Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain

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Let's say there's a kid who has the worst case of epilepsy ever. Like, seizures every 20 minutes. Doctor says the only treatment is a hemispherectomy, which is exactly what it sounds like — removal of half the kid's brain. What do you think happens after the operation? How will the kid do? Drive any machinery. Brains learn to control whatever body plan they discover themselves inside of.

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. 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.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 DE: The important part is to make sure that you’re doing things differently. Just as an example, I try to drive home from work a different route every day so I can see new things. Otherwise, you become an automatized zombie. You’ve probably noticed that time shrinks more and more as you become automatized in certain tasks.

Eagleman suggests that “Our machinery isn’t fully preprogramed, but instead shapes itself by interacting with the world”, an underdeveloped claim requiring a much deeper discussion of the roles of noise, and the brain’s own intrinsic activity, in the shaping of the brain through the life course. “Noise” refers here to the amplification of small, chance events during the unfolding of the recipe in the genome, a theme emphasised by the neurogeneticist Kevin Mitchell in his recent book Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are. Mitchell’s key point is that the genome is a type of probabilistic recipe, unfolding in stochastic, somewhat unpredictable ways as the result of noise during the journey from fertilised egg to fully developed human. Thus, identical twins are not really identical, despite outward appearances. There is much to extract from this fascinating work, that is recommended for readers interested in neuroscience, technology, and the intersection of the two.” — Library Journal(starred)Eagleman writes at a level that is easy for the average layperson to understand and he relies on anecdotes and case studies to aid the reader. DT: You bring up the computational metaphor. What are your thoughts on artificial intelligence and, particularly, the pursuit of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Do you view such a thing as possible, and is modern A.I. research following along the right lines?