So I was talking to a friend of mine, currently working towards his Ph.D in neuroscience, and we got into an interesting discussion about the most influential neuroscience book published in the last 25 years. We defined "influence" as broadly as possible, so that it refers to both working scientists and the lay public. I'm traveling today, and won't have much time to blog, but I thought I'd throw out my nominees in the hope of sparking a spirited discussion. (I'm also not convinced that my nominees are very good.)
The Mind's New Science, by Howard Gardner
Descartes' Error, by Antonio Damasio
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, by Oliver Sacks
Comments (10)
whatever book it was that did the most to promote the "memory loss scenario" (a la HM) to hollywood script writers. You can't turn on the tv or go to the movies these days without having some character lose their damned memory. Memento was great, but now it's become a cliche. I know it had become old hat to use the amnesia scenario in soaps and such, but there was a spate of these in the wake of Memento, and they all seemed to have acquired a science-y patina with use of terms like "short term memory loss" instead of "amnesia". Just the other day on House, MD, they induced it intentionally in a patient using ECT.
PS Gardner's book is not that influential (IMHO). Pinker's book Blank Slate was much more so. But there are others. Phantoms in the Brain was wildly successful.
Posted by: boojieboy | January 11, 2007 11:25 AM