Making Space: How the Brain Knows Where Things Are (eng)

Groh, Jennifer M.

ISBN 10: 0674863216 / ISBN 13: 9780674863217

Editore: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press, 2014

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Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Making Space: How the Brain Knows Where Things Are (eng)
• Editore: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2014
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0674863216
• ISBN 13: 9780674863217
• Rilegatura: Rilegato
• Condizione: new
• Peso: 0,53 chilogrammi

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

Knowing where things are seems effortless. Yet our brains devote tremendous computational power to figuring out the simplest details about spatial relationships. Going to the grocery store or finding our cell phone requires sleuthing and coordination across different sensory and motor domains. Making Space traces this mental detective work to explain how the brain creates our sense of location. But it goes further, to make the case that spatial processing permeates all our cognitive abilities, and that the brain’s systems for thinking about space may be the systems of thought itself.

Our senses measure energy in the form of light, sound, and pressure on the skin, and our brains evaluate these measurements to make inferences about objects and boundaries. Jennifer Groh describes how eyes detect electromagnetic radiation, how the brain can locate sounds by measuring differences of less than one one-thousandth of a second in how long they take to reach each ear, and how the ear’s balance organs help us monitor body posture and movement. The brain synthesizes all this neural information so that we can navigate three-dimensional space.

But the brain’s work doesn’t end there. Spatial representations do double duty in aiding memory and reasoning. This is why it is harder to remember how to get somewhere if someone else is driving, and why, if we set out to do something and forget what it was, returning to the place we started can jog our memory. In making space the brain uses powers we did not know we have.

Recensione

A terrific book; very imaginative, yet based on solid science. - Michael Gazzaniga, author of "Who's in Charge?"

There is much to praise here, and a sense of pride and joy runs though my veins... in the accuracy, the footnotes, the basting of the concepts together... It is exhilarating to feel her energy and cautious optimism about our capacity to understand how we perceive. --Times Higher Education

The timing is spot-on for this study of the brain s navigational system, with a Nobel prize awarded to John O Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser this month for their research in the field [...] Neuroscientist Jennifer Groh deftly elucidates the mental computations that allow understanding of location and boundaries, interweaving well-judged snippets of history. The mechanisms, such as the brain s updates on eye movements, are fascinating as is Groh s revelation that neurons can do double duty in tasks such as spatial navigation and memory. --Nature

"Making Space purports to explain how [...] spatial orientation works. But Jennifer Groh s wonderful book offers a much broader insight into how the sense we think of as separate gather information on our environment, and how nerves and the brain process the information [...] It s a fascinating subject that Groh describes well, with a minimum of polysyllabic bio-speak. It s also an important one." --New Scientist