Particularly loved thinking about how our brain re-wires itself to new body plans, and was telling my spouse about this as they just had eye surgery and were adapting to their "new eyes" :) Real life applicability! It was neat to read about how the brain adapts when a limb or a sense is lost or added, and what sorts of possibilities the future holds. It's no easy feat to make complex topics comprehensible to a layperson and those with no prior knowledge of the subject at hand, but Eagleman does this with considerable aplomb. I hope this will be rectified as this is a superb book but for the mistaken data provided in one instance. With his new theory of infotropism, Eagleman demonstrates why the fundamental principle of the brain is information maximization: in the same way that plants grow toward light, brains reconfigure to boost data from the outside world.

I found factual inaccuracies in the book that I know to be inaccurate because there were about my own field of expertise. 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. 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. Excellent book about the plasticity of the brain -- about how every experience we have changes the brain, and about how the brain maximizes it resources to interpret the data coming in from our senses. It's not that the idea of the brain as a self-patterning system that adapts and changes as inputs vary is new, but the sheer depth and speed of the phenomenon is only relatively recently understood and Eagleman gives us a very wide range of examples, from a young child who had half his brain removed, but developed normally, the remaining half taking on all the roles of the other, to the remarkably short term adaptations that enable us to cope with, for example, changes in lighting colour and intensity.

But we know it should be possible, because everyone reading these words is an existence proof: your biology includes 3 pounds of this alien computational material. It is not included in promotions available to our main range products, as stated in our terms of service. This is yet another title on the workings of the brain (though to be fair to David Eagleman it was already out in hardback, so he was at the start of the queue). David Eagleman once again takes the infinitely complex brain and explains it in language that a layperson can understand— and more importantly, enjoy.

Trading Address (Warehouse) Unit E, Vulcan Business Complex, Vulcan Road, Leicester, Leicestershire, LE5 3EB. Eagleman has a talent for testing the untestable, for taking seemingly sophomoric notions and using them to nail down the slippery stuff of consciousness. With fluid prose and crystal-clear analogies, Eagleman explains the function of the cerebral cortex as a general computing machine that can take any kind of input from environmental sensors — e. Since the passing of Isaac Asimov, we haven't had a working scientist like Mr Eagleman, who engages his ideas in such a variety of modes. Particularly in the first chapter, the writing was very jerky, suddenly changing topic, even telling half a story then abruptly switching to something else before coming back to the original subject again.The subject really grabbed my attention, and Eagleman is good at storytelling, but there were a couple of things about the writing style that irritated me. Livewired" is the catchy term David Eagleman has coined to describe the miraculous ability of the brain to adapt in concert with its environment and make sense of the world.

Because what actually happened to Matthew was that with intensive rehab, the remaining half of his brain adapted itself to take over the missing functions of the other half. The Wall Street Journal wrote that "since the passing of Isaac Asimov, we haven't had a working scientist like Eagleman, who engages his ideas in such a variety of modes. The author does a nice job of tying chapters together so that Livewired builds on previously explained concepts.

Now every time I think about thinking, I think about what a wonderful creature we humans are, and how Mother Nature has wholeheartedly gifted us such an amazing thing as our brain.

Med hjälp av en mikrofon spelas ljud från omgivning in och omvandlas till en elektrisk signal som anpassas något för att sedan fortsätta längs hörselnerven till hjärnan. Fortunately, the author's fast-paced storytelling keeps you engaged even during repetitive chapters.The author seems most eager to point out ways that our current understanding of the brain could lead to wild, sci-fi futures. From the best-selling author of Incognito and Sum comes a revelatory portrait of the human brain based on the most recent scientific discoveries about how it unceasingly adapts, re-creates, and formulates new ways of understanding the world we live in.