Table of Contents
Preface ix
Primer: Our Human Brain Was Not Designed All at Once by a Genius Inventor on a Blank Sheet of Paper David J. Linden 1
Science Is an Ongoing Process, Not a Belief System William B. Kristan, Jr. Kathleen A. French 9
Developing, Changing
Genetics Provides a Window on Human Individuality Jeremy Nathans 19
Though the Brain Has Billions of Neurons, Wiring It All Up May Depend upon Very Simple Rules Alex L. Kolodkin 26
From Birth Onward, Our Experience of the World Is Dominated by the Brain's Continual Conversation with Itself Sam Wang 34
Children's Brains Are Different Amy Bastian 40
Your Twelve-Year-Old Isn't Just Sprouting New Hair but Is Also Forming (and Being Formed by) New Neural Connections Linda Wilbrecht 45
How You Use Your Brain Can Change Its Basic Structural Organization Melissa Lau Hollis Cline 52
Tool Use Can Instantly Rewire the Brain Alison L. Barth 60
Life Experiences and Addictive Drugs Change Your Brain in Similar Ways Julie Kauer 66
Signaling
Like It or Not, the Brain Grades on a Curve Indira M. Raman 75
The Brain Achieves Its Computational Power through a Massively Parallel Architecture Liqun Luo 82
The Brain Harbors Many Neurotransmitters Solomon H. Snyder 88
Anticipating, Sensing, Moving
The Eye Knows What Is Good for Us Aniruddha Das 97
You Have a Superpower-It's Called Vision Charles E. Connor 105
The Sense of Taste Encompasses Two Roles: Conscious Taste Perception and Subconscious Metabolic Responses Paul A. S. Breslin 110
It Takes an Ensemble of Strangely Shaped Nerve Endings to Build a Touch David D. Ginty 119
The Bane of Pain Is Plainly in the Brain Allan Basbaum 128
Time's Weird in the Brain-That's a Good Thing, and Here's Why Marshall G. Hussain Shuler Vijay M. K. Namboodiri 135
Electrical Signals in the Brain Are Strangely Comprehensible David Foster 145
A Comparative Approach Is Imperative for the Understanding of Brain Function Cynthia F. Moss 153
The Cerebellum Learns to Predict the Physics of Our Movements Scott T. Albert Reza Shadmehr 161
Neuroscience Can Show Us a New Way to Rehabilitate Brain Injury: The Case of Stroke John W. Krakauer 167
Almost Everything You Do Is a Habit Adrian M. Haith 177
Relating
Interpreting Information in Voice Requires Brain Circuits for Emotional Recognition and Expression Darcy B. Kelley 185
Mind Reading Emerged at Least Twice in the Course of Evolution Gül Dölen 194
We Are Born to Help Others Peggy Mason 201
Intense Romantic Love Uses Subconscious Survival Circuits in the Brain Lucy L. Brown 208
Human Sexual Orientation Is Strongly Influenced by Biological Factors David J. Linden 215
Deciding
Deep Down, You Are a Scientist Yael Niv 227
Studying Monkey Brains Can Teach Us about Advertising Michael Platt 231
Beauty Matters in Ways We Know and in Ways We Don't Anjan Chatterjee 238
"Man Can Do What He Wants, but He Cannot Will What He Wants" Scott M. Sternson 245
The Brain Is Overrated Asif A. Ghazanfar 252
Dopamine Made You Do It Terrence Sejnowski 257
The Human Brain, the True Creator of Everything, Cannot Be Simulated by Any Turing Machine Miguel A. L. Nicolelis 263
There Is No Principle That Prevents Us from Eventually Building Machines That Think Michael D. Mauk 270
Epilogue 277
List of Contributors 283
Acknowledgments 285
Index 287
