The author, Rita Carter rcarter@netcomuk.co.uk ,
Why I wrote "Mapping the Mind"
I have always been fascinated by what makes people tick.
Why do some people love dressing up while others are happy
wearing a sack? Why do certain individuals flock to parties
while others do anything to avoid them? How come certain
otherwise sensible folk believe that aliens have landed? Why
do some people find farting funny? And why are some of us
natural artists while others would be hard-pushed to paint
their toenails?
Psychologists have done their best to explain these things
but until recently they could only guess what was happening
in the brain by observing behaviour - there was no way to
look inside people's heads and see what caused them to act
the way they did. Now, though, scientists can do just that.
Imaging tehnology like PET and functional MRI make it
possible to watch the human mind at work, and the picture
that is being built up as a result is astonishing.
I first came across these brain imaging studies about ten
years ago and I was instantly hooked. The first studies were
pretty crude but as the technology got better I saw that the
images were adding up, like bits in a jigsaw puzzle, to
reveal something quite startling: a complete picture of the
human mind at work. The biological roots of human behaviour,
and the neurological differences which create individual
personalities, are suddenly being made visible.
For several years I scoured the bookshops looking for a
book which pulled this picture together, but all I could find
were dense, jargon-laden tomes or superficial psychobabbble.
So I decided to write the book myself. I soon found that it
was not enough simply to piece together brain imaging
findings. To make sense of them it was necessary to weave
them into our existing models of the mind - those we have
constructed through evolutionary biology, psychology and
studies of eccentric or aberrant behaviour. Then it seemed
essential to relate what happens in "the" brain to
what happens in "my" brain - and yours ....to put
the neuroscience into the context of everyday experience and
behaviour.
"Mapping the Mind" is the result. I know it is
about the only illustrated and easily understandable guide to
what happens in the brain because I still scour the bookshops
and I still haven't found anything else like it. And I know
it is up-to-date because I was adding new findings to it
(much to my publisher's inconvenience) right up to the moment
it went to press. And it is almost certainly accurate as far
as current knowledge allows, because every word was checked
by my eminent consultant, Professor Chris Frith of the
Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology in London.
I hope you enjoy reading it.
