The Compassionate Brain: A Revolutionary Guide to Developing Your Intelligence to Its Full Potential [ペーパーバック]

The title of the book would leave one to believe that it examines and demonstrates the position that compassion and empathy go hand in hand with intelligence. This point was perhaps mentioned once in passing (without support) while the rest of the book tried to describe the evolution of the brain and how certain traumas will inhibit its growth. The title also states that it is a guide to further develop the brain. However, most of the book contains no useful information except for the point that the brain can be further developed by doing new and different activities. This is about the extent of the 'guide'. I was quite disappointed overall and certainly didn't read anything revolutionary or even new.

I was extremely disappointed by this book. The title and the write-up on the back cover held the promise of a how-to manual to use your brain to its fullest potential. The book reads like a superficial mish-mash of philosophy and neurology, with almost no back-up to its major claims and statements about human behavior or the development of societies. At times it sounds like a new age environmentalist screed, noting that poor use of the brain results in the misuse of natural resources. I was kept waiting until the final pages of the book for the magical how-to promised at the beginning. The secret formula for better brain use: be a better person, preferably an environmentalist. The only information of value is Huther's repeated assertion that your brain physiology will adapt to the way you continually use it, and will reinforce this routine way more and more. This has been said by other's before (see Edward De Bono, Mechanism of Mind).

Huther's book is insightful and interesting. His preliminary remarks were the most concise of his sections and in it he makes some intriguing remarks:

"What guides us in all our decisions is not our mind or our consciousness. It's also not the knowledge that we have learned by rote or have adopted from questionable sources. Rather it is the experiences we have accumulated in our development up to now... They define [our] expectations, they steer our attention in very specific directions; and they determine the valuation we put on what we live through and how we react to our surroundings... Thus in a certain way, these individually acquired experiences are the most important and most valuable treasure a person possesses".

Huther also mentions in this section the growing evidence that our brains are plastic and forever changing:

"What a brain can be used for inevitably depends on how it is structured. And how a brain is structured, in turn, depends on what it has been used for up to now, indeed, not only by its present owner, but also by his or her ancestors (genes)"

I also enjoyed Huther's wit, see the following:

"[The ancestors of vertebrates] didn't need a very precise nervous system to survive... [it] was directed more toward keeping the inner world of these animals constant... Their habitat was the sea or sea floor because their offspring's development was subject to changes in outer conditions... they layed their eggs where the same conditions prevailed. In a way, they used the sea as an immense uterus"

Although I enjoyed his preliminary remarks, I did not like how he ended his book. The Compassionate Brain is a mixture between popular science and philosophy. Though I understand Huther's intentions when he encourages us to challenge ourselves intellectually and socially, I feel books popularizing science should avoid doing this. For some perspective, Huther routinely introduces the prejudice before his arguments that the human brain is not designed the same as the mole brain, and that we should resolve ourselves to behave differently.
Imagine how a mole would see this argument. He would have no desire whatsoever to have a human brain, he would "just not get" our human behaviors and would probably think of us, in much the same way we think of him, as inferior.

Huther can be seen as a squirrel who discusses how our squirrel brains have been shaped by evolution and how much experience alters its structure, then he tells us that because of this knowledge we should challenge ourselves by climbing higher squirrel trees and be more rapid in our nut collecting. The later does not in any way follow from the former - and this makes the book disappointing. I would however recommend it for those looking for motivation or self-help.

It's also always nice to have a german neuroscientist write books in English.