Category: Neuroscience

This book was recommended by a colleague who is both a biologist and a neuromorphic engineer, and I was hoping to get from it some insights on how to build a brain. If I hadn’t come to it with this expectation, I think I would have enjoyed it more… because that’s not what it is. It’s the story of how a science writer switched back to being a scientist and and was able to bring a fresh eye to an old subject. Her new perspective, plus years of work and dedication, have led us to a much better understanding of who we are and why.

This book is not about how our brain works, it’s about how our brain has evolved, and should be of interest to any scientifically-literate reader. Read More …

This book has a bit of a split personality, both in terms of its structure and writing. How much this has to do with the fact that it has two authors I’m not entirely sure, but the effect was to undermine Ramachandran’s credibility in my mind. This the first of his books I have read, and may not have been a good place to start. However, it was weak enough in some ways that it makes me less likely to want to read more.

The first half is pretty much what I was expecting: a set of interesting anecdotes about the experiences of the patients of Ramachandran and others, and how these have illuminated our understanding of the workings of the brain. We hear stories about amputees with phantom limbs (and how the latter have been removed), people who believe that their parents are imposters, patients who cannot see anything on the left side of the world. These stories are told compellingly (presumably Blakeslee’s contribution), and the way they are connected to the science is generally convincing. Read More …

Seeing Voices, first published 1989, is an odd book. Partly it deals the history of the education, culture, politics, experience, and isolation of the deaf (not normally things that I would cover here). Partly it deals with the science of how sensory inputs and language are processed in the brain (at least, as it was understood at the time). Partly it is a mess of footnotes, many of which are more interesting than the main text (do yourself a favor and make sure you get an edition that has the footnotes on each page and not at the back!). This lack of integration makes the book a frustrating read at times, but I still found it worthwhile. Read More …