Consciousness and the Social Brain

By: Michael S. A. Graziano

Narrated by: Sean Runnette

What is consciousness and how can a brain, a mere collection of neurons, create it? In Consciousness and the Social Brain, Princeton neuroscientist Michael Graziano lays out an audacious new theory to account for the deepest mystery of them all. The human brain has evolved a complex circuitry that allows it to be socially intelligent. This social machinery has only just begun to be studied in detail. One function of this circuitry is to attribute awareness to others: to compute that person Y is aware of thing X.

In Graziano's theory, the machinery that attributes awareness to others also attributes it to oneself. Damage that machinery and you disrupt your own awareness. Graziano discusses the science, the evidence, the philosophy, and the surprising implications of this new theory.

©2013 Oxford University Press (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Good book. Terrible narrator

Would you recommend Consciousness and the Social Brain to your friends? Why or why not?

Graziano has an interesting hypothesis to explain what consciousness is and how it works in our brains. However, narration is so bad I couldn't get through the book.

What didn’t you like about Sean Runnette’s performance?

Runnette's delivery is monotonous and pedantic. He somehow sounds like he is talking down his nose at the listener, while delivering the material without inflection.

Exciting new ideas, I couldn't stop listening!!!

Consciousness and the Social Brain is an exciting and groundbreaking work. The author answers important questions about thinking and awareness, and how it works neurologically. Can we be aware without an object of awareness? Out of body experiences are explained as a representation of a mind, assigned an incorrect location. Yes, awareness has a location! Usually, it's right inside your head. The author talks about spirituality and religion as logical human behaviors. The spirit world is the world of perceived consciousness. The narration is excellent. The book is jam packed with interesting stories and explanations that are new and exciting, and it's all very easily understood and relatable. I highly recommend listening to Consciousness and the Social Brain. I'm so glad the author Michael Graziano took the time to present his ideas in this wonderful book!!! Kudos to Sean Runnette for the narration.

A Truly Modern Paradigm

This is a theory I have missed thusfar in what I've read and feels like the most important piece of the puzzle yet for explaining Consciousness. Not without its faults but a great read for any skill level.

However, the narrator reads slowwww, it took about double speed for the book to even read normally.

Gonna make you think hard

If you could sum up Consciousness and the Social Brain in three words, what would they be?

thought provoking stuff.

What did you like best about this story?

How he weaves personal anecdotes with complex scientific theories and facts to make the book much more readable.

Would you listen to another book narrated by Sean Runnette?

Did not care for his inflection. I think just personal preference.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

the chapter on spirituality.

Any additional comments?

I have listened to this book three times now. This is brilliant stuff, and has made me rethink some of my long held beliefs.

Plain English

I liked this book because you don't have to be a scientist to understand it. I could follow it all the way through!

Horrible narration

The content and theory are fascinating. Sometimes a bit wordy, redundant and lengthy, but he also has more succinct academic articles.
What makes this audiobook almost impossible to follow is the narrator. Makes it very monotone but in a dramatic way for each sentence. The quick wordflow combined with long pauses also make it impossible to increase the speed, since then the words become impossible to understand and pauses to empty. Just not the right way to narrate an audiobook.

Very informative work

Although deep into the neuroscience necessary to explain itself, I found plenty of simple and useful information on the topic.

Good idea but poor narration.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Consciousness and the Social Brain?

The last chapters discussing the nature of spirituality and possibility of machine consciousness were intriguing and refreshingly different from most other accounts.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The narrator spoke with very little voice inflection and what was there was annoying. Every sentence ended with a lowered pitch making it sound like each one was the last one in the paragraph or chapter. It became more and more distracting until it was only possible to listen in small doses. However, the content was compelling enough to finish.

Any additional comments?

The author has an unusual hypothesis about the relationship of awareness and attention, and even though his exposition was repetitive, the concept is exciting and compelling.

Interesting theory, poor narration

It was hard to listen to the narrator as his cadence and intonation was the exact same for every sentence over the entire duration of the book. This made it an extremely hard listen.

Apart from that, the content of the book was well written and contains an interesting theory of consciousness. It is worth noting however that the author frequently uses the word "schema" and never actually describes what the specific schema would be. This isn't an explanation in itself. If he were to explain the structure of the schema then I believe this would be a stronger theory.

To sum up the theory: consciousness is information.

That's a great direction, but without a proposed schema structure there isn't much to agree or disagree with.

Cutting edge...

I have encountered Graziano's "Attention Schema" theory of consciousness before in other books, but this volume explains it thoroughly and decisively. While it comes somewhat short of the Holy Grail of the FINAL EXPLANATION of what makes us conscious--one questions if such a thing is ever at last possible, any more than the fish explaining how its bowl was made, ultimately unable to escape its confines--Attention Theory is about the best psychological and neurological theory that we have at present. It is a definite step forward over all former theories. A book well worth reading.