The Invention of Memory: A New View of the Brain

Most people assume that they are able to remember faces, places and things because fixed images of them are more or less permanently stored in their brains. This is a big mistake, according to Rosenfield, who teaches at the City University of New York. Recent research studies surveyed here suggest that the brain is a creative generator of memories, not a repository: recollections are spliced from emotionally colored fragments and depend strongly on context. The author throws down yet another gauntlet by attacking the dominant view of the human brain as a computer with highly specialized regions controlling speech, movement, vision and other functions. Rosenfield (Freud: Character and Consciousness) guides the reader through the thickets of current debates. He supports a neo-Darwinian theory that holds that we construct perceptual maps through a sort of natural selection. (April)