Volume 35, Number 14 · September 29, 1988
Mind-Reading
By Israel Rosenfield
The Oxford Companion to the Mind
edited by Richard L. Gregory, with the assistance of O.L. Zangwill
Oxford University Press, 856 pp., $49.95
We are now beginning to understand the physical basis of normal and abnormal mental activity largely because of recent advances in the neurosciences. Among the concerns of The Oxford Companion to the Mind, edited by Richard L. Gregory and the late Oliver L. Zangwill, both well-known British psychologists, is to describe these advances. The book includes many entries on important writers in the history of philosophy and psychology. It has several well-informed and skeptical entries on telepathy, clairvoyance, and paranormal phenomena. It takes account of modern developments in linguistics and learning theory. But the heart of the book is its numerous entries on the neurosciences; the longest, 'Nervous System,' by the English neurologist Peter Nathan, gives a twenty-page account of current knowledge of the brain, and it is supplemented by such articles as 'Brain Development,' 'Brain Function and Awareness,' 'Neurotransmitters,' and 'Neuronal Connectivity and Brain Function.' Articles on Parkinsonism, schizophrenia, depression, and dementia discuss the breakdown of normal function.
Review, 4277 words
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