The possessors of this livewired machinery, we drop into the world and absorb everything around us, from our local languages to the beliefs of our societies. Livewired reads wonderfully, like what a book would be if it were written by Oliver Sacks and William Gibson, sitting on Carl Sagan's front lawn.

Särskilt beskriver David Eagleman hur hjärnan har förmågan att tolka komplicerade signaler från sensoriska organ och av dessa ta till vara på den i stunden relevanta informationen. Reading about the brain has given me more empathy and for that reason alone I think everyone should read more about the brain. Precis som en person utan synskada inte reflekterar över hur fotoner träffar näthinnan i olika mönster och antal utan istället upplever världen som "där ute". Similarly, there's a bizarre reference many pages after telling us about Nelson's experience with his lost arm that out of the blue says 'Most visitor's to Admiral Nelson's statue in London's Trafalgar Square have probably not considered the distortion of the somatosensory cortex in the left hemisphere of that elevated head. For more details, please consult the latest information provided by Royal Mail's International Incident Bulletin.

Eagleman's infectious enthusiasm, his use of fascinating anecdotes and his clear, effortless prose render the secrets of the brain's adaptability into a truly compelling page-turner. It’s machinery that reconfigures itself, that adjusts and adapts to whatever’s going on around it to optimize its function. A lot of popular neuroscience books I read regurgitate a psych 101 class for the first third of the book, which is both tedious and often in need of updating (e.

Follow Eagleman on a thrilling journey to discover how a child can function with one half of his brain removed, how a blind man can hit a baseball via a sensor on his tongue, how new devices and body plans can enhance our natural capacities, how paralyzed people will soon be able to dance in thought-controlled robotic suits, how we can build the next generation of devices based on the principles of the brain, and what all this has to do with why we dream at night.Along the way you will meet: a surfing dog, a skateboarding dog, and a bipedal dog; an armless archery champ; people who hate their limbs; a man with no short-term memory; and a woman who forgets nothing. Plasticity has been known about for a long time and none of the information in the book was more than I learnt in my undergraduate degree. It is not included in promotions available to our main range products, as stated in our terms of service. Somebody could easily insert most of the brain's accomplishments into a new sci-fi novel, and the majority of readers would assume that it's just a fiction, that we can't achieve this within our current bodies.

The inaccuracies were referenced but did not match what the reference material stated and I had to go to the reference source to clarify what was actually factually correct. While outlining his theory of ‘infotropism’ with scientific examples and everyday anecdotes, he relates his argument to unusual phenomena, such as synesthesia; the purpose of dreams; and how modern wearable devices are revolutionizing the way the human sensory system functions. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Read it to renew your faith in not just the human spirit, but also to appreciate the gifts of your own miraculous brain.Unfortunately, on the information related to eyes there are gross inaccuracies and information that is simply wrong. Not only did it have a thorough consolidation of many recent discoveries in neuroscience, but I was pleasantly surprised with a few new hypotheses to which I hadn't yet been exposed.

Eagleman has a talent for testing the untestable, for taking seemingly sophomoric notions and using them to nail down the slippery stuff of consciousness. Eagleman packs this book chock full with basic neuroscience knowledge - what we currently know about how the brain works, and we're only just scratching the surface - illustrated by rich, captivating examples.Whilst the ideas are good, there’s not a lot there to use constructively and there’s no mathematical or information theoretical analysis presented to demonstrate learning in a competitive neural substrate. For example, you might be able to use feedback from your partner's body to be more in tune with their emotional states via wearable sensory devices.