"Renowned neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux digs into the natural history of life on earth to provide a new perspective on the similarities between us and our ancestors in deep time. This page-turning survey of the whole of terrestrial evolution sheds new light on how nervous systems evolved in animals, how the brain developed, and what it means to be human." --Amazon
Table of Contents
Preface xv
Prologue: Why on Earth...? 1 (8)
PART I Our Place in Nature
Chapter 1 Deep Roots
9 (4)
Chapter 2 The Tree of Life
13 (4)
Chapter 3 Kingdoms Come
17 (3)
Chapter 4 Common Ancestry
20 (4)
Chapter 5 It's a Livin' Thing
24 (5)
PART 2 Survival and Behavior
Chapter 6 The Behavior of Organisms
29 (6)
Chapter 7 Beyond Animal Behavior
35 (4)
Chapter 8 The Earliest Survivors
39 (5)
Chapter 9 Survival Strategies and Tactics
44 (4)
Chapter 10 Rethinking Behavior
48 (5)
PART 3 Microbial Life
Chapter 11 In the Beginning
53 (4)
Chapter 12 Life Itself
57 (6)
Chapter 13 Survival Machines
63 (5)
Chapter 14 The Arrival of Organelles
68 (3)
Chapter 15 The Marriage of LUCA's Children
71 (3)
Chapter 16 Breathing New Life into Old
74 (5)
PART 4 The Transition to Complexity
Chapter 17 Size Matters
79 (3)
Chapter 18 The Sexual Revolution
82 (6)
Chapter 19 Mitochondrial Eve, Jesse James, and the Origin of Sex
88 (3)
Chapter 20 Colonial Times
91 (4)
Chapter 21 The Selection Two-Step
95 (5)
Chapter 22 Flagellating Through the Bottleneck
100 (7)
PART 5 And Then Animals Invented Neurons
Chapter 23 What Is an Animal?
107 (8)
Chapter 24 A Humble Beginning
115 (4)
Chapter 25 Animals Take Shape
119 (5)
Chapter 26 The Magic of Neurons
124 (3)
Chapter 27 How Neurons and Nervous Systems Happened
127 (10)
PART 6 Metazoan Bread Crumbs in the Oceans
Chapter 28 Facing Forward
137 (4)
Chapter 29 Tissue Issues
141 (4)
Chapter 30 Oral or Anal?
145 (3)
Chapter 31 Deep-Sea Deuterostomes Link Us to Our Past
148 (3)
Chapter 32 A Tale of Two Chords
151 (6)
PART 7 The Vertebrates Arrive
Chapter 33 Bauplan Vertebrata
157 (4)
Chapter 34 The Life Aquatic
161 (4)
Chapter 35 On the Surface
165 (6)
Chapter 36 The Milk Trail
171 (8)
PART 8 Ladders and Trees in the Vertebrate Brain
Chapter 37 Neuro-Bauplan Vertebrata
179 (4)
Chapter 38 Ludwig's Ladder
183 (5)
Chapter 39 The Triune Temptress
188 (4)
Chapter 40 Darwin's Muddled Emotional Psychology
192 (3)
Chapter 41 How Basic Are Basic Emotions?
195 (8)
PART 9 The Beginning of Cognition
Chapter 42 Cogitation
203 (5)
Chapter 43 Finding Cognition in the Behaviorist Bailiwick
208 (8)
Chapter 44 The Evolution of Behavioral Flexibility
216 (9)
PART 10 Surviving (and Thriving) by Thinking
Chapter 45 Deliberation
225 (3)
Chapter 46 The Engine of Deliberative Cognition
228 (6)
Chapter 47 Schmoozing
234 (9)
PART 11 Cognitive Hardware
Chapter 48 Perception and Memory Share Circuitry
243 (6)
Chapter 49 The Cognitive Coalition
249 (6)
Chapter 50 Rewired and Running Hot
255 (8)
PART 12 Subjectivity
Chapter 51 Being There
263 (6)
Chapter 52 What Is It Like to Be Conscious?
269 (8)
Chapter 53 I Want to Take You Higher
277 (4)
Chapter 54 Higher Awareness in the Brain
281 (8)
PART 13 Consciousness Through the Looking Glass of Memory
Chapter 55 The Invention of Experience
289 (5)
Chapter 56 Ah, Memory
294 (6)
Chapter 57 Putting Memories in Their Places
300 (5)
Chapter 58 Higher-Order Awareness Through the Lens of Memory
305 (10)
PART 14 The Shallows
Chapter 59 The Tricky Problem of Other Minds
315 (9)
Chapter 60 Creeping Up on Consciousness
324 (5)
Chapter 61 Kinds of Minds
329 (8)
PART 15 Emotional Subjectivity
Chapter 62 The Slippery Slopes of Emotional Semantics
337 (7)
Chapter 63 Can Survival Circuits Save the Day?
344 (6)
Chapter 64 Thoughtful Feelings
350 (9)
Chapter 65 Emotional Brains Run HOT
359 (9)
Chapter 66 Survival Is Deep, but Our Emotions Are Shallow
368 (4)
Epilogue: Can We Survive Our Self-Conscious Selves? 372 (9)
Appendix 381 (2)
Bibliographic Key 383 (18)
Illustration Credits 401 (2)
Index 403