We have presented very few books about the brain at the First Friday Book Synopsis in Dallas.  Yet, the business world remains fascinated with it.

You are familiar with old-fashioned, yet highly understandable conceptions, such as “left-brain logical” and “right-brain creative.”  And, you likely remember the book published in 1998, Time Management for the Creative Person:  Right-Brain Strategies for Stopping Procrastination, Getting Control of the Clock and Calendar, and Freeing Up Your Time and Your Life by Lee Silber (Three Rivers Press).

So, even though there is no chance that we will present a synopsis of this book at our monthly event, I thought our blog readers would be interested in the newest work on this subject.  On February 3, 2015, Michael S. Gazzaniga published Tales from Both Sides of the Brain:  A Life in Neuroscience (Ecco/Harper Collins).

First, who is Michael S. Gazzaniga?  Here is his biography from the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB):

Michael Gazzaniga is Director of the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at UCSB. He is the president of the Cognitive Neuroscience Institute, the founding director of the MacArthur Foundation’s Law and Neuroscience Project and the Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience, and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Academy of Sciences. He received a Ph.D. in Psychobiology from the California Institute of Technology, where he worked under the guidance of Roger Sperry, with primary responsibility for initiating human split-brain research. He subsequently made remarkable advances in our understanding of functional lateralization in the brain and how the cerebral hemispheres communicate with one another. He has published many books accessible to a lay audience which, along with his participation in the public television series The Brain and The Mind, have been instrumental in making information about brain function generally accessible.

Second, what does this book accomplish?  From the Blackstone Library web site, I found this review:

 

 

 

This book tells the impassioned story of his life in science and his decades-long journey to understand how the separate spheres of our brains communicate and miscommunicate with their separate agendas. By turns humorous and moving, Tales from Both Sides of the Brain interweaves Gazzaniga’s scientific achievements with his reflections on the challenges and thrills of working as a scientist. 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 who have accompanied him on this wild ride of intellectual discovery.

 

 

On February 24, 2015, Sally Satel reviewed the book in the Wall Street Journal.  You can click here to read her commentary.  She ends her review with this touching note:

Tales From Both Sides of the Brain will be cataloged as scientific autobiography, and that it surely is. But it is as much a book about gratitude—for the chance to study a subject as endlessly fascinating as the brain, for the author’s brilliant colleagues and, mostly, for the patients who taught him, and the world, so much.

Since it is not a best-seller, it does not qualify for one of our books that we present.  But, if you have followed the evolution of this topic over the years, this book appears to be worth your time.