that right?, oops, frontal lobe failure! It may make you feel less lonely and more superior but the lower orders are no real challenge for us. For that we need spouse, teenagers, tax collectors, magazine salespersons at the front door. Keep your body healthy - after all, the brain, despite the blood-brain barrier, is nourished by the rest of the body. That means greatly reduce the fifty percent of your body that is fat. That means exercise daily, don't eat fried foods, meats or junk snack foods. There's something called cholesterol in all those things. Bad. If it builds up in the arteries to the brain, bingo, you're an instant half-wit someday. Hemiplegia. Think your thoughts don't matter because others can't see them as they can see your 'ring around the collar' or smell your bad breath? Take up meditation so that in a year or two your brain may reprogram itself to a 'kinder, gentler' interior dialog. Still feel like going to church? Well, fine - God, herself, may have frontal lobes and really understand what we go through in life.

Lastly, don't blame Amazon that terrified amateurs review books in this manner! You asked for it; you're trying to spend your book budget online instead of in your neighborhood bookstore. Serves you right, cyber-buyer. show less

This is the book that got me interested, once again, in neuropsychology and neuroanatomy. Yes, the immediate interest is that business of not wanting "to go gently into that good night." as Dylan Thomas wrote. How much will cognitive delcine affect me as I age (something we are all doing since birth - it isn't only the old who are aging).

I think Goldberg, motivated by his own need to "rage, rage against the dying of the light," used his enormous knowledge of neuropsychology to create a work show more that should benefit all who want to know what their chances are ( or of relatives/friends) of continuing to lead a useful life despite the inevitable (and many) ways we decline in capacity as we age.

This book is not necessarily an easy read, for a generation used to soundbites, e-mail abreviations, evening news pseudo-profundity, or dumbed-down magazine articles. One has to realize that neurology is the subject medical students fear most. And with good reason. The human brain has been described as the most complex thing we know of. Somehow, in a way not yet fully understood, consciousness emerges from the healthy, mature human brain to give us (finally in human evolution) the ability to study effectively with recent functional brain scanning techniques the very organ system that allows us to smell a perfume and recall a long ago romance, to see a face in the crowd and recognize someone we have not seen for ten years (or fifty years), to freeze with terror as the amygdala (as close as we can come to Freud's Id) brings to mind a terrible incident from childhood, to meditate and find a place of peace where some of our systems shut down like that scene in the film "2001" in which HAL, the space ship's computer gets his memory modules unpluged after trying to kill the crew.

Frankly, I liked Goldberg's making the book not a text, but a personal exploration. Textbooks are the most boring article ever devised by the human mind - but necessary until in some new century slouching up towards Jerusalem we get microchip implants that make us into Borgs, don't snicker, people are having chips placed subdermal just so they can wave their arm at a door and have it open. Think how willing people will be score of years hence to suffer the implant of cerebral devices that give us many terabytes of updatable data storage or like "The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy" Marvin, the robot with a brain the size of a planet, unlimited intelligence. What Faustian deals will we make in centuries to come?

Get out your magic marker and color all those amazing bits of research and speculation about how our brains age. His theory is that we will get by nicely, thank you very much, on the sheer acumulation of left brain (that's not your creative side, sorry) routines which will enable us to be usefull on the job and not too dull in our personal lives. This is despite the loss of some brain capacity (literally, the brain shrinks), memory loss, lessened creativity and such. It helps to have been bright and active using the brain in one's occupation.

However, we still don't know definitively what causes Alzheimer's disease or many other serious forms of cognitive decline. The good news is that we have a better chance than not of living our life to the full without disabling mental decline. It is not a 'neuropsychology for dummies' work. It is not well illustrated - see my review of Rita Carter's "Mapping the Mind" which is - but one keens at Goldberg's expertise in his field (he specializes in the frontal lobes, which, incidentally, is where the part of the mind that seems to be YOU is located - maybe).

With all the babyboomers coming along worried about their senior years, I see a bright future for this book - and many others like it. There are just so many more answers to those questions the artist asked: Ou venon nous. Que sommes nous. Ou allons nous. (Gaugauin, MFA Boston). Goldberg is one of many helping us to understand the latest discoveries and theories in this field. He has some of his own; he's more in favor of the 'distributed processing' theory of brain function, not the highly modular view which has held sway for decades. Incidentally, recent research has shown that the Broca's area and Werneicke's area are less fixed and immutable than formerly thought. show less