Brainscapes: The Warped, Wondrous Maps Written in Your Brain-And How They Guide You

by Rebecca Schwarzlose

Overview

“A profoundly illuminating account of how the brain works . . . Rebecca Schwarzlose is a neuroscientist with a novelist's literary flair.” —Cass R. Sunstein, author of Too Much Information

A path-breaking journey into the brain, showing how perception, thought, and action are products of maps etched into your gray matter—and how technology can use them to read your mind

Your brain is a collection of maps. That is no metaphor: scrawled across your brain’s surfaces are actual maps of the sights, sounds, and actions that hold the key to your survival. Scientists first began uncovering these maps over a century ago, but we are only now beginning to unlock their secrets—and comprehend their profound impact on our lives. Brain maps distort and shape our experience of the world, support complex thought, and make technology-enabled mind reading a modern-day reality, which raises important questions about what is real, what is fair, and what is private. They shine a light on our past and our possible futures. In the process, they invite us to view ourselves from a startling new perspective. 
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In Brainscapes, Rebecca Schwarzlose combines unforgettable real-life stories, cutting-edge research, and vivid illustrations to reveal brain maps’ surprising lessons about our place in the world—and about the world’s place within us.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781328949981
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/19/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	317
Sales rank:	404,260
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

REBECCA SCHWARZLOSE is a neuroscientist at Washington University in Saint Louis. She holds a PhD in neuroscience from MIT and has served as chief editor of the scholarly journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences. She lives in Saint Louis.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 An Atlas of You: What Is a Brain Map? 7

2 The Tyranny of Numbers: Why Brain Maps Exist 25

3 How Brain Maps Determine What We See and Feel 45

4 Out of the Ether: Brain Maps for Hearing 71

5 Brain Maps and Codes for Taste and Smell 85

6 On the Move: Brain Maps for Action 107

7 Maps in the Making: How Brain Maps Develop and Adapt 131

8 Knowing Again: Brain Maps for Recognition 151

9 Imagining, Remembering, and Paying Attention with Brain Maps 171

10 Comprehending and Communicating with Brain Maps 191

11 Maps as Portals: Mind Reading and Mind Writing with Brain Maps 213

12 How Brain Maps Weigh Us Down and How We Rise Above Them 243

Acknowledgments 257

Notes 259

Index 287

Editorial Reviews

★ 03/22/2021

Neuroscientist Schwarzlose debuts with a fascinating deep-dive into the “remarkable maps” in the human brain. “I am not being metaphorical or using artistic license; there are actual maps in your brain,” she writes, and explains how those maps, made of interconnected neurons, function. Schwarzlose examines how each of the five senses is translated into perception via brain maps: the maps feature “gross distortions,” she writes, in how the brain perceives and makes sense of the world. These maps also play a role in movement, enabling memory and allowing humans to comprehend emotions. She also describes breakthroughs that enable individuals in apparent vegetative states to communicate through mental imagery and allow paralyzed individuals to control prosthetic devices simply by thinking of motions. She also warns of the double-edged nature of “brain-based” technologies often brushed off as science fiction: they may “empower the powerless, but they might also threaten our privacy and lessen our personal sovereignty.” Schwarzlose’s presentation of cutting-edge science is consistently accessible and concise, as is her historical perspective on early brain research (she describes work on mental imagery used by the founder of eugenics in 1870, noting that his sample only featured aristocratic European men). This is deeply enjoyable and thoroughly researched—science-minded readers should take note. Agent: Katinka Matson, Brockman Literary. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Schwarzlose’s presentation of cutting-edge science is consistently accessible and concise, as is her historical perspective on early brain research . . . This is deeply enjoyable and thoroughly researched.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Rebecca Schwarzlose is a neuroscientist with a novelist’s literary flair. Brainscapes is a profoundly illuminating account of how the brain works—and of how the maps within our heads determine what we see, recognize, remember, and feel. It’s about miracles, and it’s a complete inspiration.” —Cass R. Sunstein, author of Too Much Information

“This book is the Lonely Planet travel guide to the brain. With humility, humor, and the familiarity of a local, Rebecca Schwarzlose takes you by the hand and shows you around some of the strangest landscapes of the cortex. In Brainscapes, the brain becomes an open atlas, full of illuminating maps—just one of many enlightening metaphors in this meticulously documented and artfully decorated book.” —Stanislas Dehaene, author of How We Learn and Consciousness and the Brain 

“In lively prose, Schwarzlose introduces you to your inner cartographer: a complex brain that continuously constructs shifting maps of the world, charted from the perspective of your own body. These maps are not just created by you—they are you. They conjure what you feel, what you remember, and what you do.” —Lisa Feldman Barrett, author of How Emotions Are Made and Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain

“In Brainscapes, Rebecca Schwarzlose takes the reader on a journey through the brain by explaining all the ways it uses ‘maps’ to help us experience the world and act in it.  I thoroughly enjoyed this broad-in-scope, and beautifully written, book.” —Joseph LeDoux, author of The Deep History of Ourselves

“A beautiful book about one of the most fundamental properties of the brain—its ability as a mapmaker. The meat in our heads organizes and controls everything we do, from perception to emotion, action to cognition, by mapping complex information into simple spaces. Brainscapes explains that deep truth in clear, compelling language. It’s a fascinating, well-told story, worth the read.” —Michael Graziano, author of Rethinking Consciousness

“Brainscapes will change how you think about the brain and how you understand your own mind. This is a fascinating and original exploration of the physical principles that enable you to do all that you do, and be who you are.” —Tali Sharot, author of The Influential Mind
 

From the Publisher

06/01/2021

Just as geographic maps represent particular places on Earth, brain maps chart how our bodies interpret and interact with the world. Schwarzlose (neuroscience, Washington Univ., St. Louis) writes in this volume that early research on brain maps emerged from studies of brain damage. She describes many of the brain maps that exist in humans and other animals, sense by sense; she starts with vision, touch, hearing, taste, and smell, then moves on to describe maps for movement, memory, and object recognition, among other processes. Brain maps, essentially comprising interconnected neurons that transmit electrical and chemical signals, are simultaneously universal and utterly unique, she writes. The study of brain maps has concrete applications, like improving neonatal care or enabling people with paraplegia to control prosthetics through thought. She warns that as science learns more about the maps within our brains, we need to be wary of sharing neural data with corporations that are eager to erode our privacy for profit. VERDICT This potentially dense and impenetrable subject is illuminated and rendered comprehensible in Schwarzlose's skilled hands. A fascinating in-depth exploration of the maps contained within our brains. Recommended for science lovers.—Ragan O'Malley, Saint Ann's Sch., Brooklyn

Library Journal

2021-04-07
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.

Kirkus Reviews