Biology 202 Book Commentary

“Plugged In” is a book about the growing epidemic called video game addiction (VGA). The author, Terry R. Waite, discusses the psychological and physiological behaviors that are exhibited by video game addicts. The book is unique because the author gives a first hand experience of how VGA had affected him in the past. He acknowledges the fact that he was once an addict, and he gives personal accounts of his VGA and the effects it had on him and his family. This aspect really caught my attention because his personal involvement made him seem truly committed to helping fellow gamers. He also cites news involving VGA to inform the reader of the real life consequences of VGA. For example he

Julianne Rieders

An Anthropologist On Mars, Oliver Sacks

Explorations in Neuroscience, Pyschology, and Religion – A Commentary

Book By: Kevin S. Seybold

        This semester I read the book The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Steven

Pinker, a professor of Psychology at Harvard University.  This book explores the idea that language is innate. 

In other words he believes that all humans possess “the instinct to learn, speak, and understand language”

(pg. 3).  Pinker argues that language is biological, and that even without formal training children will develop

ways to communicate. He believes that language is an evolutionary adaptation that developed because

humans needed a system of communication.  

Frans de Waal’s Primates and Philosophers is an intriguing exploration of animal and human behavior, and a fierce attempt to link them intrinsically and inseparably.  De Waal attacks the notion that morality is a uniquely human trait – opposing those who believe that homo sapiens is a loner in ethics, and that our species rose magnificent out of the barbaric and uncomplicated ashes of our ancestors.

 “Without rebirth and resurrections, humanity loses its heroes and loses its capacity for transformation. In order to gain life, the monomythic lesson goes, we must first lose it” (146). ~Michael Paul Mason 

In almost every piece of literatureon the brain that I have encountered during my short time as a neurobiologystudent has described the design of the brain in a rather organized manner,implying that the brain is a perfectly systematic entity. For the bookcommentary assignment, I decided to read The Accidental Mind: How BrainEvolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams and God by David Linden, a scientific novel that contests the idea of thebrain as a perfectly organized entity and how its evolving design overthousands of years lead to certain phenomenon of the brain that cease to amazeeven to this day.