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Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience Audiobook
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Publisher Description
Michael S. Gazzaniga, one of the most important neuroscientists of the twentieth century, gives us an exciting behind-the-scenes look at his seminal work on that unlikely couple, the right and left brain. Foreword by Steven Pinker.
In the mid-twentieth century, Michael S. Gazzaniga, “the father of cognitive neuroscience,” was part of a team of pioneering neuroscientists who developed the now foundational split-brain brain theory: the notion that the right and left hemispheres of the brain can act independently from one another and have different strengths.
In Tales from Both Sides of the Brain, Gazzaniga 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.
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“Scientific progress is so often envisioned as the enterprise of scientists who are little more than cerebral cortices on legs, dispassionately sifting theories in their pursuit of the truth. Gazzaniga, himself a pioneer of neuroscience, corrects the story. From his firsthand experience, he reveals the role of ego, politics, jealousy, envy, lust, and all the other deadly sins in the advance of human knowledge. This is a must-read for those who care about science, history, the human brain, and, speaking only metaphorically, the human heart.”
— Eric Kaplan, coproducer of and writer on The Big Bang Theory
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“I have spent a lifetime wondering how my brain works and why it occasionally doesn’t. Tales from Both Sides of the Brain is a fun, accessible story of not just how both halves of our minds function but also how a group of brilliant and sweetly quirky neuroscientists have struggled to find answers.”
— Conan O’Brien -
“The personal story of a genius famous for one of the rare major discoveries ever made out in the still vast, still baffling terra incognita of the human brain, namely, the split-brain phenomenon.”
— Tom Wolfe, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Bonfire of the Vanities -
“Mike Gazzaniga’s personal, charming story of how he uncovered the mysteries of the way our left and right brains collaborate is fascinating. This book makes you think twice about thinking. Two heads really are better than one—and most of us have both in the same skull.”
— Alan Alda -
“The story of how science works interwoven with the life of a brilliant scientist who not only created an entire new field of inquiry but just happened to live in the Animal House at Dartmouth. A marvelous, exciting adventure, elegantly written.”
— Daniel J. Levitin, New York Times bestselling author of The Organized Mind -
“Gazzaniga is a charmer. Consequently, this is not a dry scientific tome. On the contrary, the personable Gazzaniga—his warmth and good humor virtually jump off the page—recalls his life as a scientist at Caltech, Dartmouth, Cornell, and other institutions and the ups and downs that came with it…Gazzaniga’s memoir should delight fans of the television series, The Big Bang Theory, but it will also have tremendous appeal for non-nerds, too.”
— Booklist (starred review) -
“Gazzaniga’s book is of great interest to those embarking on careers in pure research and to anyone intrigued by the story of one of the greatest discoveries in cognition.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“In this scientific memoir, the author chronicles his fifty-year career at the forefront of research and ‘the scientific saga’ in which he still plays a part…A lively appreciation of both the complexity of the human mind and the scientific enterprise.”
— Kirkus Reviews
Awards
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A 2015 Amazon Best Books of the Year Selection for Science
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About Michael S. Gazzaniga
Michael S. Gazzaniga is the director of the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California–Santa Barbara. He is the president of the Cognitive Neuroscience Institute, the founding director of the MacArthur Foundation’s Law and Neuroscience Project, and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Academy of Sciences. He lives in California.
About Johnny Heller
Johnny Heller, winner of numerous Earphones and Audie Awards, was named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile magazine in 2019. He has been a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award winner from 2008 through 2013 and he has been named a top voice of 2008 and 2009 and selected as one of the Top 50 Narrators of the Twentieth Century by AudioFile magazine.