Defending the Cavewoman: And Other Tales of Evolutionary Neurology

Neurologist Harold Klawans' sensitive and fascinating collection of clinical tales explores evolutionary neurology - how our brains are constructed and why - through the peculiar things that can go wrong in them.A woman suffering from "painful foot and moving toe syndrome" demonstrates the remnant of dinosaur brain we still carry around in our spines; a musician who loses the power of speech to a stroke retains his ability to conduct music, an illiterate man shows how reading has changed our perspective on the world, an English professor loses the ability to read English (from stroke) and substitutes Hebrew.The first half of the book explores brain function and what it can teach us about evolution. The second explores hereditary diseases, pain, and, in an informative piece on mad cow disease, external evolution, or human alteration of the environment.Klawans pleasure at the elegance of evolution infuses each of his essays, many of which center around a 'eureka!' moment - an offhand comment or question leading to a breakthrough in understanding. For example, his daughter's quip that an authentic Arabic restaurant always plays "the Song," meaning all Arabic music sounds the same to her, makes him realize the fundamental similarity between music and speech. Both exist in all cultures and culture determines comprehension.Klawans particular interest is the plasticity of the human brain. Bipedalism changed the human pelvic structure, which forced an evolutionary choice - small chimplike brains or small immature brains that would require years of maternal nurturing. The beauty of the choice made by evolution is the unique abilities fostered by environmental interaction with a developing brain.Speech is the greatest of these and the title essay concerns the case of a six-year-old girl found locked in a closet in an abandoned building. Undernourished and undersized, she was unable to speak. But her "window of opportunity" remained open and once exposed to language her progress was amazing. An adolescent, however, never exposed to speech, never develops the brain constructs and never speaks or comprehends. It's the "cavewoman," Klawans says, who made our unique cultural abilities possible, the cavewoman's nurturing and the cavewoman's mitochondrial DNA (brain diseases passed by mitochondrial DNA indicate a crucial role in brain development). Klawans' final essay, "Whatever Happened to Baby Neanderthal?" poses a stunning theory of extinction. Big Neanderthal brains were big at birth, thus lacking human plasticity, precluding language ability. Interbreeding would not have helped. Human men fathering Neanderthal babies could not pass on mitochondrial DNA (passed only through egg) and human woman did not have pelvises big enough to birth half-Neanderthal babies.Klawans ("Toscanini's Fumble," "Why Michael Couldn't Hit"), who died last year, was an engaging, clear-sighted, stimulating writer with an infectious enthusiasm. In making his way to evolutionary insi

Careful Readers of Dr. Klawans' work will recognize him as the compassionate and erudite face of the neurosciences. In this book he teaches and explains with the same passion and skill, sensitivity and sensibility with which he appears to treat his patients. The result is that this book is difficult to put down until the last page and even then, the elegantly espoused ideas sit with you. You leave with a new appreciation for the beauty and function of the human brain and a new compassion for the owners of these organs. The attention paid to the evolutionary accomplishments of women is well reasoned, understandable, and likely to be the new paradigm for our understanding of what it means to be human. Not a hunter, or a tool-builder, but a human. The distinction is delicate but important. Dr. Klawans' death is certainly a loss for a number of fields and would be even sadder if we did not have his excellent books to remember him by. This one is very personal and reads like a letter from your family doctor in places, never condescending, never failing to attribute and praise the various people who played their parts in the ideas within, but it still hits with the force of a powerful intuition and diagnostic skill. It would have to be an exceptional legacy for anybody...

Dr. Klawans was one of the last true Renaissance men of the 20th century--someone who's equally at home in the worlds of medicine, science, literature, painting, music, and, by God, even baseball! I'm really, really very sorry to learn that he has passed away last year, especially since I've been following at some remove his book-publishing career, and I had always been somewhat upset that he had never quite achieved the worldwide fame as he no doubt deserved. In many ways, I truly believe he's as brilliant and erudite as Oliver Sacks. With the immediate success of "Defending the Cavewoman," I was extremely happy to know that Dr. Klawans has finally been recognized as one of our finest science writers around. This book is--dare I say it--a crowning achievement of a distinguished career, as it sums up, in fascinating case study after case study, an entire life devoted to solving the intricate puzzles of neurology, the human mind, or perhaps I should just simply say the miracle of life. Who but Dr.Klawans could have taught us, with such elegance and charm, just why, among many, many other things, it's biologically natural for people to hate watching foreign films (because the brain isn't wired to read subtitles and absorb images at the same time!), why a pretentious literary professor suddenly lost his ability to read French and English but could still read Hebrew (because Hebrew reads from right to left, rather than the left-to-right of English and French: to learn more about how this works you simply have to read the book). If you have never heard of or read Dr. Klawans before, I strongly recommend that you begin with this book. I think you'll agree with me, after just dipping a little into the book, that with the passing of Harold Klawans the world has lost a brilliant mind, a caring doctor, a cultivated gentleman, and an amazing writer. (I don't know him personally but yet I think I can vouch for these qualities just from reading his books.)

This book is a real gem. Clinical stories are woven together with a neurological approach. In this book, I met some of the most fascinating cases involving the brain and behavior. I would think almost anybody could enjoy this book, and learn a great deal about how important our biology is in forming who we are and how we evolved, without ignoring individual differences and the environment. Klawans was not afraind to tackle the "big" questions like evolution of the mind/brain and bring them to the lay reader in such as fun way!

...especially the chapter on the three hundred retired welders with careers of exposure to manganese dust, only > of whom developed the symptoms of Parkinson's disease.<p>Reading this book is like having a dinner conversation with a good friend who has seen the world we live in much, much more clearly than most.