Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain

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The brain contains a map of the body because of a simple rule that governs how individual brain cells make connections with one another: neurons that are active close in time to one another tend to make and maintain connections between themselves. That’s how a map of the body emerges in the darkness.” Covering decades of research to the present day,Livewired presents new discoveries from Eagleman’s own laboratory, from synesthesia to dreaming to wearable neurotech devices that revolutionize how we think about the senses. The fine structure of the brain reflects the environment to which it is exposed. World experience modulates almost every measurable detail of the brain, from the molecular scale to overall brain anatomy.” Neural maps are not predefined by a genetic urban planning commission. Instead, whatever real estate is available gets used and filled.” Maintaining territory in the brain is activity-dependent: preserving ground requires constant vigor. As inputs diminish, neurons change their connections until they find where the action is.”

the brain is a dynamic system that chronically reflects the world, wraps around the inputs, adjusts itself to its challenges and goals (constantly altering its own circuitry to match the demands of the environment and the capabilities of the body; it molds its resources to match the requirements of its circumstance; when it doesn’t possess what it needs, it sculpts it). Tази книга е изключително информативно и вълнуващо пътешествие в може би най-непознатата и необяснима територия - човешкия мозък. Livewired is very good in parts, sufficiently so to make this reviewer wish that Eagleman had written a different book, because there is undoubtedly a remarkable book trying to escape the confines of this one. The long fourth chapter, “Wrapping around the inputs”, is a sometimes jaw-dropping exposition of research on sensory substitution, augmentation and enhancement. It describes the work of the author and others on bypassing channels to the brain that are in some way damaged. Normal hearing depends on the integrity of the auditory system – damage that, and deafness in varying degrees may occur. Combining some clever tech and thought, Eagleman and his colleagues have figured out how to turn sound waves into sensations registered on the surface of the skin – bypassing the ears entirely to provide a new channel of information into the brain. Other clever experiments have figured out ways of getting sensory information to the brain through the tongue, for example. This chapter left me longing for more: the details of the inside stories of the patients, the tech, the company and the lives helped are irresistible, and a testament to human ingenuity.Taking the idea further, Eagleman makes us wonder whether a livewired, self-adapting home and electric grid could be right around the corner. Trippy, sure, but why not? And that's what I particularly appreciate about Eagleman's work: he provokes us to think about *both* the stuff we take for granted *and* the radical "adjacent possible". This is especially fun since the book is talking about the very same thing you're using to read it (not the Kindle, silly — I mean your *brain*). For example, if the brain's so damn changeable, how can we even hold on to any memories before they get overwritten by new stuff? The magic of the brain is not found in the parts it's made of but in the way those parts unceasingly reweave themselves in an electric living fabric. And there is no more accomplished and accessible guide than renowned neuroscientist David Eagleman to help us understand the nature and changing texture of that fabric. With his hallmark clarity and enthusiasm he reveals the myriad ways that the brain absorbs experience: developing, redeploying, organizing, and arranging the data it receives from the body's own absorption of external stimuli, which enables us to gain the skills, the facilities, and the practices that make us who we are. Brain regions care about solving certain types of tasks, irrespective of the sensory channel by which information arrives.”

Maintaining territory requires constant input to the individual neurons: when effort slows, they seek to switch teams to the active inputs.” His expertise derives from his place at the center of the livewiring universe. As the CEO of NeoSensory, which makes sensory aids like wristbands that allow deaf people to feel sound, he’s been an architect of brain plasticity research for more than a decade. As for it being one of the most important books of the decade... it really isn’t. Plasticity has been known about for a long time and none of the information in the book was more than I learnt in my undergraduate degree. Having said that it is interesting and David Eagleman does make it easy to understand. Brain changes are driven by the difference between the internal model and what happens in the world. Thus, brains shift only when something is unpredicted. As you age and figure out the rules of the world—from the expectations of your home life to behavior in your social circles to the foods you prefer—your brain becomes less challenged with novel stimulation, and therefore more settled into place.” I was really excited to read this book. I have previously read Eagleman’s ‘The Brain’ and enjoyed his TV show in the same subject. Since first learning of plasticity during neurophysiology lectures at university I have been fascinated by the brain’s ability to adapt.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.The magic of the brain is not found in the parts it’s made of but in the way those parts unceasingly reweave themselves in an electric living fabric. And there is no more accomplished and accessible guide than renowned neuroscientist David Eagleman to help us understand the nature and changing texture of that fabric. With his hallmark clarity and enthusiasm he reveals the myriad ways that the brain absorbs experience: developing, redeploying, organizing, and arranging the data it receives from the body’s own absorption of external stimuli, which enables us to gain the skills, the facilities, and the practices that make us who we are. Eagleman covers decades of the most important research into the functioning of the brain and presents new discoveries from his own research as well: about the nature of synesthesia, about dreaming, and about wearable devices that are revolutionizing how we think about the five human senses. Finally, Livewired is as deeply informative as it is accessible and brilliantly engaging. Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain by David Eagleman – eBook Details

I liked this book. Writing is clear, tight, and entertaining, as I've come to expect from David Eagleman. Perhaps the thing I like best about Eagleman's books is the strong organizing concept. A lot of popular neuroscience books I read regurgitate a psych 101 class for the first third of the book, which is both tedious and often in need of updating (e.g. it used to be thought that the brain was one continuous neural net BUT THEN Ramon y Cajal, Psychology used to not be real science BUT THEN behaviorism, and then Phineas Gage got a pole launched through his frontal cortex, and HM had to have his hippocampus removed due to epilepsy, and here we are today). Eagleman's books in contrast, discuss the topics most tightly related to his theme at hand, and often present new material or familiar material through a novel lens, which I love! The theme of this book broadly is brain plasticity, highlighting how the brain is actually a general purpose computing machine that would ably use any input presented from birth as long as it consistently predicted something about the outside world. Eagleman also sets himself apart by introducing new, often quite startling theories, as well as making predictions. brains never reach an end point (we spend our lives blossoming toward something, even as the target moves). Gets the science right and makes it accessible … completely upending our basic sense of what the brain is in the process … Exciting” the elaborate pattern of connections in the brain—the circuitry—is full of life (connections between neurons ceaselessly blossom, die, and reconfigure).Other surprising omissions in such a tech-oriented book are the twin fields of optogenetics and chemogenetics – techniques allowing the introduction of light-sensitive or chemical-sensitive genes into certain brain regions. These regions can then be activated or inactivated in a carefully calibrated fashion. Both techniques have revolutionised neuroscience – perhaps even more than functional brain imaging has, since they allow causal inferences to be made more securely about which brain regions participate in which functions at a given time. Human trials in optogenetics are already ongoing, and a recent breakthrough has been announced in the restoration of at least some vision in a person with the genetic disease of retinitis pigmentosa. The brain has to have different systems with different speeds of learning: one for the extraction of generalities in the environment (slow learning), and one for episodic memory (fast learning).”