How The Mind Changed: A Human History Of Our Evolving Brain
Joseph Jebelli John Murray £20 ★★★★★
In its earliest iteration, the human brain was about the size of a child’s fist. The sevenmillion-year story of how ours came to be four times bigger is brought to life in this vivid, if sometimes scattershot, caper through evolutionary neuroscience.
Our own minds are among the world’s greatest remaining mysteries and author Jebelli, a gifted storyteller who also happens to be a neuroscientist, is well placed to survey the latest discoveries in a rapidly developing scientific field. He draws, too, on psychology and philosophy, showing how historical and cultural advances have played their part alongside genetic accidents and environmental forces in shaping the brain’s development to date.
Throughout, this is a narrative that’s enlivened by case studies. He interviews a middle-aged interior designer who was left unable to feel joy or love or sorrow by a stroke, a repeat offender whose antisocial personality disorder prompts him to engage in reckless, impulsive and often violent behaviour, and a former memory whizz who, after a car crash at the age of 24, was left unable to form new memories, locking her into the present (she is 42 but still believes herself to be 24).
We also meet a colourful cast of forebears, among them Ardipithecus (left), a 4ft forest-dwelling primate that developed social thinking dodge predators and more efficiently gather the fruit she lived on, and Australopithecus anamensis, a furry and modestly sized ancestor whose brain formed the region we know as the amygdala, allowing her to analyse threats such as leopards before she was pounced on.
Jebelli’s previous book, the acclaimed In Pursuit Of Memory, considered the past, present and future of Alzheimer’s. He’s chosen a still broader canvas here and his arguments can feel flimsy as he gallivants across topics from free will to artificial intelligence.
All the same, an eye for thrilling details makes his approachable, sometimes provocative book an aptly mind-expanding experience for the curious reader.