A digestible, intriguing academic read on a complex subject.
A thorough delineation of neural representations, or brain maps, that affect our sensory, motor, cognitive, and emotional capacities.
Schwarzlose, a neuroscientist at Washington University in St. Louis, explores literal brain maps, within human and animal brains, comprised of cells. Unlike traditional geographical maps, they are dynamic by virtue of electricity and time. "Neighboring neurons in your brain represent neighboring plots of land on your skin,” she writes. “The result? A beautiful, honest-to-goodness map of the surfaces of your body built into your brain." The author uses the metaphor of subway tunnels in not only explaining how brain maps affect our sight and feeling, but also to demonstrate that a map's inherent two-dimensional distortion sometimes makes it better at magnifying important information. "Vision as you know it is born in the darkness at the back of your skull, reflecting what is happening in your visual brain maps more than what is happening in your two eyes,” she writes. “This is why it matters so much exactly how your maps are warped: these maps, in turn, warp your conscious perception." Schwarzlose illuminates four primary themes of brain maps: their universality, respective uniqueness, the idea that they are created out of necessity, and their ability to give organisms the opportunity to adapt. Not only are brain maps spatial, but they can also use nonspatial phenomena, such as vibrations, to reveal where a source of sound is located. Human brain maps were discovered in 19th-century London through experiments on patients who experienced seizures and the study of their paths. The parietal lobe, writes the author, holds maps that do not belong to a single category: “They actually combine and align information from touch, vision, and hearing with information about body position and space around the body to which actions might be guided." The scope of the book is staggering, as is the potential of technology's role in decoding minds, and yet Schwarzlose successfully and enthusiastically relays the research in relevant, understandable, and absorbing language. The black-and-white illustrations are also helpful.
A digestible, intriguing academic read on a complex subject.Pub Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-328-94996-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Solid data and reasoned conjecture strike a harmonious balance in a new SETI.
A jocular title does not even hint at the real wonders of this cook’s tour of alien life.
Astrophysicist Frank, author of Light of the Stars and The Constant Fire, has been obsessed with the idea of extraterrestrial life since childhood. After years of dreaming about exploring the cosmos for signs of intelligent life, he and other scientists are on the threshold of a new era of unprecedented discovery in the field of astrobiology. He details not only recent revelations in the detection of exoplanets, but also the search for technosignatures, indicators of technologically advanced species on worlds light years distant. These are not merely elements of science fiction. They are realities now within human reach thanks to the continuing development of ultra-powerful telescopes and to the sea change in a scientific culture that once scoffed at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Frank’s enthusiasm is contagious, occasionally over-exuberant, and there is plenty of hard science in this survey, which the author presents with economy and accessibility. The book brims with fascinating facts and speculations, from the particulars of astrobiology to Dyson spheres. Frank’s cosmic tour makes stops at such milestones as the Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation, showing how these 1950s advances continue to inform our thinking about the possibility of technological civilizations. The author also recounts the origins and current manifestations of the UFO craze and how the advancement of actual science has been impeded by 70 years of pop culture images that haunt our collective expectations. Frank advises we look for alien life where it most likely exists: deep space. He also stresses the key point that we have only begun to peer into the universe with instruments capable of breakthrough discoveries, a useful riposte to critics of the effort. Throughout, Frank champions the importance of demanding standards of evidence: “They are, literally, why science works.”
Solid data and reasoned conjecture strike a harmonious balance in a new SETI.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780063279735
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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