Fascinating and thorough look at the complexities of human life. Given to me by a student at the end of the school year, I'm thankful that many of the interesting and applicable material covered in this book are areas that relate to all of us and found so many tidbits of information in this great read that apply to both the AP Psych classroom and life in general. Having said that, however, I wish the end of the book had been a little less depressing. The last 50 pages or so focus on intelligent life besides humans and potential alien interactions and was a little bit of a letdown, to be honest.

I enjoy Michio Kaku in every science show he appears in on tv and he's an expert in the field of physics. And I'm no expert in neuroscience, but my Bachelor's is in it and I continue to be pretty engrossed in the medical field, so I took a critical eye to his more "wetware" discussions of the brain.

For one, he refers to parts of the inner brain like parts of the diencephalon, telencephalon, and mesencephalon as the "limbic system" throughout the entire book. While many people still use this term, it is regarded as an outdated label for all those structures by the experts in the field of neuroscience. The normal reader wouldn't care about labels and it makes sense for unifying structure and purpose under one term. But for the sake of citizen science, I don't think using outdated language helps anyone.

Kaku also flips back and forth on his views regarding animal minds and consciousness. In the very first chapter, he refers to evolution of the brain as going from the basic reptillian brain, to the mammalian brain, to the human brain. The reptillian brain is capable of responding to simple stimuli, the mammalian brain can process emotions and social structures, and the human brain achieves full consciousness by being able to plan for the future. I think this organization is overly simplistic. For one, birds would be considered to have a mammalian brain with their complex social structures and grammar used in song birds. This is pure anthropomorphization- taking our own model of mind and applying it to others. We cannot imagine what the mind of a, say, dolphin is like because we are in no way able to be a dolphin. Their reliance on sensory information is completely different than ours. I think it's wrong to insist that humans are the only ones capable of having consciousness.

But if that is Kaku's opinion, then he should stick to it. Instead, he insists on not applying anthropomorphism to imagining alien minds in Chapter 14. He finally discusses the changes in sensory input in different species like bats, dogs, and dolphins. But if this is his opinion at the end of the book in regard to aliens, it's not what he concluded earlier. Also, his argument about sensory differences in other species would have been improved if he mentioned the inferior and superior colliculi. These small structures, located on the midbrain, are centers of information related to auditory (inferior) and visual (superior) reflexes. The inferior (the labels being used to refer to placement along the midbrain, not size) colliculus is much bigger than the superior in dolphins and bats. In humans, the two colliculi are closer in size. This makes sense for echolocating animals like bats and dolphins to rely much more on auditory cues than visual ones. Mentioning these structures would have helped Kaku demonstrate how very different our brains are from other animals' and how it is indeed unfair to assume that if their consciousness doesn't resemble ours, it's therefore not a true mind.

A couple other stray misunderstandings- I'm not completely convinced of Kaku's explanations of mirror neurons as to how they're used in the brain to replicate behaviors. And his definition of a homunculus as cortical areas assigned to various body regions was unclear. But I had no criticisms of the physics, quantum theory, and engineering parts of his arguments. Some of the science seemed farfetched (like transmitting consciousness via lasers), but I'm unfamiliar with the groundbreaking work in these areas. This was still an interesting book with lots of amazing ideas about the future of robots, the mind, and where else technology can take us.

Book Riot Read Harder Challenge Item: A Non-fiction Book About Science

For the first half of this book, I thought it would be a 3-star book. It was a little on the dry and academic side --it seemed clear that Kaku's experience in writing was not necessarily for a general audience -- but the brain science was interesting, and there were a few truly fascinating studies that I'd never come across in similar reading on the subject. I'll never forget the one about how, when left and right brain can no longer communicate with each other, we literally have "two minds" that often do not agree with one another. Fascinating!

However, as the book went on, it kind of just devolved into Kaku rambling about everything that could even be tangentially related to the way the mind works but that just felt like a grab bag of his pet interests. Sure, I'm interested in robots and aliens, too, but I don't really need to hear someone else fanboy over them for pages and pages without the sort of scientific grounding that made the first half of the book compelling.

So yeah, by the end, I was pretty much ready for it to be done.

I liked the explanations early in the book on how the brain works. I've found myself trying to add the concept of the multiple brain process flows and how a certain one 'wins' to my everyday thinking.

Some interesting bits, but I found the writing annoying. The author went on so many tangents, many about fiction in books and movies, spending more time talking about what people have IMAGINED that what is actually being worked on or may be in our future.

A lot of fun/scary speculation about the future of neuroscience and technology. There is enough neuroscience explanation for the general reader with cases and studies to support Kaku's speculations. Overall, a very interesting and accessible read.

Loved it, and I learned so much.


Some of Michio’s ideas for how physics might shape our future seem a little far-reaching for me but I tend to be a cynic.

I find it most realistic that we will destroy ourselves before science progresses much farther, but maybe that’s why he’s the scientist and I’m just some random lady. He’s the dreamer, and he’s really got some amazing ideas.

One issue I found a few times was that Michio will highlight an idea or concept but not provide further explanation. One example:
Pg 107 - memories are not stored sequentially but on various parts of brain.
Pg 109 - scientists taught mice to press two bars in sequence and then in the next paragraph says they “injected the mice with a special chemical, making them forget the task”.
Then on page 122 - Michio brings up the issue with Men In Black, that they cannot erase a memory that just happened ... yet isn’t that what he is implying the scientists did for the mice? Maybe I’m missing something, but he seems to contradict himself a few other times as well.
Michio then goes on to talk about a new drug that can erase memories in mice but gives no hint at how this is even accomplished and what form of memory ..

Overall, though, a lot can be learned from the insights he shares here.

Whoa.