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Comment by pavs | Hacker News Reader

I have been reading up a lot of Neuropsychology books and articles recently (not to be confused with pop-psych), and I have noticed that I have gained a lot of understanding, tolerance and acceptance of other people (and my own) and their mental quips. Once you start to understand how the brain works (not superficially, but _really_ have a good grasp), you start seeing yourself and world around you in a different way.

I might go as far as proposing that studying psychology is as humbling experience as studying cosmology and astronomy.

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I've had the same experience. Truly humbling, indeed.

One mental condition that really fascinates me is schizophrenia as you begin to understand reality is the brain's way of interpreting chemical, visual, auditory, tactile and other external stimuli, but also via its internal chemical reactions, neural connections that can go haywire.

Cognitive dissonance is another topic I'm fascinated by and wish everyone would know about it.

Anyway, if your interested in these subjects, but don't want to read very technical papers, I recommend reading Jonah Lehrer as he'll point you in some interesting directions: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/frontal-cortex

Agreed. It would make "intelligent, successful" people be more humble about their accomplishments, if they realized that they were really lucky to have the genetic dice roll just the right way that their brains worked basically okay, with no significant distortions or blind spots in their reasoning and functioning ability.

I have Jonah lehrer's blog on my feed. However I wouldn't recommend his books though (or most other mainstream pop-psych books). We recently read it on /r/NPBC (Neuropsychology Book Club) and I thought the book was an oversimplified interpretation to sell his predeterminer narrative of the book.

Currently we are reading Antonio Damasio's "The Feeling of What Happens" (really enjoying it so far, very dense.)

You can read Lehrer's unofficial reddit interview here (The OP, subtextual, is a professional Neuropsychologist):

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/d1pib/jonah_lehrer_aut...

You can read my thoughts on his interview and his book on the comment's section. Same username.

If you wouldn't recommend Lehrer, what would you recommend?

One think I have recently learned when it comes to recommending books is to point out the obvious: I have a different level of personal experience and knowledge about the topic, so the books I liked is often the result of my personal experience and the kind of books I usually like.

I am a fan of dry, no-nonsense, non-fiction books. So I don't think its very surprising that I often don't enjoy pop-psych books because they tend to dumb down the science and use selective knowledge to get readers hooked into the topic. Hard science is rarely a priority in those kind of books, its the personal narrative and interpretation they want to push that takes precedence over actual science.

This is why I often read books thats written by people who have good background knowledge on the topic and is a professional on that field. Which means I try to avoid books written by General "sciency" guy who has an interest in many things and read some books on those things and he is just rehashing and reinterpreting those words the way he likes it to sell as many books as he can.

I am fairly new to Neuro/psych books. So I don't have an extensive list of books I have already read. However I do have a fairly good list of books on my queue that I have collected over the last few weeks from other professionals neuropsychologists on the field.

- Anything by Antonio Damasio (just started reading "The Feeling of What Happens", loving it.)

- Books by Daniel Dennett

- Books by Joseph Ledoux

- Books by Oliver Sacks

- Subcortical Structure and Cognition (needs some neurology background, I have none. I am slowly building myself up to reading it)

- The Neuroscience of Religious Experience

- Phantoms of the Brain

Note that all the books or authors I have recommended are either psychologists or neuropsychologists by profession (AFAIK), unlike Lehrer, who is a science journalist with interest in psychology. When you read a hardcore no-nonsense Neuropsychology book (ie, Damasio) and then compare it to lehrer, I think you will see the glaring difference in knowledge and substance.

What do you think of Richard Granger? I've read several of his papers (Essential Circuits of Cognition, Engines of the Brain), and as a non-neuroscientist his hierarchical model seems interesting and plausible, and more importantly from my point of view, computationally feasible.

I have never heard of him. I will check out some of his work. Thanks.

Any books & articles you'd particularly recommend? I've read some popular neurology stuff (books by Oliver Sacks, Jonah Lehrer's blog), but that's it, and would love to go deeper.

Edit: I see a few suggestions from you in other parts of this thread. Any others?

I have recommended some books here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1643750

For articles and research paper:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Neuropsychology/

http://www.reddit.com/r/psychology/

For any specific articles I would recommend I will have to go through my huge list of saved links. I am a bit lazy right now, I might come back to this later and post some. :)

Cool, thanks. I bookmarked it and will check back later.

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