An intense lesson in the neuroscience of getting around.
The latest knowledge on how we find our way.
Kemp, a molecular biologist specializing in neurodegenerative diseases, admits that he gets lost in his native city. So he admires virtuoso navigators, like his wife, who always know where they are. This short book delivers an expert education in how the brain guides us. As the author shows, it’s not a matter of intelligence; plenty of smart people lose their way. The key is memory, largely centralized in the hippocampus, a small structure deep inside the skull atop the brainstem that’s literally packed with cells vital to our sense of direction. Licensed London cab drivers, who must memorize every one of the city’s 25,000 streets, possess a hippocampus much larger than London bus drivers, who only memorize a single route. The first symptom of Alzheimer’s is not memory loss but inability to navigate. “Essentially,” writes Kemp, “navigation is…a seamless combination of sensory memory, and short-term and long-term memories spliced together, interpolated and intertwined with one another by the hippocampus and other related brain structures.” Early knowledge on the subject arose from studies of rats and mazes, and the Einstein of rat navigation was Edward Tolman. According to Kemp, Tolman’s 1948 paper, “Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men,” is a work that "should sit alongside other great scientific discoveries of the twentieth century.” Tolman’s rats did not memorize a series of turns to achieve their goal; rather, they built a cognitive map of the maze, which is not topologically accurate but superb for choosing a precise route. Except for two illustrations, Kemp relies on prose to explain a complex process involving dozens of structures and specialized neurons throughout the brain. Readers with a well-developed hippocampus will have an easier time, but everyone will appreciate the author’s stories of how some Indigenous cultures learn their territory (they get lost, too) and concluding sections on how to become a better navigator and how to behave if lost in the wild.
An intense lesson in the neuroscience of getting around.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-324-00538-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
Long shelved by its author, an ode to a mountain range’s mysteries proves timeless.
Nature’s pitiless grandeur.
Shepherd, a novelist, wanted to understand the “essential nature” of the Cairngorm Mountains, near her home in Scotland, but recognized that it might be “a tale too slow for the impatience of our age.” Though such feelings couldn’t sound more current, she penned them during World War II. After fleeting attempts to publish back then, she set this book aside until 1977, when a university press published it; she died in 1981. In this slightly expanded American edition, Shepherd’s perspective, which prioritizes sensory observations over geological particulars, loses none of its resonance. More hiker than climber, she begins on a lichen-lined plateau, going vertical amid “tangles of ice” on “rose-red” cliffs. Looking at a loch far below, she’s “on a mighty shelf, above the world.” Shepherd doesn’t soft-peddle nature’s ruthlessness. An eagle hunting for food is “the very terror of strength”; to stand inside a cloud is to confront a frightening void. Neither does she ignore interesting historical facts; Cairngorm forestland was first cut in the 19th century, when Scotland needed wood during the Napoleonic Wars. Mainly, though, Shepherd focuses on qualities that are beyond measure. Why do plant species largely eradicated by glaciers flourish in the Cairngorms? Did those combative stags she spotted—their antlers interlocked and unable to free themselves—battle to the death? The answers elude her, and she’s OK with that. Though very short, this book still feels padded, with a long introduction by Robert Macfarlane, first published in a 2011 Scottish edition, and a new afterword by Jenny Odell. Macfarlane, who spent part of his childhood in the Cairngorms, deems this a classic with few peers. While this might be hometown boosterism, there’s no denying that Shepherd’s prose reaches considerable heights.
Long shelved by its author, an ode to a mountain range’s mysteries proves timeless.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668066591
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Weisman quietly unfolds his sobering cautionary tale, allowing us to conclude what we may about the balancing act that...
Nicely textured account of what the Earth would look like if humans disappeared.
Disaster movies have depicted the State of Liberty poking out from the ground and empty cities overgrown with trees and vines, but what would really happen if, for one reason or another, every single one of us vanished from the planet? Building on a Discover magazine article, Weisman (Journalism/Univ. of Arizona; An Echo in My Blood, 1999, etc.) addresses the question. There are no shocks here—nature goes on. But it is unsettling to observe the processes. Drawing on interviews with architects, biologists, engineers, physicists, wildlife managers, archaeologists, extinction experts and many others willing to conjecture, Weisman shows how underground water would destroy city streets, lightning would set fires, moisture and animals would turn temperate-zone suburbs into forests in 500 years and 441 nuclear plants would overheat and burn or melt. “Watch, and maybe learn,” writes the author. Many of his lessons come from past developments, such as the sudden disappearance of the Maya 1,600 years ago and the evolution of animals and humans in Africa. Bridges will fall, subways near fault lines in New York and San Francisco will cave in, glaciers will wipe away much of the built world and scavengers will clean our human bones within a few months. Yet some things will persist after we’re gone: bronze sculptures, Mount Rushmore (about 7.2 millions years, given granite’s erosion rate of one inch every 10,000 years), particles of everything made of plastic, manmade underground malls in Montreal and Moscow. In Hawaii, lacking predators, cows and pigs will rule.
Weisman quietly unfolds his sobering cautionary tale, allowing us to conclude what we may about the balancing act that nature and humans need to maintain to survive.Pub Date: July 10, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-312-34729-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
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