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Summary: Practical use of meditation...
Review:
I applaud Dr. Schwartz' work with OCD patients and his use of meditation techniques in his practice. The integration of eastern meditation techniques with western science is in a very amorphous state at this time. However, Dr. Schwartz' book details how they can be used together in this instance with a quantifiable positive result.
This book is easy to read, thought provoking and a positive contribution to scientific integration of non-traditional medical techniques. I recommend it to everyone curious about the role of the mind in medical care.
I am a practitioner of mindfulness based meditation. I am not a Buddhist. I say this because I have experienced some of the insights that this meditation technique offers and know first hand that it has the potential to be a powerful tool in modern western science. I applaud Dr. Schwartz and other medical researchers (Jon Kabat-Zinn and James Austin come to mind) for their pioneering work. I also say this because it skews my perspective on this book. But a skewed perspective isn't necessarily a false one.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a moment too soon
Review: A mind-blowing read that presents the first hard scientific evidence that what we call "the mind" (consciousness) can physically alter the brain (matter) by choosing what we focus our attention on. Doesn't take a genius to see the far reaching implications of this.
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Summary: Enlightening
Review: Dr. Schwartz's innovative look into neuroscience discoveries past and present is a most enlightening read. He begins by tying in his own personal OCD research, mixes studies on brain structure and activity with biology and quantum physics, then comes full circle to his OCD studies. In a humorous yet truthful sort of coincidence, you can almost feel your brain changing as you fill it with the detailed information throughout this intriguing book. Awareness takes on a whole new level as you open the unseen world that runs like clockwork behind our everyday lives.....a great way to open new doors for biology, neuroscience and physics fans alike.
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Summary: he is not a true scientist
Review: He is a spiritual person. Well I thought about what he was talking about a lot. I'm not going to explain all of my thoughts here, but I at least mention what conclusions I reached, lemme know if anyone else shares these. First of all he doesn't come out of closet and candidly say that I believe in god and I think the spiritual world is definitely involved with human brains.He keeps that hidden throughout for several reasons which mostly are obvious; he hiddenly calls those "spiritual effects", mind! So what is mind? He never answers that question. I think he does that so maybe some of his not smarter audiences conclude that maybe god exists or maybe science does explain religion somehow. And then he brings up the quantum physics and says Aha that's what it is, quantum physics explains mind but he never says how, all he says is that the classical physics doesn't explain mind it only explains brain, particles hitting each other and stuff. By involving quantum physics I think he's trying to gain more validity or legitimacy on his absolutely non-valid arguments. My final comment is "WHAT?!"
Why don't you explain what you are talking about instead of just bombarding us by your opinions? Don't just say brain sucks say why it sucks. Oh, btw I don't belong to Arkansas, I should be living in NY or CA at least.
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Summary: Educational and enlightening
Review: I agree with the more thoughful customer reviews of this very interesting book. Some chapters are very educational, thought-provoking, and enlightening. Those chapters are at the beginning and the end of the book. They describe obsessive-compulsive disorders and treatments, the history of the mind vs brain debates, quantum physics, volition, and how these topics explain the mind. The middle chapters about animal experiments serve little purpose, are confusing and are depressing. Furthermore, this book desperately needs editing. Too much of the text is obviously dictation, and there are silly and unnecessary analogies throughout. The chapter on free will is interesting, but the cited experiments are ridiculous. Having said all this, I recommend this book, but advise selective reading.
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Summary: Some good and bad conclusions
Review: I bought this book anticipating a different perspective on this timeless question. A different perspective is exactly what I found. Schwartz begins with a description of his research on obsessive-compulsive disorder. This section of the book is simply great. It is a nice example of how advances in neurobiological investigation have helped to elucidate the neural circuitry that underlies psychological states. Schwartz also gives a nice overview of the current views on conciousness. He then goes on to discuss the topic of neuroplasticity citing the case of the Silver Springs monkeys. You get a nice history lesson in addition to a summary of some hard won facts about the brain. He also gives plenty of examples of neuroplasticity in humans. He uses this as the physical basis of his own stylized treatment for OCD. His treatment is based on the concept of a mental force (a nebulous concept if there ever was one) that is able to change the brain through the principles of quantum mechanics. He devotes the rest of his book to discussing the quantum mind as well as some implications of the theory as it applies to consciousness. It is the last third of the book that attempts to explain the concept of a mental force that interacts with the physical substance of the brain (through quantum mechanics) to ultimately produce behavior. The problem as I see it, is that Schwartz believes that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, in that it is more than the sum of its mere physical parts. He seems to be unable to accept the idea that our mental lives are reducible entirely to physical processes. Many of Schwartz's conclusions in this book are based on his a priori assumption that the mind is more than the brain. He interprets the results of a variety of experiments as proof that the mind is not reducible. Granted, many of the experiments he alludes to are fascinating--neuroscience is fascinating by definition, of course--but that does not mean they HAVE to be the product of something greater than the brain. A good example of this is his discussion of Libet's experiments that revealed a readiness potential as proof of free will (and thus a rejection of the "philistine reductionist" viewpoint that all human behavior is caused because as we all know a lack of volition would just be the absolute-ruin-of-the-world-as-we-know-it GAG!). I also found Libet's experiments intruguing; however, I see them as simply raising more questions, not providing a death-blow to materialism. Finally, Schwartz has a habit of quoting all over the place. He is especially fond of William James, and why not? James was ahead of his time. His contribution to our understanding of the mind is known by every student of psychology. However, Schwartz is using James's insights as an appeal to authority. He also quotes Roger Sperry among others as if to say, "well, these great thinkers think the mind is more than the brain so it must be so!" Then there is the whole quantum mechanical (QM) brain theory. I'm not a physicist so I will refrain from commenting too much on it. To Schwartz and his physicist buddy Stapp, QM is the mechanism by which the immaterial affects the material. There is a lot of hype in the section of the book and some interesting proposals as well. However, it simply doesn't deliver in the end. In the end, it is Schwartz's mixture of hard neurobiological facts with immaterial hocus-pocus conclusions that CAUSES me to give it an average evaluation. It's hard to believe that a scientist would be so quick to credit certain discoveries as irrefutable evidence of his own biased opinion. Contrariwise, these perplexing phenomenon are merely the beginnings of further lines of investigation. A scientist must assume he or she is working to uncover some material process. How would one go about trying to prove a physical process is the result of something immaterial? If you have OCD, you will enjoy the first third of the book. If you are a student of the neurosciences you will enjoy the first two-thirds of the book. And if you're a dualist you will probably enjoy all three.
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Summary: Super
Review: I loved this book like a priest loves an alter boy! it is that damn good
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Summary: A milestone in our understanding of human nature
Review: I suffer from Stuttering and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, two Tourette's-related neurological disorders, and my quest to understand and defeat my afflictions has led me to ponder the nature of the mind itself. My problems are the result of a defective brain circuit, and the brain is the seat of my self-awareness. Yet my soul rebels against the limitations of my brain and seeks to change them. (I've been fairly successful at defeating my OCD with Schwartz's techniques; I'm now attempting to adapt them to combat Stuttering.) If I am nothing but my brain, as materialists like Stephen Pinker and Susan Blackmore suggest, then my internal struggle shouldn't even be possible, let alone successful. Jeffrey Schwartz comes closer to resolving the paradoxes of human consciousness than Pinker, Blackmore, or E.O. Wilson. Not only does the brain impose its structure on thought - for example, I never asked to stutter - but thought (sometimes immaterial) in turn shapes brain - explaining how with therapy and effort I'm able to make longlasting reductions in my stuttering and OCD. The same holds true for depression and many other mental illnesses. Schwartz relates the shaping of the neuro-synaptic functioning of our brain with quantum physics and Buddhist philosophy (to my mind, he misses an even better chance to link it with Christian ideas such as Sanctification, which mirror science's insight even better than Buddhist "mindfulness." Christ said, "As a man thinks, so is he," and St. Paul wrote at length about the struggle between the Spirit and the Flesh and the gradual renewal of the inner nature.) The philosophical implications of this proven scientific fact are huge - it means that Materialism, the belief that all of reality is mere matter, is wrong.
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Summary: Consciousness addressed by science
Review: I was having a bit of a philosophical crisis when I went looking for a book on free will and determinism -- I had discovered that deep down, I really didn't believe in free will. That was a surprise, since consciously I thought the idea of fate was absurd. I always thought that my brain had been programmed to be the way it was through my genes and the way I was raised, and that the best I could do was to not get too upset about the way I am, do whatever came to me, and hope for some life-changing experience to make things better. After some research on the internet I decided to do what William James and Abraham Maslow did and "act as if" I had free will, and see if I got the same extraordinary results they did (both had been depressed determinists and were "cured" once they gave free will an active try). I still wanted intellectual confirmation though, and I came across this book at the bookstore and bought it on a hunch. This book has blown my mind. Schwartz' cognitive-therapy work with obsessive-compulsive patients leads us to ask the question, "How is it that a strictly mental process can result in measurable brain changes as shown on PET scans?" Is it caused by another part of the brain? Even if it is, that just postpones the question, because what caused that part of the brain to be any different this time? He makes the case that conscious experience isn't reduceable to anything more fundamental -- try having a colorblind researcher truly understand the color "red" by tracing physical and chemical changes in the brain. Combine that with the fact in quantum mechanics that observation affects which reality it is that shows up, and he proposes a kind of fundamental "mental force" and does a much better job of explaining it than I've done here. One problem is that in the middle of the book there is a lot of scientific history of particular studies that would support his theory, but they aren't really necessary because they don't say much more than what he's already said, and there's lots of detail that isn't necessary for making his point. It can get dry and uninteresting in those parts, and it seems more like he's just trying to give these unsung scientists their due. That can't negate, however, how great the rest of the book is. It has a very powerful argument against strict materialism, especially for this atheist/materialist who didn't believe in free will last week. (I can't *believe* how many things this book explains with regard to spiritual claims.) So, don't get discouraged by the scientific history if you get bored by it, and see the book through. And have fun.
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Summary: My Mind and My Brain Loved This Book
Review: I've always been fascinated by the workings of the brain, so I knew I had to read this book after reading a brief excerpt in "The Wall Street Journal." The idea that mindful attention to the workings of the brain can cause physical changes in the brain is a radical departure from recent scientific thinking. For many years, it has been believed that the brain is "hard-wired," a process completed early in childhood, and the adult brain can not be rewired in any significant way. The work of Dr. Schwartz and his colleagues demonstrates that the brain can be retrained to overcome the effects of illness or injury, at any age. I am not a scientist, so I'll admit that some of the scientific explanations caused my brain to do some heavy lifting. And, there were parts of the chapter on the Silver Spring Monkeys I found too disturbing to read. That aside, this book excited me about the possibilities to retrain the brain. Dr. Schwartz's work has been primarily with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) patients, but the implications for other mental disorders, as well as victims of stroke and brain injury, are monumental. This book also got me excited about learning other subjects it touches on, such as quantum physics and Buddhism. (Really!) If you are ready to expand your thinking on this important subject, you will certainly want to read "The Mind and the Brain."
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