Download or read book Finding Places The Search For The Brain s Gps written by Unni Eikeseth and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finding Places tells the story of the ground-breaking discovery of the cells that constitute the brain's positioning system — its GPS. The book takes you into the lab of neuroscientists May-Britt and Edvard Moser and lets you experience the work of the many researchers who revealed how certain incredible cells help rats and humans find their way. It details the discovery of the mind-boggling 'grid cells', which generate a hexagonal coordinate system and enable precise positioning and pathfinding. While giving a unique insight into the research process, the author also conveys what these insights mean for you and me. Have you ever wondered how your brain knows where you are, why your memories are tied to places, or why Alzheimer's disease causes people to lose their sense of place? These questions and many more are answered in this book.The author's goal is not only to document a fascinating scientific achievement that has revolutionized our understanding of the brain, but also to offer insight into the nature of science, and the imagination and creativity that lie behind topnotch research.Related Link(s)
Download or read book Wayfinding written by M. R. O'Connor and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At once far flung and intimate, a fascinating look at how finding our way make us human. "A marvel of storytelling." —Kirkus (Starred Review) In this compelling narrative, O'Connor seeks out neuroscientists, anthropologists and master navigators to understand how navigation ultimately gave us our humanity. Biologists have been trying to solve the mystery of how organisms have the ability to migrate and orient with such precision—especially since our own adventurous ancestors spread across the world without maps or instruments. O'Connor goes to the Arctic, the Australian bush and the South Pacific to talk to masters of their environment who seek to preserve their traditions at a time when anyone can use a GPS to navigate. O’Connor explores the neurological basis of spatial orientation within the hippocampus. Without it, people inhabit a dream state, becoming amnesiacs incapable of finding their way, recalling the past, or imagining the future. Studies have shown that the more we exercise our cognitive mapping skills, the greater the grey matter and health of our hippocampus. O'Connor talks to scientists studying how atrophy in the hippocampus is associated with afflictions such as impaired memory, dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, depression and PTSD. Wayfinding is a captivating book that charts how our species' profound capacity for exploration, memory and storytelling results in topophilia, the love of place. "O'Connor talked to just the right people in just the right places, and her narrative is a marvel of storytelling on its own merits, erudite but lightly worn. There are many reasons why people should make efforts to improve their geographical literacy, and O'Connor hits on many in this excellent book—devouring it makes for a good start." —Kirkus Reviews
Download or read book Searching Minds by Scanning Brains written by Marc Jonathan Blitz and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-03-17 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the ethical and legal challenges presented by modern techniques of memory retrieval, especially within the context of potential use by the US government in courts of law. Specifically, Marc Blitz discusses the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and the Fifth Amendment's self-incrimination clause. He also argues that we should pay close attention to another constitutional provision that individuals generally don’t think of as protecting their privacy: The First Amendment’s freedom of speech. First Amendment values also protect our freedom of thought, and this—not simply our privacy—is what is at stake if government engaged in excessive monitoring of our minds.
Download or read book Brain Games written by Stephanie Drimmer and published by National Geographic Kids. This book was released on 2019 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grab a pencil and get ready to become a problem-solving superstar with activities, puzzles, and games that will give your brain a serious boost. Master mystifying mazes, crack coded messages, and uncover the secrets behind optical illusions, all while learning about your own amazing mind.
Download or read book The Brain from Inside Out written by György Buzsáki MD, PhD and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-18 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is there a right way to study how the brain works? Following the empiricist's tradition, the most common approach involves the study of neural reactions to stimuli presented by an experimenter. This 'outside-in' method fueled a generation of brain research and now must confront hidden assumptions about causation and concepts that may not hold neatly for systems that act and react. György Buzsáki's The Brain from Inside Out examines why the outside-in framework for understanding brain function has become stagnant and points to new directions for understanding neural function. Building upon the success of 2011's Rhythms of the Brain, Professor Buzsáki presents the brain as a foretelling device that interacts with its environment through action and the examination of action's consequence. Consider that our brains are initially filled with nonsense patterns, all of which are gibberish until grounded by action-based interactions. By matching these nonsense "words" to the outcomes of action, they acquire meaning. Once its circuits are "calibrated" by action and experience, the brain can disengage from its sensors and actuators, and examine "what happens if" scenarios by peeking into its own computation, a process that we refer to as cognition. The Brain from Inside Out explains why our brain is not an information-absorbing coding device, as it is often portrayed, but a venture-seeking explorer constantly controlling the body to test hypotheses. Our brain does not process information: it creates it.
Download or read book From Here to There written by Michael Bond and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wise and insightful exploration of human navigation, what it means to be lost, and how we find our way. How is it that we can walk unfamiliar streets while maintaining a sense of direction? Come up with shortcuts on the fly, in places we’ve never traveled? The answer is the complex mental map in our brains. This feature of our cognition is easily taken for granted, but it’s also critical to our species’ evolutionary success. In From Here to There Michael Bond tells stories of the lost and found—Polynesian sailors, orienteering champions, early aviators—and surveys the science of human navigation. Navigation skills are deeply embedded in our biology. The ability to find our way over large distances in prehistoric times gave Homo sapiens an advantage, allowing us to explore the farthest regions of the planet. Wayfinding also shaped vital cognitive functions outside the realm of navigation, including abstract thinking, imagination, and memory. Bond brings a reporter’s curiosity and nose for narrative to the latest research from psychologists, neuroscientists, animal behaviorists, and anthropologists. He also turns to the people who design and expertly maneuver the world we navigate: search-and-rescue volunteers, cartographers, ordnance mappers, urban planners, and more. The result is a global expedition that furthers our understanding of human orienting in the natural and built environments. A beguiling mix of storytelling and science, From Here to There covers the full spectrum of human navigation and spatial understanding. In an age of GPS and Google Maps, Bond urges us to exercise our evolved navigation skills and reap the surprising cognitive rewards.
Download or read book Dark and Magical Places The Neuroscience of Navigation written by Christopher Kemp and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the brain helps us to understand and navigate space—and why, sometimes, it doesn’t work the way it should. Inside our heads we carry around an infinite and endlessly unfolding map of the world. Navigation is one of the most ancient neural abilities we have—older than language. In Dark and Magical Places, Christopher Kemp embarks on a journey to discover the remarkable extent of what our minds can do. Fueled by his own spatial shortcomings, Kemp describes the brain regions that orient us in space and the specialized neurons that do it. Place cells. Grid cells. He examines how the brain plans routes, recognizes landmarks, and makes sure we leave a room through a door instead of trying to leave through a painting. From the secrets of supernavigators like the indigenous hunters of the Bolivian rainforest to the confusing environments inhabited by people with place blindness, Kemp charts the myriad ways in which we find our way and explains the cutting-edge neuroscience behind them. How did Neanderthals navigate? Why do even seasoned hikers stray from the trail? What spatial skills do we inherit from our parents? How can smartphones and our reliance on GPS devices impact our brains? In engaging, engrossing language, Kemp unravels the mysteries of navigating and links the brain’s complex functions to the effects that diseases like Alzheimer’s, types of amnesia, and traumatic brain injuries have on our perception of the world around us. A book for anyone who has ever felt compelled to venture off the beaten path, Dark and Magical Places is a stirring reminder of the beauty in losing yourself to your surroundings. And the beauty in understanding how our brains can guide us home.
Download or read book Pinpoint How GPS is Changing Technology Culture and Our Minds written by Greg Milner and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One of the most mesmerizing and exhilarating, yet alarming modern technology books…an extraordinary tale." —Gillian Tett, Financial Times Pinpoint tells the fascinating story of a hidden system that touches nearly every aspect of modern life. Tracking the development of GPS from its origins as a bomb guidance system to its present ubiquity, Greg Milner examines the technology’s double-edged effect on the way we live, work, and travel. Savvy and original, this sweeping scientific history offers startling insight into how humans understand their place in the world.
Download or read book Dark and Magical Places written by Christopher Kemp and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2022-01-20 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A NATURAL STORYTELLER" Mary Roach "BRILLIANT AND BEGUILING" Matthew Gavin Frank "CAPTIVATING ... WILL ALTER THE WAY YOU SEE AND MOVE THROUGH THE WORLD" M. R. O'Connor "AS ENTERTAINING AS IT IS ENLIGHTENING" Geographical Magazine, Book of the Month Within our heads, we carry around an infinite and endlessly unfolding map of the world. Navigation is one of the most ancient neural abilities we have - older even than language - and in Dark and Magical Places, Christopher Kemp embarks on a journey to discover the remarkable extent of what our minds can do. From the secrets of supernavigators to the strange, dreamlike environments inhabited by people with 'place blindness', he will explore the myriad ways in which we find our way. Kemp explains the cutting-edge neuroscience that is transforming our understanding of it - and tries to answer why, for a species with a highly-sophisticated internal navigation system that evolved over millions of years, do humans get lost such a lot? "I WAS THRILLED TO DISCOVER THIS BOOK" Robert Moor
Download or read book Supernavigators written by David Barrie and published by The Experiment. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Just astonishing . . . Our natural navigational capacities are no match for those of the supernavigators in this eye-opening book.”—Frans de Waal, The New York Times Book Review Publisher's note: Supernavigators was published in the UK under the title Incredible Journeys. Animals plainly know where they’re going, but how they know has remained a stubborn mystery—until now. Supernavigators is a globe-trotting voyage of discovery alongside astounding animals of every stripe: dung beetles that steer by the Milky Way, box jellyfish that can see above the water (with a few of their twenty-four eyes), sea turtles that sense Earth’s magnetic field, and many more. David Barrie consults animal behaviorists and Nobel Prize–winning scientists to catch us up on the cutting edge of animal intelligence—revealing these wonders in a whole new light.
Download or read book Seeing the Mind written by Stanislas Dehaene and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-04-30 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lavishly illustrated and accessibly explained deep dive into the major new findings from cognitive neuroscience. Who are we? To this age-old question, contemporary neuroscience gives a simple answer: we are exquisite neuronal machines. Each of our dreams, thoughts, and feelings arises from a pattern of activity in our brain. In Stanislas Dehaene’s Seeing the Mind, we learn not only that the mind maps onto the brain, but that it is just a complex electrical motif on the tapestry of our neurons. In this richly illustrated and highly accessible book, Dehaene uses the power of brain images to tell the story of centuries-old efforts to understand who we are, and how it is possible that our thoughts emerge from just three pounds of flesh. Seeing the Mind is divided into one hundred topics, each described by a spectacular full-page color image and, on the facing page, a brief text that explains what this image means and why it matters. By weaving together images and text, the book brings readers into the intimacy of their own brains. As Dehaene explains, “All the gorgeous biological processes that you are about to discover are taking place, right now, inside your own brain.” A modern cabinet of curiosities, Seeing the Mind is an intriguing and memorable read that will astonish readers with a direct, face-to-face meeting with themselves—and with the material stuff of their thoughts and dreams.
Download or read book Finding North written by George Michelsen Foy and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2016-05-10 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Navigation is the key human skill. It's something we do everywhere, whether feeling our way through a bedroom in the dark, or charting a ship's course. But how does navigation affect our brains, our memory, ourselves? Blending scientific research and memoir, and written in beautiful prose, Finding North starts with a quest by the author to understand this most basic of human skills---and why it's in mortal peril. In 1844, Foy's great-great grandfather, captain of a Norwegian cargo ship, perished at sea after getting lost in a snowstorm. Foy decides to unravel the mystery surrounding Halvor Michelsen's death---and the roots of his own obsession with navigation---by re-creating his ancestor's trip using only period instruments. Beforehand, he meets a colorful cast of characters to learn whether men really have better directional skills than women, how cells, eels, and spaceships navigate; and how tragedy results from GPS glitches. He interviews a cabby who has memorized every street in London, sails on a Haitian cargo sloop, and visits the site of a secret navigational cult in Greece. At the heart of Foy's story is this fact: navigation and the brain's memory centers are inextricably linked. As Foy unravels the secret behind Halvor's death, he also discovers why forsaking our navigation skills in favor of GPS may lead not only to Alzheimers and other diseases of memory, but to losing a key part of what makes us human.
Download or read book Looking for Spinoza written by Antonio R. Damasio and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2003 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description
Download or read book Wayfinding written by M. R. O'Connor and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At once far flung and intimate, a fascinating look at how finding our way make us human. "A marvel of storytelling." —Kirkus (Starred Review) In this compelling narrative, O'Connor seeks out neuroscientists, anthropologists and master navigators to understand how navigation ultimately gave us our humanity. Biologists have been trying to solve the mystery of how organisms have the ability to migrate and orient with such precision—especially since our own adventurous ancestors spread across the world without maps or instruments. O'Connor goes to the Arctic, the Australian bush and the South Pacific to talk to masters of their environment who seek to preserve their traditions at a time when anyone can use a GPS to navigate. O’Connor explores the neurological basis of spatial orientation within the hippocampus. Without it, people inhabit a dream state, becoming amnesiacs incapable of finding their way, recalling the past, or imagining the future. Studies have shown that the more we exercise our cognitive mapping skills, the greater the grey matter and health of our hippocampus. O'Connor talks to scientists studying how atrophy in the hippocampus is associated with afflictions such as impaired memory, dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, depression and PTSD. Wayfinding is a captivating book that charts how our species' profound capacity for exploration, memory and storytelling results in topophilia, the love of place. "O'Connor talked to just the right people in just the right places, and her narrative is a marvel of storytelling on its own merits, erudite but lightly worn. There are many reasons why people should make efforts to improve their geographical literacy, and O'Connor hits on many in this excellent book—devouring it makes for a good start." —Kirkus Reviews
Download or read book Healing Spaces written by Esther M. Sternberg MD and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-30 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Esther Sternberg is a rare writer—a physician who healed herself...With her scientific expertise and crystal clear prose, she illuminates how intimately the brain and the immune system talk to each other, and how we can use place and space, sunlight and music, to reboot our brains and move from illness to health.”—Gail Sheehy, author of Passages Does the world make you sick? If the distractions and distortions around you, the jarring colors and sounds, could shake up the healing chemistry of your mind, might your surroundings also have the power to heal you? This is the question Esther Sternberg explores in Healing Spaces, a look at the marvelously rich nexus of mind and body, perception and place. Sternberg immerses us in the discoveries that have revealed a complicated working relationship between the senses, the emotions, and the immune system. First among these is the story of the researcher who, in the 1980s, found that hospital patients with a view of nature healed faster than those without. How could a pleasant view speed healing? The author pursues this question through a series of places and situations that explore the neurobiology of the senses. The book shows how a Disney theme park or a Frank Gehry concert hall, a labyrinth or a garden can trigger or reduce stress, induce anxiety or instill peace. If our senses can lead us to a “place of healing,” it is no surprise that our place in nature is of critical importance in Sternberg’s account. The health of the environment is closely linked to personal health. The discoveries this book describes point to possibilities for designing hospitals, communities, and neighborhoods that promote healing and health for all.
Download or read book Connecting with Coincidence written by Bernard Beitman and published by Health Communications, Inc.. This book was released on 2016-03-07 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We've all experienced or heard of surprising events and unexplainable coincidences—money that seems to come from nowhere, a spontaneous idea that turns into a life-changing solution, meeting our soulmate on a flight we weren't supposed to take, or families being reunited by "accident" after years of separation. Often these coincidences are explained as being controlled by a higher power or pure chance. But for the first time since Carl Jung's work, comes bold new research that explains scientifically how we can identify, understand, and perhaps even control the frequency of coincidences in our everyday lives. Bernard Beitman, a leading expert on Coincidence Studies, proposes a greater personal responsibility which depends partly upon newly discovered "grid cells" located in the brain, near the hippocampus. But neuroscience cannot complete the entire puzzle, and in this fascinating guide, Beitman provides the missing piece. From analyzing true stories of synchronicity from around the globe and throughout history, he shares key personality characteristics and situational factors that contribute to the occurrence of meaningful coincidences in our lives. Where other books on coincidences tend to be theoretical, inspirational, or story collections only, Beitman's book is the first to provide a scientific understanding and practical ways in which readers can use them in their own lives. He reveals: How to activate your observing self so you don't miss synchronistic moments How serendipity can offer insights into solving problems or making difficult decisions Why stress activates meaningful coincidences Which states of mind impede our ability to experience synchronicity How to interpret the meaning of a coincidence Why being attuned to coincidences is a learned skill—and how to hone your sensitivity.
Download or read book Cruising World written by and published by . This book was released on 1992-01 with total page 1816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
