Rebecca Schwarzlose
Teoksen Brainscapes: The Warped, Wondrous Maps Written in Your Brain―And How They Guide You tekijä
Tekijän teokset
Brainscapes: The Warped, Wondrous Maps Written in Your Brain―And How They Guide You (2021) 65 kappaletta
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Brainscapes: The Warped, Wondrous Maps Written in… Tekijä: Rebecca Schwarzlose
The unfortunately new-age-sounding title is not representative of the solid and interesting and well-written science writing in this book, about how the brain can comprehend and organize spatial and other information, and then use those mechanisms to coordinate things like motion and memory. Good explanations of complex biological brain phenomena without being too complex or talking down to the reader.
Really interesting book to dive into, about our brains and how we use maps to facilitate our cognitive processes.
https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2022/03/book-review-brainscapes-by-rebecca.htm...
https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2022/03/book-review-brainscapes-by-rebecca.htm...
I received a digital review copy of this from the publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt through NetGalley. I set aside another brain book that I finally devoted the time to read (Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow) when this became available.
Our brains make literal maps of everything: visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, olfactory, movement, and many special maps that combine senses and intentions to help us relate to the world. Scientists have also found evidence of crossover neurons in maps, complicating things further - neural responses representing movement in the tactile map and what appear to be touch responses in the movement map. The maps sort out and economize the thinking and non-thinking.
I'd read Michio Kaku's 2014 The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind when it came out and he referred to some of the technologies at the time to "read" minds and mimic telekinesis (meaning, controlling consciously with minds). Technology continues to improve with respect to our access and understanding of these maps to the point that scientists have been able to help some suffering from paraplegia to restore rudimentary control over some limbs, even provide extremely limited visual cues to the blind.
This is an easy and yet not so easy read. Schwarzlose writes conversationally but the material may be unfamiliar to most, even readers of the subject. Be warned, though; there are cavalier descriptions of animal experimentations (and not just your average laboratory rats. "In other words, yes, it is possible to open up the brain and see the map in V1, but only with a great deal of effort." is a tamed summary.) This should not be a surprise as how did scientists gain knowledge before the recent advances? Still, she closes with a good observation, which may seem obvious but too often isn't: "Any book worth reading should change how the reader experiences the world, even if only by a little.
On findings of concentrations in the touch maps:
On music training and its effect on movement, tactile and auditory maps:
On the evolution of attention... attention makes us better at perceiving particular targets, but worse at perceiving almost everything else. Think of the basketball bounce counting experiment and the surprise visitor (my example, not hers.) Attention is a necessarily finite resource.
On the understanding of the maps
The development of brain maps is crucial during our developmental stages (even in the womb) and Schwarzlose makes the case against hands-off parenting/child rearing:
A note for the publisher on the digital formatting: the entire book had dropped letters in words, with spaces in place of them. It was odd, occurring on my ADE reader app on my iPad, in NetGalley's reader app also on my iPad, and on my Kindle. And it was pervasive throughout the text.… (lisätietoja)
Our brains make literal maps of everything: visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, olfactory, movement, and many special maps that combine senses and intentions to help us relate to the world. Scientists have also found evidence of crossover neurons in maps, complicating things further - neural responses representing movement in the tactile map and what appear to be touch responses in the movement map. The maps sort out and economize the thinking and non-thinking.
You can thank brain maps for the speed and clarity of your senses, not to mention the fact that you have the headspace to harbor five senses instead of one or two.
I'd read Michio Kaku's 2014 The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind when it came out and he referred to some of the technologies at the time to "read" minds and mimic telekinesis (meaning, controlling consciously with minds). Technology continues to improve with respect to our access and understanding of these maps to the point that scientists have been able to help some suffering from paraplegia to restore rudimentary control over some limbs, even provide extremely limited visual cues to the blind.
This is an easy and yet not so easy read. Schwarzlose writes conversationally but the material may be unfamiliar to most, even readers of the subject. Be warned, though; there are cavalier descriptions of animal experimentations (and not just your average laboratory rats. "In other words, yes, it is possible to open up the brain and see the map in V1, but only with a great deal of effort." is a tamed summary.) This should not be a surprise as how did scientists gain knowledge before the recent advances? Still, she closes with a good observation, which may seem obvious but too often isn't: "Any book worth reading should change how the reader experiences the world, even if only by a little.
On findings of concentrations in the touch maps:
In other words, we feel more than we need to with our faces because our distant ancestors walked on four feet, like the pig, and survived better with faces packed with tough receptors. In this way, our perception of touch is shaped not just by our human bodies and human needs, but by the bodies and needs of the creatures from which we evolved.More vestigial evidence of of that darned evolution.
On music training and its effect on movement, tactile and auditory maps:
But that does not mean that the brain maps of child musicians are superior to those of their non-musical peers. Piano lessons do not buy your child a better brain. Instead those lessons(or rather the hours of practice that they promote) buy you a brain that is better suited to piano playing and other tasks that require dexterity of the hands.Take that, Baby Mozart hawkers!
On the evolution of attention... attention makes us better at perceiving particular targets, but worse at perceiving almost everything else. Think of the basketball bounce counting experiment and the surprise visitor (my example, not hers.) Attention is a necessarily finite resource.
There is no reason why a mind couldn't perceive and process all of that [a "firehose of panoramic sensory experience"] information simultaneously. And yet it is patently clear that our minds [as opposed to a hypothetical alien with the ability] cannot. Why is that?
To answer that question, recall the tough tradeoffs inherent in brain evolution. Your brain mustn't be too big or heavy, or demand too much fuel. Brain maps are one of nature's solutions to this problem - a way to reap the most from a finite brain.
On the understanding of the maps
Knowledge about a representation is a powerful thing. That;s because once you know how something is represented, you can eavesdrop on or manipulate what is being represented.This raises questions as to how and ethics. Schwarzlose observes that some forms of "mind reading" are already possible or will be in the near future. Also, most of those technologies if even possible, are impractical. She does discuss the heath, privacy, and autonomous impacts to people.
The development of brain maps is crucial during our developmental stages (even in the womb) and Schwarzlose makes the case against hands-off parenting/child rearing:
All we can do is try to give children the enrichment and interaction that will help them develop diverse maps, because these neural foundations will give them the greatest ease and versatility for building cognitive ladders throughout life.
A note for the publisher on the digital formatting: the entire book had dropped letters in words, with spaces in place of them. It was odd, occurring on my ADE reader app on my iPad, in NetGalley's reader app also on my iPad, and on my Kindle. And it was pervasive throughout the text.… (lisätietoja)
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- 3
- Jäseniä
- 69
- Suosituimmuussija
- #250,752
- Arvio (tähdet)
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- 3
- ISBN:t
- 6