William H. Calvin and George A. Ojemann's CONVERSATIONS WITH NEIL'S BRAIN (A-W 1994)
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Conversations with Neil's Brain
The Neural Nature of Thought & Language
Copyright ©1994 by William H. Calvin and George A. Ojemann.

You may download this for personal reading but may not redistribute or archive without permission (exception: teachers should feel free to print out a chapter and photocopy it for students).


William H. Calvin, Ph.D., is a neurophysiologist on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington.

George A. Ojemann, M.D., is a neurosurgeon and neurophysiologist on the faculty of the Department of Neurological Surgery, University of Washington.

Chapter List

1     A Window to the Brain 1
2.     Losing Consciousness 21
3.     Seeing the Brain Speak 41
4.     If Language Is Left, What's Right? 61
5.     The Problems with Paying Attention 77
6.     The Personality of the Lowly Neuron 91
7.     The What and Where of Memory 113
8.     How Are Memories Made? 125
9.     What's Up Front 139
10.     When Things Go Wrong with Thought and Mood 153
11.     Tuning Up the Brain by Pruning 169
12.     Acquiring and Reacquiring Language 183
13.     Taking Apart the Visual Image 195
14.     How the Brain Subdivides Language 211
15.     Why Can We Read So Well? 225
16.     Stringing Things Together in Novel Ways 235
17.     Deep in the Temporal Lobe, Just Across from the Brain Stem 245
18.     In Search of the Narrator

    Postscript and Acknowledgments 279
        End Notes 282
        Index

There is a Dutch edition and a German translation.


INSTRUCTORS: The Personality of the Lowly Neuron may be a useful quick intro to cellular-level neuro for your students. If you need glossary links from your own web page "handouts," you can make use of the glossary items in THE CEREBRAL CODE, e.g., to gloss postsynaptic, use
<a href=http://www.williamcalvin.com/bk9gloss.html#postsynaptic>Postsynaptic</a>

If you would like to see a translation for your language, alert a relevant publisher and point them toward our literary agent:

Brockman, Inc., 5 East 59th Street, New York NY 10022 USA.
fax +1(212)935-5535 ....... e-mail rights@brockman.com

Conversations with Neil's Brain:
The Neural Nature of Thought and Language
(Addison-Wesley, 1994), co-authored with my neurosurgeon colleague, George Ojemann. It's a tour of the human cerebral cortex, conducted from the operating room, and has been on the New Scientist bestseller list of science books. It is suitable for biology and cognitive neuroscience supplementary reading lists. ISBN 0-201-48337-8.
AVAILABILITY widespread (softcover, US$12).
Ojemann Home Page || Calvin Home Page || Go read Chapter 1