The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains

by Joseph LeDoux

Overview

Longlisted for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

A leading neuroscientist offers a history of the evolution of the brain from unicellular organisms to the complexity of animals and human beings today

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.

In The Deep History of Ourselves, LeDoux argues that the key to understanding human behavior lies in viewing evolution through the prism of the first living organisms. By tracking the chain of the evolutionary timeline he shows how even the earliest single-cell organisms had to solve the same problems we and our cells have to solve each day. Along the way, LeDoux explores our place in nature, how the evolution of nervous systems enhanced the ability of organisms to survive and thrive, and how the emergence of what we humans understand as consciousness made our greatest and most horrendous achievements as a species possible.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780735223837
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/27/2019
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	537,704
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Joseph LeDoux is the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science, and Professor of Neural Science, Psychology, Psychiatry, and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at New York University. He directs the Emotional Brain Institute at NYU and at The Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, and is Deputy Director of the Max Planck-NYU Center for Language, Music, and Emotion, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. LeDoux's books include Anxious, Synaptic Self, and The Emotional Brain, and he is a singer and songwriter in the folkrock band the Amygdaloids, and in the acoustic duo So We Are. He lives with his wife Nancy Princenthal in Brooklyn, New York.

Table of Contents

Preface xv

Prologue: Why on Earth …? 1

Part 1 Our Place in Nature

Chapter 1 Deep Roots 9

Chapter 2 The Tree of Life 13

Chapter 3 Kingdoms Come 17

Chapter 4 Common Ancestry 20

Chapter 5 It's a Livin' Thing 24

Part 2 Survival and Behavior

Chapter 6 The Behavior of Organisms 29

Chapter 7 Beyond Animal Behavior 35

Chapter 8 The Earliest Survivors 39

Chapter 9 Survival Strategies and Tactics 44

Chapter 10 Rethinking Behavior 48

Part 3 Microbial Life

Chapter 11 In the Beginning 53

Chapter 12 Life Itself 57

Chapter 13 Survival Machines 63

Chapter 14 The Arrival of Organelles 68

Chapter 15 The Marriage of LUCA's Children 71

Chapter 16 Breathing New Life into Old 74

Part 4 The Transition to Complexity

Chapter 17 Size Matters 79

Chapter 18 The Sexual Revolution 82

Chapter 19 Mitochondrial Eve, Jesse James, and the Origin of Sex 88

Chapter 20 Colonial Times 91

Chapter 21 The Selection Two-Step 95

Chapter 22 Flagellating Through the Bottleneck 100

Part 5 … And Then Animals Invented Neurons

Chapter 23 What Is an Animal? 107

Chapter 24 A Humble Beginning 115

Chapter 25 Animals Take Shape 119

Chapter 26 The Magic of Neurons 124

Chapter 27 How Neurons and Nervous Systems Happened 127

Part 6 Metazoan Bread Crumbs in the Oceans

Chapter 28 Facing Forward 137

Chapter 29 Tissue Issues 141

Chapter 30 Oral or Anal? 145

Chapter 31 Deep-Sea Deuterostomes Link Us to Our Past 148

Chapter 32 A Tale of Two Chords 151

Part 7 The Vertebrates Arrive

Chapter 33 Bauplan Vertebrata 157

Chapter 34 The Life Aquatic 161

Chapter 35 On the Surface 165

Chapter 36 The Milk Trail 171

Part 8 Ladders and Trees in the Vertebrate Brain

Chapter 37 Neuro-Bauplan Vertebrata 179

Chapter 38 Ludwig's Ladder 183

Chapter 39 The Triune Temptress 188

Chapter 40 Darwin's Muddled Emotional Psychology 192

Chapter 41 How Basic Are Basic Emotions? 195

Part 9 The Beginning of Cognition

Chapter 42 Cogitation 203

Chapter 43 Finding Cognition in the Behaviorist Bailiwick 208

Chapter 44 The Evolution of Behavioral Flexibility 216

Part 10 Surviving (and Thriving) by Thinking

Chapter 45 Deliberation 225

Chapter 46 The Engine of Deliberative Cognition 228

Chapter 47 Schmoozing 234

Part 11 Cognitive Hardware

Chapter 48 Perception and Memory Share Circuitry 243

Chapter 49 The Cognitive Coalition 249

Chapter 50 Rewired and Running Hot 255

Part 12 Subjectivity

Chapter 51 Being There 263

Chapter 52 What Is It Like to Be Conscious? 269

Chapter 53 I Want to Take You Higher 277

Chapter 54 Higher Awareness in the Brain 281

Part 13 Consciousness Through the Looking Glass of Memory

Chapter 55 The Invention of Experience 289

Chapter 56 Ah, Memory 294

Chapter 57 Putting Memories in Their Places 300

Chapter 58 Higher-Order Awareness Through the Lens of Memory 305

Part 14 The Shallows

Chapter 59 The Tricky Problem of Other Minds 315

Chapter 60 Creeping Up on Consciousness 324

Chapter 61 Kinds of Minds 329

Part 15 Emotional Subjectivity

Chapter 62 The Slippery Slopes of Emotional Semantics 337

Chapter 63 Can Survival Circuits Save the Day? 344

Chapter 64 Thoughtful Feelings 350

Chapter 65 Emotional Brains Run HOT 359

Chapter 66 Survival Is Deep, but Our Emotions Are Shallow 368

Epilogue: Can We Survive Our Self-Conscious Selves? 372

Appendix 381

Bibliographic Key 383

Illustration Credits 401

Index 403

Editorial Reviews

07/08/2019

The eons-long development of the mechanics of thought—and other aspects of life—are covered in this sprawling, sometimes indigestible treatise from NYU neuroscientist Le Doux (The Emotional Brain). Surveying the rise and evolution of life-forms out of the primordial soup, he highlights such milestones as the acquisition of neurons by jellyfish and the arrival of mammals with their structured brains. Le Doux then focuses on the neuroscience of how brains process information and control behavior, elaborating on two themes: that, contrary to conventional wisdom, one’s emotions do not cause one’s behaviors and that, contrary to anthropomorphism, nonprimate animals may not have emotions, or even consciousness. The book contains provocative, sometimes unsettling descriptions of experiments, by Le Doux and others, that demonstrate how much seemingly conscious, willed behavior is actually unconscious and automatic, along with detailed discussions of the complex interactions of perception, memory, emotions, and cognition that underlie consciousness. However, Le Doux’s writing tends to bog down in impenetrably dense terminology: “The dorsal and ventral lateral prefrontal cortex regions also receive inputs from the multimodal convergence zone in the neocortical pareital and temporal lobes.” Though this exhaustive study brings up some fascinating concepts, the often arcane presentation will deter all but the most devoted of lay readers. Agent: Katinka Matson, Edge. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

2019-05-08
An in-depth examination of "the place of human beings in the nearly four-billion-year-long history of life."

Humans are the only creatures that talk, reason, and reflect on who we are, but all organisms do many of the same things we do to survive, writes LeDoux (Science and Psychiatry/New York Univ.; Anxious: Using the Brain To Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety, 2015, etc.). Plenty of popular authors describe the history of life, but LeDoux wants readers to remember as well as enjoy, so he divides his book into short, pithy chapters, each explaining a single evolutionary advance. Four billion years ago, something acquired the ability to extract energy from its surroundings and to reproduce, so it fit the definition of "life." To continue living, it had to survive by avoiding dangers and pursuing necessities. The author emphasizes that action and even learning and memory don't require a nervous system. "Behavior is not…primarily a tool of the mind but of survival," he writes, continuing, "the connection of behavior to mental life, like mental life itself, is an evolutionary afterthought." Creatures without nerves did fine for several billion years. Primitive hydra evolved a simple nerve net that enabled much quicker responses, but since the net was generalized, hydra behavior is identical no matter what part of its body is stimulated. Its close kin, jellyfish, developed the first concentrated collections of neurons to control specialized actions such as swimming and prey capture. Nervous systems and then brains gradually grow more complicated, and LeDoux delves into the nature of awareness, perception, deliberation, memory, language, emotion, and, finally, consciousness. Like all good educators, the author begins simply. The first half of the book is a superb overview of evolution; the second half gradually focuses on brain structure and function. Readers will learn a great deal of deep neuroscience, although, despite a generous stream of illustrations, they will need to pay close attention.

A dense but expert history of human behavior beginning at the beginning.

Kirkus Reviews

Praise for The Deep History of Ourselves

"Readers have good reason to ponder LeDoux’s concluding challenge. [A] refreshingly lucid treatment of profound questions.”
—Booklist (starred review)

“Plenty of popular authors describe the history of life, but LeDoux wants readers to remember as well as enjoy, so he divides his book into short, pithy chapters, each explaining a single evolutionary advance. . . . Like all good educators, the author begins simply. . . . [An] expert history of human behavior beginning at the beginning.”
—Kirkus Reviews

"Joseph LeDoux deepens our understanding of a profound question as old as Aristotle: how does our mind set us apart from other species? We could not have a better guide: LeDoux is a world-leading neuroscientist whose research has taken him to the frontiers of behavior, emotions, and consciousness.  With brilliance, wit, and wisdom, LeDoux traces four billion years of life, showing how humans share basic behaviors with one-celled organisms yet soar to a reflective self-awareness that may be unique in the universe. Utterly fascinating and a thrill to read."  
—Jeffrey D. Sachs, University Professor at Columbia University

"Joseph LeDoux is the major scientist leading the current important effort to delineate the brain mechanisms of emotional states. In his most recent book, The Deep History of Ourselves, LeDoux attempts to connect the survival capacity of single-celled micro-organisms to the unique human capacity for survival. This capacity is importantly mediated by our ability to think, feel, and to contemplate not only our own past and future but the past and future of humankind. This is an extraordinary book. Indeed, as LeDoux points out, it is a deep history of ourselves." 
 —Eric R. Kandel, Kavli Professor and University Professor, Columbia University; Senior Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; author of In Search of Memory and The Age of Insight; recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

“LeDoux begins his new book with the biology of simple life forms but ends it, at the peak of biological complexity, with a closely argued defense of human feeling and consciousness as higher order cognitive processes. One does not need to agree with all of his positions―and I, for one, agree with many―to admire the quality of his achievement and to congratulate him on it.”
 —Antonio Damasio, Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, University of Southern California, and author of The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling and the Making of Cultures

"Joseph LeDoux has provided a remarkable, personalized synthesis of zoology, neuroscience, psychology and philosophy: His main theme is the emergence of consciousness through the evolution of nervous systems and the behaviors they control: Not the tree of life, but the tree of consciousness, and where it may lead us. An amazing, mind-expanding read.”
—Trevor Robbins, University of Cambridge, Recipient of the 2014 Brain Prize
 
"This is a fascinating book with a grand vision of the evolution of life, from its molecular origins to what it is like to be conscious. Joseph LeDoux takes an unconventional look at some key ideas, including new and revealing insights on how our brains work.”
—Marian Stamp Dawkins, Professor of Animal Behaviour, University of  Oxford

"An enthralling, highly informative journey from the origins of life itself to the emergence of creatures with sophisticated mental lives. An indispensable perspective on how we humans come to possess intelligence, consciousness, and emotion. From biology to mentality, this book is a tour de force."
—Susan Schneider, NASA Chair, Library of Congress, and author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind
 
"Joseph LeDoux has written an extraordinary book full of insight, enlightening the many ways that we humans, and along the way, other animals, came to be the way we are. Wonderfully readable by a lay audience, full of useful information even for other neuroscientists."
—Daniel Levitin, PhD, FRSC, author of This Is Your Brain on Music and The Organized Mind
 
"Joseph LeDoux is one of the rare scientists who sees both the forest and the trees.  This exceptionally readable book will satisfy diverse audiences.  It is a primer on the evolution of life forms wedded to a sophisticated, historically informed, provocative discussion of the psychological processes that cry for illumination.  An original work by a distinguished scientist who understands both the brain and its relation to psychological events." 
—Jerome Kagan, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Harvard University
 
"The most important thing to know about consciousness is that it evolved. In this master work, Joe LeDoux shows us not only the big picture of that evolution, but also the critical details of the complex nervous system that has enabled consciousness to emerge into our lives."
­—Christopher Frith, author of Making Up the Mind
 
“Putting ourselves in context is always a wise idea; putting ourselves in the context of 4 billion years of history is a perspective-altering tour-de-force. Short, appealing essays ask 'what is consciousness?', 'what is emotion?', and, most of all, 'who am I?' The answers will surprise you.” 
—Hazel Rose Markus, author of Clash! How to Thrive in a Multicultural World

"Deep History presents the continuity in how behavior results from biological processes in the simplest organisms to the most complex. This supports the thesis that behavior in complex organisms such as ourselves is due largely to processes different from those that lead to conscious awareness. LeDoux presents all this with engaging detail and a masterful command of the big picture, culminating in his own theories of consciousness and of the emotions. This rich and remarkable book is must reading for anybody interested in the nature of life, thought, and consciousness."
—David Rosenthal, Philosophy and Cognitive Science, CUNY Graduate Center 

From the Publisher

07/01/2019

Neuroscientist LeDoux (neural science, psychology & psychiatry, New York Univ.; Anxious) draws a hard line in the sand between the human mind and that of all other species. In the first part of this two-part volume he takes readers on a long journey through the evolutionary tree of life, emphasizing the physical features and behaviors that connect all life forms. The second part focuses on those mental faculties that separate Homo sapiens from other animals: cognition, consciousness, memory, and the capacity of the human brain for language, reasoning, and culture. In his view animal brains lack this functionality, and he takes issue with scientists such as Frans de Waal, Marc Bekoff, and Jane Goodall, whose research shows that animals have emotions and other states of consciousness comparable to those of humans. Chapters are short, easily digested essays, but the sections on theories of consciousness and memory are highly technical and, despite helpful illustrations, may cause the general science reader to glaze over. VERDICT Recommended for those with a strong background in evolutionary cognition who enjoyed Daniel Dennett's From Bacteria to Bach and Back. For an alternate viewpoint on animal cognition turn to de Waal's Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?—Cynthia Lee Knight, Hunterdon Cty. Historical Soc., Flemington, NJ

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