Congenital malformations of the brain: Pathological, embryological, clinical, radiological and genetic aspects by Margaret G. Norman, Barbara C. McGillivray, Dagmar K Kalousek, Alan Hill, and Kenneth J. Poskitt New York, Oxford University Press, 1995

1996 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 687-688
Author(s):  
A. James Barkovicb
2001 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 581-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
DEREK BICKERTON

Donald Loritz, How the brain evolved language. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. 227.Lyle Jenkins, Biolinguistics : exploring the biology of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii+264.In the course of reviewing recent books on the evolution of language and communication (Dunbar 1996, Hauser 1996, Deacon 1997) I have had occasion to note that relatively few writers on these topics know much about linguistics, and to wish that more of them did. I should have remembered the old adage that one shouldn't wish for things - one might get them.For more than a century, linguists honored the Linguistic Society of Paris's ban on all discussion of language evolution; other disciplines went ahead with it regardless. Now that the centrality of language evolution to any study of our species is becoming apparent, linguists are desperately trying to play catchup, and the two volumes reviewed here both appeared in the last couple of years. Both authors are linguists, albeit hyphenated ones. Donald Loritz teaches computational linguistics at Georgetown University; his doctorate was in psycholinguistics. Lyle Jenkins works in the Biolinguistics Institute in Cambridge, MA; however, his doctorate was in unhyphenated linguistics. It would be difficult to find two authors whose ideas were more diametrically opposed.


2002 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 613-616
Author(s):  
Ronald Gray

In this highly ambitious book, Glynn attempts to provide a description of both how the brain works and how it has developed. Taking an interdisciplinary approach (he is a physiologist by training), he relies on insights from a wide number of disciplines, including psychology, neurology, anthropology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, psychiatry, physiology, and even philosophy. He is interested in providing answers to some perennial and interconnected questions that relate to the mind: “What kind of thing is mind? What is the relation between our minds and our bodies and, more specifically, what is the relation between what goes on in our minds, and what goes on in our brains? How did brains and minds originate? Can our brains be regarded as nothing more than exceedingly complicated machines? Can minds exist without brains” (p. 4). Although his arguments are rather technical, the book is intended for a nonscientist audience.


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