What do you think?
Rate this book
The Future of the Brain: Essays by the World's Leading Neuroscientists
Including a chapter by 2014 Nobel laureates May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser An unprecedented look at the quest to unravel the mysteries of the human brain, The Future of the Brain takes readers to the absolute frontiers of science. Original essays by leading researchers such as Christof Koch, George Church, Olaf Sporns, and May-Britt and Edvard Moser describe the spectacular technological advances that will enable us to map the more than eighty-five billion neurons in the brain, as well as the challenges that lie ahead in understanding the anticipated deluge of data and the prospects for building working simulations of the human brain. A must-read for anyone trying to understand ambitious new research programs such as the Obama administration's BRAIN Initiative and the European Union's Human Brain Project, The Future of the Brain sheds light on the breathtaking implications of brain science for medicine, psychiatry, and even human consciousness itself. Contributors Misha Ahrens, Ned Block, Matteo Carandini, George Church, John Donoghue, Chris Eliasmith, Simon Fisher, Mike Hawrylycz, Sean Hill, Christof Koch, Leah Krubitzer, Michel Maharbiz, Kevin Mitchell, Edvard Moser, May-Britt Moser, David Poeppel, Krishna Shenoy, Olaf Sporns, Anthony Zador.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published November 20, 2014
78 people are currently reading
1422 people want to read
About the author
Gary F. Marcus
16 books206 followersGary Marcus is an award-wining Professor of Psychology at New York University and director of the NYU Center for Child Language. He has written three books about the origins and nature of the human mind, including Kluge (2008, Houghton Mifflin/Faber), and The Birth of the Mind (Basic Books, 2004, translated into 6 languages). He is also the editor of The Norton Psychology Reader, and the author of numerous science publications in leading journals, such as Science, Nature, Cognition, and Psychological Science. He is also the editor of the Norton Psychology Reader and has frequently written articles for the general public, in forums such as Wired, Discover, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
February 16, 2015
This collection of summary and speculation by cognitive and computational neuroscientists is both enticing and disappointing. It’s great to catch some of the fever dreams of brilliant and creative scientists over what leaps in understanding the brain and mind may soon be reachable. But more than a few of the contributors are cautious, and the editors deserve credit for making a special section called “Skeptics”. Ultimately, there is not much here to satisfy the pent-up demand of the public for some take-home messages and to participate in the excitement behind the push for expensive new initiatives. However, neuroscientists of every stripe should check the book out for its effective manifesto in support of a movement toward a Big Science approach to so-far intractable questions about the brain and complex mental capacities.
The first section, “Mapping the Brain”, covers work to create standardized brain atlases, early delineation of functional connectionist maps (Connectomes), and the invention of a genetic tagging method allowing the potential of “bar-coding” all neurons in the brain. An encoded activity monitor detectable with new high-resolution scanning holds promise for allowing detailed activity patterns in a living brain to be tracked like never before. Other advances include an increased its resolution for functional MRI and in recent years an extension called Diffusion Tensor Imaging that allows visualization of tracts in live human and animal brains. Sporns advances his theory that mapping the human brain at the cellular level is a key to breakthroughs in understanding. I believe that efforts to move in that direction may eventually pay off, but not without some big advance in principles of brain-behavior relations. Several contributors in the volume highlight this knowledge gap, which is expressed clearly at the close of a Wikipedia article on Connectomes:
Just as detailed road maps of the earth's surface do not tell us much about the kind of vehicles that travel those roads or what cargo they are hauling, to understand how neural structures result in specific functional behavior such as consciousness, it is necessary to build theories that relate functions to anatomical connectivity .
The section on “Computation” covers extensive work on computer analysis of brain circuit operations and initial planning for how to deal with the massive data generated by new techniques to monitor the activity of thousands of cells at the same time. (As a former brain researcher, I found the method was way cool, involving the genetic insertion of DNA for a protein that fluoresces with the calcium fluxes associated with synaptic activity and microscopy which allows a “read” of cell activity changes in planar sheets processed by focal plane).
This section leads naturally to the following one, “Simulation of the Brain”. The hope is that the field of artificial intelligence can get out of the doldrums it’s been in since the 60’s by emulating the circuit operations of real brains. The efforts at simulation of activity patterns of various networks involved in behaviors or cognitive tasks are expected benefit from checking of predictions with performance of real operational patterns, and, in turn, simulation constructs that work well should be applicable as algorithms to make sense of the vast data streams of neuronal activity sequences from live brains. It feels like “pie in the sky” to me, but, hey, like Browning wrote, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, else what’s a heaven for.” This applies especially to a short following section dealing with implications for understanding human language. Ditto for the dream of rapid advancement in solutions for mental illness, Alzheimers, autism, etc. I got the most mileage out of brief representation from the field of rehabilitation and the promise of effective brain-machine interfaces, a chapter placed in a final section called “Implications.”
This book is not something I can recommend to satisfy the interests of average readers. I would recommend instead a book of more open speculation by the physicist Kaku, The Future of the Mind, whose goal was to guess where we will be in 100 years. However, the book may be important for most neuroscientists to peruse, despite the relatively small fraction of the roughly 40,000 neuroscientists worldwide working in areas related to the topics covered in the book. It would give them a chance to sample the big ambitions afloat and to understand where a lot of research funding is going to be being focused.
In 2013, President Obama announced the launch a massive joint federal and private industry effort called the BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies), and by 2014 the level of investment surpassed $300 million. A parallel ambitious initiative was started in Europe called the Human Brain Project . By theory scientists from multiple disciplines are to work together instead of in competing isolated siloes. Work at the Allen Institute for Brain Research, which was started on the human brain simulation goal by a former Microsoft co-founder, seems to adhere nicely to this model of broad collaboration. Otherwise, I am dubious that the initiatives will yield the same level of bang for the buck as the Human Genome Project they are being compared to ($3.8 billion investment yielding an economic output estimated at about 800 billion). Then again, I had my doubts about the wisdom of that project and worried at the time about it taking funding from more fruitful work.
This book was provided as a e-book by the published through the Netgalley program.
The first section, “Mapping the Brain”, covers work to create standardized brain atlases, early delineation of functional connectionist maps (Connectomes), and the invention of a genetic tagging method allowing the potential of “bar-coding” all neurons in the brain. An encoded activity monitor detectable with new high-resolution scanning holds promise for allowing detailed activity patterns in a living brain to be tracked like never before. Other advances include an increased its resolution for functional MRI and in recent years an extension called Diffusion Tensor Imaging that allows visualization of tracts in live human and animal brains. Sporns advances his theory that mapping the human brain at the cellular level is a key to breakthroughs in understanding. I believe that efforts to move in that direction may eventually pay off, but not without some big advance in principles of brain-behavior relations. Several contributors in the volume highlight this knowledge gap, which is expressed clearly at the close of a Wikipedia article on Connectomes:
Just as detailed road maps of the earth's surface do not tell us much about the kind of vehicles that travel those roads or what cargo they are hauling, to understand how neural structures result in specific functional behavior such as consciousness, it is necessary to build theories that relate functions to anatomical connectivity .
The section on “Computation” covers extensive work on computer analysis of brain circuit operations and initial planning for how to deal with the massive data generated by new techniques to monitor the activity of thousands of cells at the same time. (As a former brain researcher, I found the method was way cool, involving the genetic insertion of DNA for a protein that fluoresces with the calcium fluxes associated with synaptic activity and microscopy which allows a “read” of cell activity changes in planar sheets processed by focal plane).
This section leads naturally to the following one, “Simulation of the Brain”. The hope is that the field of artificial intelligence can get out of the doldrums it’s been in since the 60’s by emulating the circuit operations of real brains. The efforts at simulation of activity patterns of various networks involved in behaviors or cognitive tasks are expected benefit from checking of predictions with performance of real operational patterns, and, in turn, simulation constructs that work well should be applicable as algorithms to make sense of the vast data streams of neuronal activity sequences from live brains. It feels like “pie in the sky” to me, but, hey, like Browning wrote, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, else what’s a heaven for.” This applies especially to a short following section dealing with implications for understanding human language. Ditto for the dream of rapid advancement in solutions for mental illness, Alzheimers, autism, etc. I got the most mileage out of brief representation from the field of rehabilitation and the promise of effective brain-machine interfaces, a chapter placed in a final section called “Implications.”
This book is not something I can recommend to satisfy the interests of average readers. I would recommend instead a book of more open speculation by the physicist Kaku, The Future of the Mind, whose goal was to guess where we will be in 100 years. However, the book may be important for most neuroscientists to peruse, despite the relatively small fraction of the roughly 40,000 neuroscientists worldwide working in areas related to the topics covered in the book. It would give them a chance to sample the big ambitions afloat and to understand where a lot of research funding is going to be being focused.
In 2013, President Obama announced the launch a massive joint federal and private industry effort called the BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies), and by 2014 the level of investment surpassed $300 million. A parallel ambitious initiative was started in Europe called the Human Brain Project . By theory scientists from multiple disciplines are to work together instead of in competing isolated siloes. Work at the Allen Institute for Brain Research, which was started on the human brain simulation goal by a former Microsoft co-founder, seems to adhere nicely to this model of broad collaboration. Otherwise, I am dubious that the initiatives will yield the same level of bang for the buck as the Human Genome Project they are being compared to ($3.8 billion investment yielding an economic output estimated at about 800 billion). Then again, I had my doubts about the wisdom of that project and worried at the time about it taking funding from more fruitful work.
This book was provided as a e-book by the published through the Netgalley program.
October 19, 2016
I didn't get to finish this book. I had borrowed it from my university's library and they didn't let me keep it more than a couple of days straight. But since the book is a collection of essays, it really doesn't matter if you read it through.
It could be a good choice for people who want to get up-to-date with current progress in neurosciences and the outlook they offer.
It could be a good choice for people who want to get up-to-date with current progress in neurosciences and the outlook they offer.
February 8, 2022
A good 2015 collection of essays from the most prominent neuroscientists. Quite interesting to understand how are we accomplishing (or not) some of the goals.
March 28, 2018
I told the editor my name as he was inscribing this book for me after a science talk. Hey wrote: "To Chris from Gary" and drew a brain that looked more like a Cashew. Somehow that feels spot on given the book's subject matter.
December 5, 2014
In recent years there has been much discussion, and coverage in current scientific media, about physics (e.g.: relativity and quantum mechanics) and DNA sequencing (understanding the human genome). It seems however after reading this book that research into the nature and functioning of the human brain has not been adequately covered in the popular press and the details of this research are largely, unknown or at least underappreciated by the non-scientific community.
The Future of the Brain tries to correct this lack of coverage. The book is a collection of essays by twenty one of the world’s leading neuroscientists. Each presents the researcher’s perspective on the area of research carried out by his or her lab, and more broadly on the state of current neuroscience research.
For years I've heard reference to the seemingly philosophical question regarding "whether a human brain is capable of understanding itself". I for one have never doubted that it can, but after reading this book I have a better appreciation for the difficulty of doing so. Not for philosophical reasons but entirely due to the complexity of the organ itself.
Progress has been slow in the past but more recently, as tools are improving, more advanced techniques are being developed and as understanding the brain allows better and more targeted questions to be asked of experiments, the pace of advance “is staggering” (according to Anthony Zador of the Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory). According to Zador currently 30,000 researchers meet each year to share what they have discovered, so to say that there is a lot happening would be a gross understatement.
The challenge being undertaken by neuroscientists is enormous given that the human brain is composed of about 10 billion neurons, each connected to about 10,000 other neurons by synapses thereby creating approximately 100 trillion connections. In addition to the sheer numbers of neurons and connections, it is difficult to even see the neurons to map and understand their interconnections. Given their size, a light microscope cannot resolve neurons and synapses so an electron scanning microscope is required to scan exceedingly thin sections of brain tissue, one at a time, a very slow & error prone undertaking.
Quite beyond the huge number of neurons and the sought after map of their interconnections, brain activity is a dynamic process. All of the connections interact in real time in very complex ways to produce the activity we think of as awareness and consciousness. At present fMRI and electronic monitoring of a small number of neurons at a time is still used to view activity in the brain. Neuroscientist Rafael Yuste has however likened this to “understanding a television program by looking at a single pixel”. Clearly better techniques are needed. These are currently being developed.
Since the mouse brain is organized very similarly to a human brain, it has become a major focus of current research as a starting point to eventually understanding the human brain. Even with the much smaller mouse brain to deal with (only about 100,000,000 neurons), the problems remain daunting. New and novel techniques have recently been developed which are starting to make it possible to deal with the large numbers and complexity involved.
Anthony Zador has proposed techniques to engineer a random (and hopefully unique) DNA “bar code” into each of the 10 billion neurons to uniquely identify each of them. Each neuron would then be made to exchange these DNA barcodes with those that it is connected to using an engineered virus (based on the rabies virus that infects across synapses). The resulting combination of barcodes in each neuron would allow DNA sequencing to construct a database of all neuron interconnections. This would in turn allow a detailed map of all brain interconnections to be constructed.
The essays in this book describe various ways of attacking the problem by using new low cost DNA sequencing techniques and “big data” analysis through the use of high powered computing instead of the traditional neuron by neuron and connection by connection methods. Hopefully these approaches will move brain research into a higher gear. This is clearly the aim in at least two current major efforts, one by the US and the other by by the EU.
The BRAIN Initiative is a proposed collaborative research initiative announced by the Obama administration on April 2, 2013, with the goal of mapping the activity of every neuron in the human brain. Based upon the Human Genome Project, the initiative has been projected to cost more than $300 million per year for ten years.
The Human Brain Project (HBP) is a large 10-year scientific research project, established in 2013 at an estimated cost of €1.19 billion. It is directed by the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne and largely funded by the European Union, which aims to simulate the complete human brain on supercomputers to better understand how it functions.
In conclusion, a very interesting read !!!
The Future of the Brain tries to correct this lack of coverage. The book is a collection of essays by twenty one of the world’s leading neuroscientists. Each presents the researcher’s perspective on the area of research carried out by his or her lab, and more broadly on the state of current neuroscience research.
For years I've heard reference to the seemingly philosophical question regarding "whether a human brain is capable of understanding itself". I for one have never doubted that it can, but after reading this book I have a better appreciation for the difficulty of doing so. Not for philosophical reasons but entirely due to the complexity of the organ itself.
Progress has been slow in the past but more recently, as tools are improving, more advanced techniques are being developed and as understanding the brain allows better and more targeted questions to be asked of experiments, the pace of advance “is staggering” (according to Anthony Zador of the Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory). According to Zador currently 30,000 researchers meet each year to share what they have discovered, so to say that there is a lot happening would be a gross understatement.
The challenge being undertaken by neuroscientists is enormous given that the human brain is composed of about 10 billion neurons, each connected to about 10,000 other neurons by synapses thereby creating approximately 100 trillion connections. In addition to the sheer numbers of neurons and connections, it is difficult to even see the neurons to map and understand their interconnections. Given their size, a light microscope cannot resolve neurons and synapses so an electron scanning microscope is required to scan exceedingly thin sections of brain tissue, one at a time, a very slow & error prone undertaking.
Quite beyond the huge number of neurons and the sought after map of their interconnections, brain activity is a dynamic process. All of the connections interact in real time in very complex ways to produce the activity we think of as awareness and consciousness. At present fMRI and electronic monitoring of a small number of neurons at a time is still used to view activity in the brain. Neuroscientist Rafael Yuste has however likened this to “understanding a television program by looking at a single pixel”. Clearly better techniques are needed. These are currently being developed.
Since the mouse brain is organized very similarly to a human brain, it has become a major focus of current research as a starting point to eventually understanding the human brain. Even with the much smaller mouse brain to deal with (only about 100,000,000 neurons), the problems remain daunting. New and novel techniques have recently been developed which are starting to make it possible to deal with the large numbers and complexity involved.
Anthony Zador has proposed techniques to engineer a random (and hopefully unique) DNA “bar code” into each of the 10 billion neurons to uniquely identify each of them. Each neuron would then be made to exchange these DNA barcodes with those that it is connected to using an engineered virus (based on the rabies virus that infects across synapses). The resulting combination of barcodes in each neuron would allow DNA sequencing to construct a database of all neuron interconnections. This would in turn allow a detailed map of all brain interconnections to be constructed.
The essays in this book describe various ways of attacking the problem by using new low cost DNA sequencing techniques and “big data” analysis through the use of high powered computing instead of the traditional neuron by neuron and connection by connection methods. Hopefully these approaches will move brain research into a higher gear. This is clearly the aim in at least two current major efforts, one by the US and the other by by the EU.
The BRAIN Initiative is a proposed collaborative research initiative announced by the Obama administration on April 2, 2013, with the goal of mapping the activity of every neuron in the human brain. Based upon the Human Genome Project, the initiative has been projected to cost more than $300 million per year for ten years.
The Human Brain Project (HBP) is a large 10-year scientific research project, established in 2013 at an estimated cost of €1.19 billion. It is directed by the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne and largely funded by the European Union, which aims to simulate the complete human brain on supercomputers to better understand how it functions.
In conclusion, a very interesting read !!!
March 20, 2015
A very mixed bag of essays by neurobiological big bosses and stars.
As everybody predicts that the future holds a similar blooming of neuroscience as we saw in genomics, a book about it's future, as predicted by the bigest names in the field should be an exciting read, right? Sadly not so much, and maybe it reflects the issues as of the field. Almost half of the essays are layed out according to the same plan: there is an [awesome method]; there is 86 billion neurons (this number is present in at least half of the essays in the book); we would use the [awesome method] to map/simulate/sequence the human/mouse brain with the billions dollars that DARPA/Paul Allen/European Commission/Obama gave us, generating peta/zetabytes of data. It's not like these projects would not give us a lot of insight of how brain works, but some of the articles look more like a Soviet 5 year plan, with the projected outpoots of neurons and axons mapped instead of tons of steel (the essay from Allen institute talks about SOPs, QC and web interfaces for the brain map, much needed stuff, but not really visionary).It's of course not all like that - a lot of ideas, as for example Church's "Rosetta Brain/BOINC" or Maharbiz's "Neural Dust"
are visionary and showing that we could hope for new revolutions in methodology. In my opinion the best part of the books comes from the sceptics of the "Big Projects", especially pieces from Ned Block, Matteo Carandini, and Gary Marcus, which argue that we should focus on ideas and theories and experiments to test them, rather than hope that large quantities of different data would give them to us on a silver platter. In the end it's maybe telling that the cute sci-fi afterword imagining the state of neurobiology in 2064, predicts it's crisis after 2020s.
As everybody predicts that the future holds a similar blooming of neuroscience as we saw in genomics, a book about it's future, as predicted by the bigest names in the field should be an exciting read, right? Sadly not so much, and maybe it reflects the issues as of the field. Almost half of the essays are layed out according to the same plan: there is an [awesome method]; there is 86 billion neurons (this number is present in at least half of the essays in the book); we would use the [awesome method] to map/simulate/sequence the human/mouse brain with the billions dollars that DARPA/Paul Allen/European Commission/Obama gave us, generating peta/zetabytes of data. It's not like these projects would not give us a lot of insight of how brain works, but some of the articles look more like a Soviet 5 year plan, with the projected outpoots of neurons and axons mapped instead of tons of steel (the essay from Allen institute talks about SOPs, QC and web interfaces for the brain map, much needed stuff, but not really visionary).It's of course not all like that - a lot of ideas, as for example Church's "Rosetta Brain/BOINC" or Maharbiz's "Neural Dust"
are visionary and showing that we could hope for new revolutions in methodology. In my opinion the best part of the books comes from the sceptics of the "Big Projects", especially pieces from Ned Block, Matteo Carandini, and Gary Marcus, which argue that we should focus on ideas and theories and experiments to test them, rather than hope that large quantities of different data would give them to us on a silver platter. In the end it's maybe telling that the cute sci-fi afterword imagining the state of neurobiology in 2064, predicts it's crisis after 2020s.
Read
April 13, 2016Aimed at neuroscience researchers, not the lay reader.
February 19, 2020
An interesting book: sometimes a little hard going ....which purports to bring us up-to-date on what is going on in the world of brain research. I learned quite a lot. There are some massive projects proceeding which aim to map the brain in great detail...down to the individual neurons if they are able to do that. There is also a European project which is aiming to be able to build a model of the brain ...which can be used to model the various processes, chemical signalling etc.
Of course there are critics who say that even if we have this detailed model or map of the brain without the equivalent of "software" for the brain we will not have much insight.
New tools have been developed which can change the colour of neurons when they are behaving in a particular way...and a transparent fish is being used to observe multiple neurons at work simultaneously.
I also learned that there are many types of neurons....not just one. There may be as many as 1000 different types.....presumably each playing a different role. And whereas with a computer, the power supply is kept separate from computing and computing separate from memory but with nervous systems these things are interdigitated (interlocked). Scientists are already moving on from single neuron studies to working with networks of neurons and it is now possible to work with hundreds or indeed thousands on neurons at the same time.
I was interested to note the names of Ned Block and Hilary Putnam cropping up ....I recall them from my studies on the Philosophy of Mind. My overall impression is of a relatively new field of research which is powering ahead in multiple ways. As somebody said we might now be at the end of the beginning ....but we are still a very long way from understanding how the brain works. We have glimpses but the role of the glial cells is not well understood, and brains do not operate in isolation but are embedded in a body ...often containing specialised sensory receptor arrays....and genes are not everything; epigenetic variation comes into play....maybe triggered by alterations in nutrition or early stress and maternal care..which can generate functional changes to the brain and body. The psychiatric diagnosis of illness are labels of similar sorts of behaviour.....unrelated to any medical test. but it is now clear that schizophrenia and autism is largely due to mutation in genes...and particular mutations may manifest as schizophrenia in one person, autism in another, and intellectual disability or epilepsy in another. This is not exceptional. This is the rule. And psychiatric conditions can arise from mutations in many genes...maybe as many as one thousand. Not all these conditions are inherited. And most of these mutations are also found in people who exhibit no psychiatric conditions.
The authors indulge themselves with some speculation about the future in their last chapter. The main issue that I have with this is that they are kind of constrained by the technology of today and really don't know what break-throughs (or obstacles) might lie just around the corner. Nevertheless a really interesting book and I've learned a lot. I give it 5 stars.
Of course there are critics who say that even if we have this detailed model or map of the brain without the equivalent of "software" for the brain we will not have much insight.
New tools have been developed which can change the colour of neurons when they are behaving in a particular way...and a transparent fish is being used to observe multiple neurons at work simultaneously.
I also learned that there are many types of neurons....not just one. There may be as many as 1000 different types.....presumably each playing a different role. And whereas with a computer, the power supply is kept separate from computing and computing separate from memory but with nervous systems these things are interdigitated (interlocked). Scientists are already moving on from single neuron studies to working with networks of neurons and it is now possible to work with hundreds or indeed thousands on neurons at the same time.
I was interested to note the names of Ned Block and Hilary Putnam cropping up ....I recall them from my studies on the Philosophy of Mind. My overall impression is of a relatively new field of research which is powering ahead in multiple ways. As somebody said we might now be at the end of the beginning ....but we are still a very long way from understanding how the brain works. We have glimpses but the role of the glial cells is not well understood, and brains do not operate in isolation but are embedded in a body ...often containing specialised sensory receptor arrays....and genes are not everything; epigenetic variation comes into play....maybe triggered by alterations in nutrition or early stress and maternal care..which can generate functional changes to the brain and body. The psychiatric diagnosis of illness are labels of similar sorts of behaviour.....unrelated to any medical test. but it is now clear that schizophrenia and autism is largely due to mutation in genes...and particular mutations may manifest as schizophrenia in one person, autism in another, and intellectual disability or epilepsy in another. This is not exceptional. This is the rule. And psychiatric conditions can arise from mutations in many genes...maybe as many as one thousand. Not all these conditions are inherited. And most of these mutations are also found in people who exhibit no psychiatric conditions.
The authors indulge themselves with some speculation about the future in their last chapter. The main issue that I have with this is that they are kind of constrained by the technology of today and really don't know what break-throughs (or obstacles) might lie just around the corner. Nevertheless a really interesting book and I've learned a lot. I give it 5 stars.
October 2, 2017
Descent book. Slightly repetitive, but I learnt some cool new things.
Grid cells!!! I find these super interesting as I can really start to draw parallels between computer algorithms and how the entrohinal cortex's grid cells project to the hippocampus' place cells.
Ultra sound as an alternative to light for real time/in vivo imaging of the brain. Yes, I hadn't considered that, seems reasonable, but I want to see the energy calculations.
Using genetics to sequence the connectome. Huh, cool. By labeling reach neuron and then propagating those labels to downstream neurons and concatenating the senders and receivers labels we can recreate the graph of connections.
Otherwise, the general tend was; connectome + neurome (the different types of neuron - genetic history, morphology, fitting pattern) + circuits + ... some other stuff I can't remember.
Grid cells!!! I find these super interesting as I can really start to draw parallels between computer algorithms and how the entrohinal cortex's grid cells project to the hippocampus' place cells.
Ultra sound as an alternative to light for real time/in vivo imaging of the brain. Yes, I hadn't considered that, seems reasonable, but I want to see the energy calculations.
Using genetics to sequence the connectome. Huh, cool. By labeling reach neuron and then propagating those labels to downstream neurons and concatenating the senders and receivers labels we can recreate the graph of connections.
Otherwise, the general tend was; connectome + neurome (the different types of neuron - genetic history, morphology, fitting pattern) + circuits + ... some other stuff I can't remember.
December 26, 2021
This book is basically a collection of articles / scholar work on the current neuroscience research. I don't have a formal degree in neuroscience so this book actually did let me see the big picture. I have understood that there are basically two schools of thought in understanding how the brain works; bottom up and top down.
Near future will let us know which approach proves to be more useful. Very interesting read.
Near future will let us know which approach proves to be more useful. Very interesting read.
April 29, 2022
My ratings of books on Goodreads are solely a crude ranking of their utility to me, and not an evaluation of literary merit, entertainment value, social importance, humor, insightfulness, scientific accuracy, creative vigor, suspensefulness of plot, depth of characters, vitality of theme, excitement of climax, satisfaction of ending, or any other combination of dimensions of value which we are expected to boil down through some fabulous alchemy into a single digit.
August 2, 2021
I read an essay a day for a month and that worked pretty well given the density of the subject matter. I felt that this was more a book of what we don't know rather than about the possibilities for the future, although there were some interesting new things that I learned. Unfortunately, too dry for my undergraduate students.
September 17, 2021
This book won't be a fascinating read for most people (I know how smug that sounds, but I'm only trying to be truthful). I'm comfortable recommending it to "armchair neuroscientists" or readers that already have more than high-school level knowledge about the cortex and wish to get the pulse of this field of research from 1st hand sources.
October 5, 2018
DNF completely. The "big data is a possible solution to all of neuroscience" theme became pretty tedious. Occasionally there were interesting essays about consciousness and the application of neurotechnology to clinical questions.
September 7, 2018
Interesting but kind of dry and hard to get through
June 5, 2025
For if you desire reading long form ads from various institutions
January 2, 2024
Mainly focused on the current state of the art in neuroscience, some contributing authors also give philosophical perspectives regarding what may be possible/impossible to expect from advancing our understanding of the (human) brain and our elusive consciousness. Some of my favorite chapters are:
Anthony Zador, "The Connectome as a DNA Sequencing Problem"
May-Britt Moser & Edvard I. Moser, "Understanding the Cortex through Grid Cells"
Jeremy Freeman, "Large-scale Neuroscience: from Analytics to Insight"
Anthony Zador, "The Connectome as a DNA Sequencing Problem"
May-Britt Moser & Edvard I. Moser, "Understanding the Cortex through Grid Cells"
Jeremy Freeman, "Large-scale Neuroscience: from Analytics to Insight"
May 29, 2016
I don't like giving up on books. This is actually somewhat of an understatement - I have been known to "hate read" for weeks on end rather than leave a book unfinished. So when I say that I gave up on this one *twice* before finally going back to it in desperation due to a lack of anything else on hand, it means the first few chapters were very, very offputting. Much to my surprise, the compendium gradually became more engaging to me, and the final few chapters were even achieving of interesting. (Ok, not the last one, way to cutesy for me).
Now believe it or not, this isn't necessarily a criticism of the book. Popular science books vary enormously in intended authorship, and I'm pretty good at plowing through when something is clearly aimed at someone else and accepting this is not "my" book. It is often a marketing issue - in this case, this book is marketed as explaining the future of neuroscience, but would be better marketed as "a bunch of articles by scientists talking about the projects they are trying to get funded". As you can imagine, this is pretty varied in results: and a key thing to understand going in is that there is a lot more focus on explaining what technology can do for mapping/examining/explaining/recording brain functioning than discussion of that functioning itself.Then for some inexplicable reason, the first few chapters are by far the least interesting to anybody, reading a lot more like a grant proposal than well, an actual explanation of sciency stuff. Mind you, all first five articles on brain mapping are a bit like that: the last couple start to argue a little more about why their way might be more useful than another way, or even why different ways have different uses, and this at least gives the lay reader a reason to carefully step through the dense material.
The book got more interesting from there. Or possibly it broke me. Either way, as a librarian with a humanities degree and a lay interest, I gave up on understanding *all* (Cough, most, cough) of the detail and continued reading pulling out what I can. And surprised myself by how much I did. Including:
*Large scale data analysis - i.e. what computers can do now - is likely to be about to engender some huge leaps forward in what we know about the brain - particularly our understanding of how it all fits together and our ability to "map" structures and functions;
*DNA mapping technology combined with genetic engineering has already transformed neuroscience, allowing all kinds of ingenious ways to track and map the workings of mouse brains. Combining this with the capacity to process and sort enormous amounts of data is what might mean we can understand so much more soon - at least about mouse brains;
*Neither of these things will necessarily mean we understand better how the biology of the brain results in human behaviour - actually, so little about the brain is understood that much of the science is putting together scattered things we understand without even really knowing if the information combined belongs together;
*This is not the same thing as saying scientists don't know anything - actually science knows a lot - it is just that there is rather a lot more to know;
*I am very glad not to be a genetically engineered mouse. The idea of genetically engineering a unique identifier string into every neuron of some poor mouse's brain and then genetic sequencing the dna to track the pattern of neurons is both one of the most brilliant and downright creepy things I have ever read. I really want to benefit from the results and I'm not sure what that says about me;
*To get to understanding mental illness - well, the most promising approach seems to consist of isolating groups of people with particular gene mutations AND a common mental illness and studying them intensely. I remain skeptical of these approaches, so I'm not holding my breath. But still, to move beyond labelling and managing diseases purely from symptom clusters would be good.
The last few chapters, which deal with implications and downsides, are predictably much more interesting, as they discuss slightly more big picture issues. I particularly loved Leah Krubitzer's chapter dealing with the problems of trying to view the brain in isolation from the body and environment it is part of, and constantly engaged with it.
In the end, the book left me grappling with far in its infancy neuroscience really is, while, as always, endlessly impressed with the quality of thinking and passion and genius engaging with it.
Now believe it or not, this isn't necessarily a criticism of the book. Popular science books vary enormously in intended authorship, and I'm pretty good at plowing through when something is clearly aimed at someone else and accepting this is not "my" book. It is often a marketing issue - in this case, this book is marketed as explaining the future of neuroscience, but would be better marketed as "a bunch of articles by scientists talking about the projects they are trying to get funded". As you can imagine, this is pretty varied in results: and a key thing to understand going in is that there is a lot more focus on explaining what technology can do for mapping/examining/explaining/recording brain functioning than discussion of that functioning itself.Then for some inexplicable reason, the first few chapters are by far the least interesting to anybody, reading a lot more like a grant proposal than well, an actual explanation of sciency stuff. Mind you, all first five articles on brain mapping are a bit like that: the last couple start to argue a little more about why their way might be more useful than another way, or even why different ways have different uses, and this at least gives the lay reader a reason to carefully step through the dense material.
The book got more interesting from there. Or possibly it broke me. Either way, as a librarian with a humanities degree and a lay interest, I gave up on understanding *all* (Cough, most, cough) of the detail and continued reading pulling out what I can. And surprised myself by how much I did. Including:
*Large scale data analysis - i.e. what computers can do now - is likely to be about to engender some huge leaps forward in what we know about the brain - particularly our understanding of how it all fits together and our ability to "map" structures and functions;
*DNA mapping technology combined with genetic engineering has already transformed neuroscience, allowing all kinds of ingenious ways to track and map the workings of mouse brains. Combining this with the capacity to process and sort enormous amounts of data is what might mean we can understand so much more soon - at least about mouse brains;
*Neither of these things will necessarily mean we understand better how the biology of the brain results in human behaviour - actually, so little about the brain is understood that much of the science is putting together scattered things we understand without even really knowing if the information combined belongs together;
*This is not the same thing as saying scientists don't know anything - actually science knows a lot - it is just that there is rather a lot more to know;
*I am very glad not to be a genetically engineered mouse. The idea of genetically engineering a unique identifier string into every neuron of some poor mouse's brain and then genetic sequencing the dna to track the pattern of neurons is both one of the most brilliant and downright creepy things I have ever read. I really want to benefit from the results and I'm not sure what that says about me;
*To get to understanding mental illness - well, the most promising approach seems to consist of isolating groups of people with particular gene mutations AND a common mental illness and studying them intensely. I remain skeptical of these approaches, so I'm not holding my breath. But still, to move beyond labelling and managing diseases purely from symptom clusters would be good.
The last few chapters, which deal with implications and downsides, are predictably much more interesting, as they discuss slightly more big picture issues. I particularly loved Leah Krubitzer's chapter dealing with the problems of trying to view the brain in isolation from the body and environment it is part of, and constantly engaged with it.
In the end, the book left me grappling with far in its infancy neuroscience really is, while, as always, endlessly impressed with the quality of thinking and passion and genius engaging with it.
March 15, 2017
Interesting
An interesting and entertaining book, puts us in perspective the news in neuroscience and the future that they would ask doing
An interesting and entertaining book, puts us in perspective the news in neuroscience and the future that they would ask doing
December 12, 2014
‘The Future of the Brain’ is an extensive overview of current research into the neuroscience of the brain, encompassing a wide range of disciplines from genetics to computing, as well as the type hardware that can be used to directly link the brain with the world outside (such as cochlea implants, and the potential of restoration of sight). The book is composed of contributions from very diverse fields, which the editors have systematically organised into a text that, given the extent of the different approaches, achieves a sense of a logical progression through a huge and rapidly expanding arena. Certainly the sheer volume of contributions and the complexity of the subjects might have made for a volume of dry and confusing technical facts. However, great care has been taken to thematise and link the different essays that have been largely written to inform through engaging narrative. Like the brain, this book has been put together with a view to the world around it and the interconnectedness of the many different systems involved in the function of this special organ.
As well as a thorough presentation of empirical work, there is also the pragmatic view of how the research is funded and why; the most obvious reason being conditions such as Alzheimer’s, dementia, schizophrenia and other psychiatric conditions. The contributors acknowledge that although a better understanding of these conditions might lead to successful treatments we are still some way from this goal. So, in the typical thoroughness of this book, there is a discussion of the ethical issues arising from the results of research being used by unscrupulous individuals for personal profit who might inappropriately claim to provide life-changing treatments.
There is much here for a science fiction writer for whom the final chapter of the book might prove particularly interesting, as it is a retrospective of neuroscience related by a time traveller from the future. It is a novel way of presenting a brief overview of the current history of neuroscience research, but also where the discipline may be going.
‘The Future of the Brain’ has been written to reach a wide audience, although a reader without a science background would have to apply themselves to some of the more technical chapters. There are plenty of illustrations, but some of the more complex arguments could do with more diagrams to smooth the flow of the discussion. There is such a wealth of information within the book that even someone proficient in life sciences will need to make notes in order to follow some of the discussions and make appropriate links to other chapters; although the editors’ commentary on each section is very helpful for orientation. It is an extremely useful reference book with a structure that makes it possible to easily dip in and out of, and one that will be read more than once.
As well as a thorough presentation of empirical work, there is also the pragmatic view of how the research is funded and why; the most obvious reason being conditions such as Alzheimer’s, dementia, schizophrenia and other psychiatric conditions. The contributors acknowledge that although a better understanding of these conditions might lead to successful treatments we are still some way from this goal. So, in the typical thoroughness of this book, there is a discussion of the ethical issues arising from the results of research being used by unscrupulous individuals for personal profit who might inappropriately claim to provide life-changing treatments.
There is much here for a science fiction writer for whom the final chapter of the book might prove particularly interesting, as it is a retrospective of neuroscience related by a time traveller from the future. It is a novel way of presenting a brief overview of the current history of neuroscience research, but also where the discipline may be going.
‘The Future of the Brain’ has been written to reach a wide audience, although a reader without a science background would have to apply themselves to some of the more technical chapters. There are plenty of illustrations, but some of the more complex arguments could do with more diagrams to smooth the flow of the discussion. There is such a wealth of information within the book that even someone proficient in life sciences will need to make notes in order to follow some of the discussions and make appropriate links to other chapters; although the editors’ commentary on each section is very helpful for orientation. It is an extremely useful reference book with a structure that makes it possible to easily dip in and out of, and one that will be read more than once.
February 13, 2015
This amalgamation of relatively short and approachable essays brings together a group of renowned neuroscientists who discuss our current knowledge of the human brain. If there are parts that seem too technical, it is because of the novelty of the field (e.g. neurotechnology). I believe that with time, maturity of these sub-disciplines will be made more approachable to the casual observer (such as myself).
However, as a neuroscientist who studies neuroglia, specifically microglia—the innate immune cells of the brain—I found this book wanting on this topic. It came up a handful of times and contributed only one paragraph to the entire book. At least it was a pro-glia paragraph. But this brings up a bigger issue and that is that we can not have a complete understanding of the nervous system without a complete understanding of the so-called ‘supporting’ cells, which make up half of the brain’s total volume. Current research has delved into the function of this non-neuronal, but very dynamic cell population and shown how important it is for appropriate brain function. For anyone wanting a more detailed story of how the ‘other half’ of brain is involved in normal brain development and homeostasis, I suggest
by R. Douglas Fields. On a broader note, because of the rapid acceleration in neuroscience information due to technological advances, which will only continue to grow through newly developed initiatives (i.e. the United States’ BRAIN initiative), this body of work is a delightful platform to look back on five to ten (or 50, as the last chapter presciently attempts) years down the scientific road and see how far we have come from the year 2015. Unfortunately, according the authors in the last essay, it may not be as much of a utopia as we might like, but progress will be made and this selection of essays informs us of how that will be accomplished.
December 2, 2016
Briefly, this book is a collection of essays that presents all the significant progress in the field of neuroscience the scientists are doing today to investigate, analyze and map the brain, a field that still has a long way to go, since we don´t know exactly how the brain works. It talks about the large-scale projects like the Human Connectome Project, EPFL´s Blue Brain Project, Paul Allen´s Institute for Brain Science projects, the NIH BRAIN initiative, the current advances and progress made, and the challenges they are tackling in the quest to map the brain at the circuit and functional level. The body of knowledge of neuroscience is still a collection of facts. It fails to connect the molecular level with the circuit level and the functional or computational level of the brain.
The book organize the essays written by some of the most prominent authors and scientists, to cover the most significant lines of investigation up to know: mapping the brain, computation, simulation and language. These sections are somewhat technical but you can follow it if you get to know a little from the neuroscience stuff. Then next sections are my favorite: skeptics, implications and a final afterword. It is like declaring the facts and then make a reality and objectivity check. I am with the skeptics. “…even today no single human understands how the brain works at anything but an abstract and highly simplified level” page 262. However, I keep with an optimistic view. At some time in the future, we will reach a practical and comprehensive understanding of the brain to apply it to health issues, prosthetics, new computing paradigms, as well as many other benefits that we still do not foresee.
Definitely, it is a very recommendable book for all of you interested in knowing the more interesting, mysterious and exciting subject today: our brain.
The book organize the essays written by some of the most prominent authors and scientists, to cover the most significant lines of investigation up to know: mapping the brain, computation, simulation and language. These sections are somewhat technical but you can follow it if you get to know a little from the neuroscience stuff. Then next sections are my favorite: skeptics, implications and a final afterword. It is like declaring the facts and then make a reality and objectivity check. I am with the skeptics. “…even today no single human understands how the brain works at anything but an abstract and highly simplified level” page 262. However, I keep with an optimistic view. At some time in the future, we will reach a practical and comprehensive understanding of the brain to apply it to health issues, prosthetics, new computing paradigms, as well as many other benefits that we still do not foresee.
Definitely, it is a very recommendable book for all of you interested in knowing the more interesting, mysterious and exciting subject today: our brain.
March 3, 2016
Cuando comencé a interesarme por el estudio del cerebro, hace unos 8 años, había muchas tecnologías, prototipos e ideas novedosas que actualmente son relativamente rutinarios para la mayoría de los neurocientíficos que escriben en este libro. Es asombroso el desarrollo y avance tan vertiginoso de nuestros conocimientos sobre el cerebro. Y fascinante que por supuesto eso solo desata más preguntas.
Estos ensayos abarcan el estado del arte y las predicciones sobre el conocimiento acerca del cerebro en áreas como la neuroimagen, la genética, la simulación, redes neuronales y áreas más polémicas como el estudio de la conciencia, además de las implicaciones que tiene todo esto en la enfermedad mental y el desarrollo de nuevas tecnologías. En general los autores son claros y la mayoría tiene un buen sentido del humor y menciona datos que el público general probablemente no conozca a fondo.
El libro cierra con una recolección de un viajero del tiempo que desde 2064 nos cuenta como han avanzado las neurociencias, desde la ética, la prevención y cura de ciertas enfermedades, los neuroimplantes y los algoritmos que simulan actividad cerebral. Incluso menciona lo que todavía en ese año seguirán siendo misterios. Será interesante -y emocionante- ver qué tanto se aproximan estas ideas a la realidad. Nos vemos, año 2064.
Estos ensayos abarcan el estado del arte y las predicciones sobre el conocimiento acerca del cerebro en áreas como la neuroimagen, la genética, la simulación, redes neuronales y áreas más polémicas como el estudio de la conciencia, además de las implicaciones que tiene todo esto en la enfermedad mental y el desarrollo de nuevas tecnologías. En general los autores son claros y la mayoría tiene un buen sentido del humor y menciona datos que el público general probablemente no conozca a fondo.
El libro cierra con una recolección de un viajero del tiempo que desde 2064 nos cuenta como han avanzado las neurociencias, desde la ética, la prevención y cura de ciertas enfermedades, los neuroimplantes y los algoritmos que simulan actividad cerebral. Incluso menciona lo que todavía en ese año seguirán siendo misterios. Será interesante -y emocionante- ver qué tanto se aproximan estas ideas a la realidad. Nos vemos, año 2064.
January 3, 2016
At the start I didn't like the book because it was a bit disjointed, but after the first three essays I realized I was reading the book incorrectly. This book is best read like a seminar textbook, where you take in each chapter on its own. The order is simply organizational, like an outline. There isn't a lot of flow between chapters; when a chapter references another, there is ~30% chance the reference is before the referenced.
That being said, this is a fantastic book on the current state of a very diverse field. You get the full stack of neuroscience, from cellular to philosophical, from academic to clinical & from doubters to sunshine pumpers. You will probably want to look up some of the authors too; I had read some of their papers while in grad school but discovering Jeremy Freeman's lab & Ned Block's essays was a treat.
The language is clear to any engineer or scientist; any other person could capture about 70% of the material. Some of the neuroscience regarding cognition and perception was extremely difficult so going slow there is very important. The same is true for the neuronal modeling. However, if you take the book as it is (a chapter every week, taking the time to digest the chapter), then you will be able to communicate on the current state of neuroscience as well as any grad student or professor in the field.
That being said, this is a fantastic book on the current state of a very diverse field. You get the full stack of neuroscience, from cellular to philosophical, from academic to clinical & from doubters to sunshine pumpers. You will probably want to look up some of the authors too; I had read some of their papers while in grad school but discovering Jeremy Freeman's lab & Ned Block's essays was a treat.
The language is clear to any engineer or scientist; any other person could capture about 70% of the material. Some of the neuroscience regarding cognition and perception was extremely difficult so going slow there is very important. The same is true for the neuronal modeling. However, if you take the book as it is (a chapter every week, taking the time to digest the chapter), then you will be able to communicate on the current state of neuroscience as well as any grad student or professor in the field.
December 27, 2014
A collection of essays on the state and future of neuroscience research. Although it's more accessible than research papers, it's definitely beyond a popular science book. As a collection, some will grab you more than others depending on your interests. For me, the chapters on brain simulation and on brain evolution I found most fascinating.
Beyond the details covered by each author, one comes away with the deep impression of how much remains unknown in the field. In fact, it's because of the tremendous advances since the 1990s that we've come to realize how far we have to go. We have gotten much better at gathering detailed data on bits and pieces, but we are far from understanding how all the levels fit together.
One thing that is very clear is that given the current state of the art, many of the claims being made of brain science today (and in the previous decades) are based on very coarse and primitive abilities to understand what the brain is doing. We will look back on many of the claims made of brain science today and shake our heads at the naivety.
If you count yourself as an interested layman in neuroscience, or are involved in related fields and want an overview, then I can recommend this book. If you want a
Beyond the details covered by each author, one comes away with the deep impression of how much remains unknown in the field. In fact, it's because of the tremendous advances since the 1990s that we've come to realize how far we have to go. We have gotten much better at gathering detailed data on bits and pieces, but we are far from understanding how all the levels fit together.
One thing that is very clear is that given the current state of the art, many of the claims being made of brain science today (and in the previous decades) are based on very coarse and primitive abilities to understand what the brain is doing. We will look back on many of the claims made of brain science today and shake our heads at the naivety.
If you count yourself as an interested layman in neuroscience, or are involved in related fields and want an overview, then I can recommend this book. If you want a
December 15, 2014
This book is among the most numbing I have ever read. The public is interested in the brain and writers everywhere have capitalized on this thirst for information; people want to know if we can manufacture artificial intelligence, use brain imaging to detect many types of mental disorders, and possibly use the information to help treat patients, and for other good causes; this book is not about this, rather, it consists of a series of essays setting forth the latest progress neuroscientists, and other others, have made towards the understanding of the brain. The technical language is overwhelming and reads like one scientist talking to another- it is not that they are spouting obscure verbiage to hide the fact that they have nothing to say (to paraphrase Steven Pinker in his excellent book, "Sense of Style"), they do- just not to the general public.The book goes into great detail about how scientists can lean much about the brain by tracking neural responses to stimuli; perhaps they should wire up a person reading this book and then they would know for sure how brain cells appear when bored.
November 16, 2015
This book isn't quite what I was expecting. I thought it would be more like "This Explains Everything": A collection of essays written by scientific experts, but written for the casual reader. The audience for this book is unclear to me. On the one hand, it seems like the essays are written for others in the neuroscience field, and are assertions of where the field needs to go and what needs to happen next. On the other hand, the essays assume no knowledge about the neuroscience field and each essay provides an overlapping overview of recent or notable works and achievements.
The essays can be a bit on the dry side.
In a nutshell, I would say this is book is an excellent insight into the *field* of neuroscience, who the major players are, and what the next steps are. The ideal reader might be a scientist that is interested in neuroscience but is not already in the field. I wouldn't recommend this to a casual reader who only wants to learn more about how the brain works.
The essays can be a bit on the dry side.
In a nutshell, I would say this is book is an excellent insight into the *field* of neuroscience, who the major players are, and what the next steps are. The ideal reader might be a scientist that is interested in neuroscience but is not already in the field. I wouldn't recommend this to a casual reader who only wants to learn more about how the brain works.
November 10, 2014
A very interesting collection of essays written by the most popular scientists among those who work in the field of neuroscience, grouped by topics such as language, consciousness and neuroimaging. Given the complexity of the topic this is not an introductory book or an easy reading, but for those who have at least a good prior knowledge of the subject it is a must.
Una raccolta di saggi molto interessanti scritti dagli scienziati piú famosi tra quelli che lavorano nel campo delle neuroscienze, suddivisi per argomenti come il linguaggio, il neuroimaging e la coscienza. Data la complessitá dell'argomento questo non é un libro introduttivo o per coloro che non hanno almeno una buona conoscenza precedente dell'argomento, per tutti gli altri é un must.
THANKS TO NETGALLEY AND PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS FOR THE PREVIEW!
Una raccolta di saggi molto interessanti scritti dagli scienziati piú famosi tra quelli che lavorano nel campo delle neuroscienze, suddivisi per argomenti come il linguaggio, il neuroimaging e la coscienza. Data la complessitá dell'argomento questo non é un libro introduttivo o per coloro che non hanno almeno una buona conoscenza precedente dell'argomento, per tutti gli altri é un must.
THANKS TO NETGALLEY AND PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS FOR THE PREVIEW!
September 12, 2015
Coming from so many different authors, inevitably some essays were more engaging than others. A lot was fairly difficult to understand, and I've taken three college courses in neuroscience. Also, I found the motive of the book rather irritating: a time capsule. While I appreciated learning about what are the current approaches to neuroscience, I don't think this book conveys as much as it could have.
May 16, 2015
Great way to learn about current research in neuroscience. The vastness of the field and the complexity of the problems are both brought into sharp relief.
Refreshingly, the essays are written at a level beyond popular science books, with details about actual experiments (instead of oversimplifications and optimistic conjecture). With some background in biology, say a survey class, the material is novel and manageable.
Refreshingly, the essays are written at a level beyond popular science books, with details about actual experiments (instead of oversimplifications and optimistic conjecture). With some background in biology, say a survey class, the material is novel and manageable.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews