Michael C. Corballis

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Do we have bigger brains than dolphins? Does your dog remember where it buried its bone? Why do we remember faces but not names? In 21 short walks around the human brain, acclaimed psychologist Michael Corballis answers these and other questions by introducing us to what we have learned about the human mind in the last 50 years.

21 Short Walks Around the Human Brain

Pieces of Mind

A psychologist shows how gestures rather than sounds formed the basis of language fundamentals, using evidence from anthropology, animal behavior, neurology, molecular biology, and anatomy to make his case.

The Origins of Language

From Hand to Mouth

Background to the problem -- The Rubicon -- Language as miracle -- Language and natural selection -- The mental prerequisites -- Thinking without language -- Mind reading -- Stories -- Constructing language -- Hands on to language -- Finding voice -- How language is structured -- Over the Rubicon

What It Is and Where It Came From

The Truth about Language

What enables us to communicate with one another through the use of speech? Is the difference between Homo sapiens and other apes simply a matter of degree or are we unique and discontinuous from other species? Corballis argues that the answers to these questions lie in the fact that humans are the only primates that are predominantly right-handed, a sign of the specialization of the lift hemisphere of the brain for language. Illustrated.

Evolution of the Generative Mind

The Lopsided Ape

Corballis argues that mind-wandering has many constructive and adaptive features. These range from mental time travel?the wandering back and forth through time, not only to plan our futures based on past experience, but also to generate a continuous sense of who we are--to the ability to inhabit the minds of others, increasing empathy and social understanding. Through mind-wandering, we invent, tell stories, and expand our mental horizons. Mind wandering , hardly the sign of a faulty network or aimless distraction, actually underwrites creativity, whether as a Wordsworth wandering lonely as a cloud, or an Einstein imagining himself travelling on a beam of light. Corballis takes readers on a mental journey in chapters that can be savored piecemeal, as the minds of readers wander in different ways, and sometimes have limited attentional capacity.

What the Brain Does When You're Not Looking

The Wandering Mind

Ivan L. Beale

Addressing the problem of how we tell left from right, the authors discuss that the ability to tell left from right depends on bodily asymmetry, and implications for child development, reading disability, navigation, art, and culture.

The Psychology of Left and Right

Chris McManus

Michael Peters

Twins present special problems for the study of lateralisation, both psychological and biological. Central to both areas is the common observation that identical (monozygotic) twins can differ in their laterality. In the case of hand preference, this is most obvious in the one in five twin pairs where one is right-handed and the other left-handed. A similar problem can be found morphologically, not only in normal anatomical traits, such as hair whorls, which can be in opposite direction, but also in the rare condition of conjoined twins, where it is frequently the case that one twin has its heart and viscera in the normal orientation (situs solitus) and the other is mirror reversed (situs inversus). This special issue of Laterality brings together papers on these different aspects of twinning. Two of the papers are biological, one providing a detailed analysis of the laterality of artificially conjoined twins created by fusing two different species of newt, and the other overviewing the recent developments in understanding the molecular biology of visceral lateralisation in relation to twinning. The other papers concern aspects of cerebral lateralisation in twins, one providing a much needed meta-analysis and critical overview of the twin literature, another providing detailed data from a large study of handedness in twins, a third asking about the almost neglected question of footedness, earedness and eyedness in twins, and the fourth looking at lateralised cognitive processing. Between them these papers extend the literature on lateralisation in twins, and reinforce the need to consider the lateralisation of twins from biological, neurological and psychological perspectives.

Biology and Psychology

Twin Lateralisation

Michael C.. Corballis

It is often said that speech is what distinguishes us from other animals. But are we all talk? What if language was bequeathed to us not by word of mouth, but as a hand-me-down? The notion that language evolved not from animal cries but from manual and facial gestures--that, for most of human history, actions have spoken louder than words--has been around since Condillac. But never before has anyone developed a full-fledged theory of how, why, and with what effects language evolved from a gestural system to the spoken word. Marshaling far-flung evidence from anthropology, animal behavior, neurology, molecular biology, anatomy, linguistics, and evolutionary psychology, Michael Corballis makes the case that language developed, with the emergence of Homo sapiens, from primate gestures to a true signed language, complete with grammar and syntax and at best punctuated with grunts and other vocalizations. While vocal utterance played an increasingly important complementary role, autonomous speech did not appear until about 50,000 years ago--much later than generally believed. Bringing in significant new evidence to bolster what has been a minority view, Corballis goes beyond earlier supporters of a gestural theory by suggesting why speech eventually (but not completely!) supplanted gesture. He then uses this milestone to account for the artistic explosion and demographic triumph of the particular group of Homo sapiens from whom we are descended. And he asserts that speech, like written language, was a cultural invention and not a biological fait accompli. Writing with wit and eloquence, Corballis makes nimble reference to literature, mythology, natural history, sports, and contemporary politics as he explains in fascinating detail what we now know about such varied subjects as early hominid evolution, modern signed languages, and the causes of left-handedness. From Hand to Mouth will have scholars and laymen alike talking--and sometimes gesturing--for years to come.

Originally published in 1976, this title deals with the problem of how we tell left from right. The authors argue that the ability to tell left from right depends ultimately on a bodily asymmetry, such as preference for one or the other hand, or dominance of one side of the brain. This has implications for child development, reading disability, navigation, art, and culture.

The Recursive Mind challenges the commonly held notion that language is what makes us uniquely human. In this compelling book, Michael Corballis argues that what distinguishes us in the animal kingdom is our capacity for recursion: the ability to embed our thoughts within other thoughts. "I think, therefore I am," is an example of recursive thought, because the thinker has inserted himself into his thought. Recursion enables us to conceive of our own minds and the minds of others. It also gives us the power of mental "time travel"--the ability to insert past experiences, or imagined future ones, into present consciousness. Drawing on neuroscience, psychology, animal behavior, anthropology, and archaeology, Corballis demonstrates how these recursive structures led to the emergence of language and speech, which ultimately enabled us to share our thoughts, plan with others, and reshape our environment to better reflect our creative imaginations. He shows how the recursive mind was critical to survival in the harsh conditions of the Pleistocene epoch, and how it evolved to foster social cohesion. He traces how language itself adapted to recursive thinking, first through manual gestures, then later, with the emergence of Homo sapiens, vocally. Toolmaking and manufacture arose, and the application of recursive principles to these activities in turn led to the complexities of human civilization, the extinction of fellow large-brained hominins like the Neandertals, and our species' supremacy over the physical world.

The Origins of Human Language, Thought, and Civilization - Updated Edition

The Recursive Mind

"Does the fact that as much as fifty percent of our waking hours [finds] us failing to focus on the task at hand represent a problem? Michael Corballis doesn't think so, and with [this book], he shows us why, rehabilitating woolgathering and revealing its ... useful effects. Drawing on the latest research from cognitive science and evolutionary biology, Corballis [posits that] mind-wandering not only frees us from moment-to-moment drudgery, but also from the limitations of our immediate selves"--Amazon.com.

Michael C. Corballis

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