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highly recommended |
The Executive Brain is the first popular but rigorous book to explore the most 'human' region of the brain, the frontal lobes. Writing in a lively and accessible style, the author shows how the frontal lobes enable us to engage in complex mental processes, how they control our judgment and our social and ethical behavior, how vulnerable they are to injury, and how devastating the effects of damage often are, leading to chaotic, disorganized, asocial, and even criminal behavior. Replete with fascinating case histories and anecdotes, Goldberg's book offers a panorama of state-of-the-art ideas and advances in cognitive neuroscience. It is also an intellectual memoir, filled with vignettes about the author's early training with Luria, his escape from the Soviet Union, and later interactions with patients and professionals around the world.
Helpful to Understanding Brain Injury 
I have a child with a brain injury and found that the material contained in this book helpful in understanding her processing difficulties and gave me ideas to put in place to help overcome some of those differences. The book provided me with a better understanding of how certain neuropsychological tests measure what they say they measure. The Executive Brain was so helpful to me that I purchased additional copies and gave them friends and teachers who either have or work with children with learning difficulties. The beginning of Goldberg's work takes place during the time of the Soviet Union. Having traveled in Russia, I found his account of events there facinating.
A Worthwhile Read
I had managed to obtain "Executive Brain" after reading Dr. Goldberg's intriguing The Wisdom Paradox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger As Your Brain Grows Older, and this book certainly brings additional understanding of neuropsychology and neurobiology as it can be a useful resourceful book.
This book explores the frontal lobes of the brain as well the understanding of how this part of our brain works. Not only frontal lobes and neurons are discussed in this book, but a sort of autobiography of the author himself is brought to light. I certainly like the section regarding the Tourette's as it is an insightful read.
It is easy to read and consists only of 12 chapters. I personally felt "Executive Brain" is a worthwhile read as it holds essential information about the frontal lobes and personal aspects of the author himself.
I loved the book!
I loved the way it was written, integrating science and context (year, country, people's backgrounds) Because after all, we must not forget that our minds and brains are part of the huge dinamic context of the life and environment we are living. The way we look at things, what we conclude and give importance to, ...are not just random events.
Interesting, not despite its slightly unscientifical approach, but because of it
Yes, it was personal. But liked it. A lot of pop-science ultimately fails to deliver a clear understanding of the subjects it's about. That's because they're presenting essentially a watered down account of the scientifical approach, i.e. they consist mostly of a superficial collection of studies and theories that have been created only to prove what we already know. That goes for text books too.
On the other side we have books that push things further. They'll help us orientate by being honestly subjective. You cannot reach balanced thought by just repeating the text book account of things. Freud is a good example. Despite being down right wrong on many issues, he's still very influential and always a good read, as long as you know how to be critical.
I'm not saying he's some kind of a modern Freud, but compared to a lot of the psychological mainstream, I found this book to be incredibly interesting and insightful, in a really novel way that I believe is much needed after the very dry era of cognitive and neuropsychological reign since the 80s.
And, for 200 pages, it's packed with useful ideas. Keep in mind that despite the overall tone of this review, it's actually relatively well backed up and applicable say in school essays. What I like to stress is his unique approach to popularization -- not formal but subjective. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's false -- it just is not obsessed with not being false. And in my opinion it's the correct choice -- that is absolutely a lower level function that _should_ be left out of especially the more popular, less referencable, accounts. Let us do the appraisals by ourselves.
So so 
As a psychologist, I found Goldberg's discussions of the frontal lobes rather good. However, readers should be aware that many of his claims regarding the halves of the brain are rather controversial, such as all the nonsense about specialization wherein one half processes information while in the "novice" stage until it's handed over to the other half in the "expert" stage. Pretty far-fetched stuff.
reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4
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based on 19 reviews
