Reflections of a Neuropsychologist: Brushes with Brains follows the life of an influential neuropsychologist's fascinating and varied career. Unique in its autobiographical approach, it features coverage of research into human evolution, archaeology and neurology.
Beginning with his earliest memories (and implications for memory processes), John L. Bradshaw reflects on his archaeological expeditions preceding his primary career as a physiological psychologist and a behavioural neuroscientist. His influential research covers such rare neurological disorders as Huntington’s disease, Friedreich ataxia and Williams syndrome, and more common maladies like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, stroke, Fragile X, Tourette’s syndrome, obsessive compulsive and attention deficit hyperactivity disorders, schizophrenia, autism and depression.
His fascinating personal experiences illustrating scientific discoveries will entertain, enthuse, encourage and inspire, and provide established research scientists and practising clinicians with a unique road map.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Chapter 1, The Evolution of All Things
Chapter 2, Tools: Tacit and Tactual Symbols of Civilization
Chapter 3, Art, Graffiti, Juvenilia or Kilroy?
Chapter 4, Language, What Tales the Tongue may Tell
Chapter 5, The Child is Father to the Man
Chapter 6, The Old Forge and my First School
Chapter 7, Secondary School Early Awakenings, or Where the Whore Moans, there Moan I
Chapter 8, Dreaming Spires, Oxford Days, et in Arcadia Ego
Chapter 9, Sticking up like a Sore Thumb, Hitch Hiking
Chapter 10, An Industrious Interlude and Industrial Interval, ICI
Chapter 11, An Ugly Picture in a Beautiful Frame
Chapter 12, The Golden Road, or a Shot in the Dark
Chapter 13, Eyes a Window to your Thoughts
Chapter 14, Aotearoa, a Year in the Land of the Long White Cloud
Chapter 15, Terra Australis (Nobis Adhuc) Incognita
Chapter 16, Commissural Connectivity
Chapter 17, Harry McGurk, Read My Lips, Ventriloquism
Chapter 18, Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Symmetrical Stimuli and Bimanual Responses
Chapter 19, Consciousness, Will and Time
Chapter 20, When Ignorance Is Bliss
Chapter 21, I Didn’t Think I Had Noticed It, Unconscious Processing
Chapter 22, When Recognition Fails, Agnosia
Chapter 23, Phantom Legs and Neglected Arms
Chapter 24, Is Your Tuesday Green? Synaesthesia
Chapter 25, Bodily Integrity and Identity, Is it really me?
Chapter 26, Empathy for Pain and Mirror Neurons
Chapter 27, Stop it, it Tickles; Why You Can’t Tickle Yourself
Chapter 28, Huntington’s Disease, the Lady of the Lake and the Hunt for the Gene
Chapter 29, Parkinson’s Disease, When Go Turns to Slow
Chapter 30, Musicians’ Dystonia A Brain Out Of Tune
Chapter 31, Clothes-pegs, Sex, Hobbies, Addiction and Gambling
Chapter 32, Fun, Fraud and Fabrication, What a Tangled Web We Weave
Chapter 33, A God of the Gaps and Dental Distress
Chapter 34, The Little Brain
Chapter 35, The Magician’s Apprentice: Back to Basics
Chapter 36, STROKE: The Hour that Struck
Chapter 37, I’m as Old as I Feel
Chapter 38, Where to now? Some Forward-Looking After Thoughts
Suggestions for Further Reading
Biography
John L. Bradshaw originally received a scholarship to study Classical Languages at Merton College, Oxford (1958), before transferring to Psychology, Physiology and Philosophy. After two years (1962–1964) as a systems analyst for Imperial Chemical Industries, John completed a PhD in Physiological Psychology at Sheffield University (1967). He then worked at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand (1967–1968), before moving to the newly-established Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, rising to a Personal Chair and an Emeritus Professorship. His group has worked on movement, neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders, human evolution and the evolution of language, praxis and tool use, synaesthesia, spatial representation, embodiment, mirror neuron, phantom limb and many other arcane phenomena.
"Neuropsychology has been a fecund source of insight about the brain and the mind. Modern cognitive neuroscience originated from it. In Reflections of a Neuropsychologist, John L. Bradshaw provides an informed and entertaining account of its origin." --Carlo Umiltà, M.D., Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychology, University of Padua, Italy.
