Brainscapes: An Atlas of Your Life on Earth

by Rebecca Schwarzlose

A trailblazing journey through the maps etched into your brain, and how everything depends on them

Your brain is a collection of maps. That is no metaphor: scrawled across your brain's surfaces are actual schematic images of the sights, sounds, and actions that hold the key to your survival.

Scientists first began uncovering these maps over a century ago, but we are only now beginning to unlock their secrets. Our inner cartography distorts and shapes our experience of the world, supporting complex thought, and making technology-enabled mind-reading a reality. The maps in our brain invite us to view ourselves from a startling new perspective.

In Brainscapes, Rebecca Schwarzlose combines unforgettable real-life stories, cutting-edge research, and vivid illustrations to reveal brain maps' surprising lessons about our place in the world - and the world's place within us.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Psychology, Neuroscience, Health, Biology, Brain

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2021

About the author

Rebecca Schwarzlose is a cognitive neuroscientist studying the developing brain at Washington University in Saint Louis. She earned a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from M.I.T. and served as the editor of the scholarly journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences for three years. She has been obsessed with both writing and the mind since she was a girl. She now finds beauty in the brain’s capacity to represent and distill the big, wide world.

Reviews

[Erin Clemence · Rating 3 out of 5]

Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic ARC of this novel received in exchange for an honest review.

Expected publication date: June 15, 2021

Our brains are a myriad of maps; maps that tell us how to process sensory information, how to relate to the world, how to relate to others, and various other everyday behaviours we aren’t even conscious of. “Brainscapes” by neurologist Rebecca Schwarzlose is an examination of these maps, presented in a layperson way, through direct examples, scientific studies, and illustrations.

I am a bit of a brain “nerd”; I love to read about how the brain works and I am obsessed with its pure power, so I jumped at the chance to pick up this novel.

Schwarzlose does use commonplace language throughout this novel (with the exception of when she details scientific equipment or research and commonplace language cannot be used, but then she explains and describes in a way that a reader can understand) but it is NOT an easy read to say the least. There is a lot of information in this novel, and it’s not something that can be read in a day.

Schwarzlose talks about the brains role in sensory processing, how our brains are the same and how they are different (from both each other and others in the animal kingdom). There is a lot of fascinating information in this novel, especially when comparisons to animals were drawn, when we could see how they processed the world in regards to how we processed the world, and where, in fact, we were very similar. However, there is a lot of heavy, scientific bulk to this novel, too. Those who are more science-minded would enjoy parts of it and those who are more interest-motivated (like myself), would enjoy parts of it. It is a novel for everybody, and yet not one section is completely for one group of people.

“Brainscapes” is a unique and engaging way to look at our human brain, how it has evolved over time, and how and why it processes things the way it does. Regardless of where you lie on the scientific spectrum, this novel will leave you in (even more) awe of the magnificence of the human brain and its capabilities.

[♑︎♑︎♑︎ ♑︎♑︎♑︎ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Science writing for a lay audience is a challenge because unless you're Stephen Hawking you're tasked with making complicated concepts understandable enough and entertaining enough that your readers don't feel lost or bored and give up. For me, though, Brainscapes errs too far on the side of the enthusiastic and the anecdotal. I felt reminded far too often, as I read, that what I was learning about the brain was something I should be very excited about. I would have preferred to have been led to discover my own wonder. This is a Mary Roach kind of science book, and will likely appeal to her readers, but I'm more of a Konrad Lorenz kind of science reader.

[Mehtap exotiquetv · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wie kann man das Gehirn clustern und wo sitzt welche Funktion?
Was bedeutet riechen, was das Sehen und wie hat man überhaupt herausgefunden, wo welche Funktionen sitzen? Es ist ein spannender Einblick in unser wichtigsten Organ. Wie dieser CEO unserer Gedanken und Gefühlswelt und unserer motorischen Fähigkeiten steuert und wann wir die Fähigkeit verlieren das Steuer zu lenken.
Das Buch ist sehr flüssig zu lesen.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

The unfortunately new-age-sounding title is not representative of the solid and interesting and well-written science writing in this book, about how the brain can comprehend and organize spatial and other information, and then use those mechanisms to coordinate things like motion and memory. Good explanations of complex biological brain phenomena without being too complex or talking down to the reader.

[Clif · Rating 4 out of 5]

The human brain may be the most complex object there is, but that shouldn't put you off from exploring how it works.

This easy to read book explains what might be called the geography of the brain; what areas are responsible for processing what our senses take in from our surroundings. The story can be told from the knowledge gained from two main sources, injuries and magnetic resonance scanning in concert with electrical stimulation.

The behavior of people who have suffered strokes, blockages of blood flow to any part of the brain, has long been an indicator of what particular areas inside our skulls do for us. Ms. Schwarzlose relates many curious cases, such as one where a person could only sense food on one half of a plate put before him. He would eagerly eat the food on that half and ask for more, unable to see that the other half of the plate was still full. Rotating the plate 180 degrees brought him delight in seeing there was more to eat. Just because we consider our daily experience normal is no reason to dismiss what happens in our brains as simple!

She tells of experiments with animals that put light on how our brains, similar to those of animals in many ways, allow us to perceive and manipulate the world we know. She wants us to realize that the brain is quite malleable, arranging itself, wiring itself up in response to what it has to deal with starting with conditions inside the womb, continuing right through childhood and, though slowing considerably, never coming to a stop until death. This book should be issued for free to every pregnant woman and her partner for how it shows a good environment is a must for the sake of a well developed mind.

Anyone can testify to how different people are in their aptitudes and skills. The brain is certainly adaptable as we know from our ability to learn new things, but the speed with which learning can occur in youth compared to older age show how development is still proceeding early on, that you can form the arrangement of your grey matter as surely as you can the muscles that we traditionally associate with "physical education." But it is complexity, not bulk, that is built in the brain.

There is only so much space within the cranium so everything cannot be given all the real estate there that it might otherwise control. Instead, compromises are reached and over the long period of evolution, what provides an improvement in the odds of survival wins more space. The title of the book covers this concept of claimed territory. There are many illustrations showing how different parts of the body are disproportionately represented within the brain. The lips and nose, though small in comparison to the total surface of the skin, claim large parts of the brain. Of course we already know this by the extreme sensitivity of the nose and mouth compared to, for example, the back.

The author walks us through all of our senses, with shading of parts of the brain that are involved in each. But she tells of distributed processing; that there is no fixed spot for each function, but areas that may shift if one is injured or if a birth defect prevents a particular sense from being experienced. We know from car accidents that loss of function can occur with brain tissue destruction, yet at least a limited amount of function can usually be regained with training, new territory being claimed.

The only subject I noticed missing is consciousness and that is likely because it is the most difficult thing to localize within the brain, yet it is the single most solid thing we experience, the thing called "me" that is experiencing all the things that the five senses provide us. While the brain is a physical thing that can be seen and touched and dissected, the mind, though based entirely in the brain, is far more elusive. Perhaps this subject will be a future task for Rebecca Schwarzlose.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 2 out of 5]

The brain definitely has maps, and there are important things to be learned from how the maps are laid out and the nature and quality of the connections between sensory inputs and the neurons that they map to. But most of this is old neuroscience, and beyond that the overall metaphor of the brain as a set of maps that relate individual neurons to individual nerve excitations in a geometric layout that corresponds to the geometry of the inputs is highly misleading. That's not a good description of how the brain works. As Daniel Dennett has explained, it's not a Cartesian Theater. It's much more complicated than that. It's more like a Rube Goldberg machine of echoes and feedback loops with a complex integration into the rest of the body that includes connections between different brain parts, connections between the brain and various hormones and neurotransmitters and the Devil only knows what else. We are just beginning to figure these things out. It's dauntingly complicated, though we are making massive progress, so that the neuroscience of fifty years ago already looks like the Dark Ages. This is unfortunately not the best book for helping an interested layperson like me to understand the current state of the art.

[Jim Razinha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a digital review copy of this from the publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt through NetGalley. I set aside another brain book that I finally devoted the time to read (Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow) when this became available.

Our brains make literal maps of everything: visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, olfactory, movement, and many special maps that combine senses and intentions to help us relate to the world. Scientists have also found evidence of crossover neurons in maps, complicating things further - neural responses representing movement in the tactile map and what appear to be touch responses in the movement map. The maps sort out and economize the thinking and non-thinking.

You can thank brain maps for the speed and clarity of your senses, not to mention the fact that you have the headspace to harbor five senses instead of one or two.

I'd read Michio Kaku's 2014 The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind when it came out and he referred to some of the technologies at the time to "read" minds and mimic telekinesis (meaning, controlling consciously with minds). Technology continues to improve with respect to our access and understanding of these maps to the point that scientists have been able to help some suffering from paraplegia to restore rudimentary control over some limbs, even provide extremely limited visual cues to the blind.

This is an easy and yet not so easy read. Schwarzlose writes conversationally but the material may be unfamiliar to most, even readers of the subject. Be warned, though; there are cavalier descriptions of animal experimentations (and not just your average laboratory rats. "In other words, yes, it is possible to open up the brain and see the map in V1, but only with a great deal of effort." is a tamed summary.) This should not be a surprise as how did scientists gain knowledge before the recent advances? Still, she closes with a good observation, which may seem obvious but too often isn't: "Any book worth reading should change how the reader experiences the world, even if only by a little.

On findings of concentrations in the touch maps:

In other words, we feel more than we need to with our faces because our distant ancestors walked on four feet, like the pig, and survived better with faces packed with tough receptors. In this way, our perception of touch is shaped not just by our human bodies and human needs, but by the bodies and needs of the creatures from which we evolved.

More vestigial evidence of of that darned evolution.

On music training and its effect on movement, tactile and auditory maps:

But that does not mean that the brain maps of child musicians are superior to those of their non-musical peers. Piano lessons do not buy your child a better brain. Instead those lessons(or rather the hours of practice that they promote) buy you a brain that is better suited to piano playing and other tasks that require dexterity of the hands.

Take that, Baby Mozart hawkers!

On the evolution of attention... attention makes us better at perceiving particular targets, but worse at perceiving almost everything else. Think of the basketball bounce counting experiment and the surprise visitor (my example, not hers.) Attention is a necessarily finite resource.

There is no reason why a mind couldn't perceive and process all of that [a "firehose of panoramic sensory experience"] information simultaneously. And yet it is patently clear that our minds [as opposed to a hypothetical alien with the ability] cannot. Why is that?
To answer that question, recall the tough tradeoffs inherent in brain evolution. Your brain mustn't be too big or heavy, or demand too much fuel. Brain maps are one of nature's solutions to this problem - a way to reap the most from a finite brain.

On the understanding of the maps

Knowledge about a representation is a powerful thing. That;s because once you know how something is represented, you can eavesdrop on or manipulate what is being represented.

This raises questions as to how and ethics. Schwarzlose observes that some forms of "mind reading" are already possible or will be in the near future. Also, most of those technologies if even possible, are impractical. She does discuss the heath, privacy, and autonomous impacts to people.

The development of brain maps is crucial during our developmental stages (even in the womb) and Schwarzlose makes the case against hands-off parenting/child rearing:

All we can do is try to give children the enrichment and interaction that will help them develop diverse maps, because these neural foundations will give them the greatest ease and versatility for building cognitive ladders throughout life.

A note for the publisher on the digital formatting: the entire book had dropped letters in words, with spaces in place of them. It was odd, occurring on my ADE reader app on my iPad, in NetGalley's reader app also on my iPad, and on my Kindle. And it was pervasive throughout the text.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

An informative book, especially for those that are new to the topic. The author takes us through how the brain uses maps to interpret information from our senses, and other concepts such as time and number.

I was a little disappointed as due to the blurb provided about social media and brain manipulation, I was expecting a different book. There are just a few pages on this towards the very end of the book. The books main focus is on the senses and how they operate.

I would also say that if you have studied psychology at school or beyond then a lot of the studies will be familiar to you as she takes the reader through the classic studies of first discoveries. There are also lots of animal experiments which some readers might not want to read.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and author for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

[GONZA · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was interesting, but also a little bit boring because maybe the topic didn't lend itself much to popularization and the author is not really Oliver Sacks. That said, there are some things that are pretty well known, that I was familiar with from my psychology of perception and neuropsychology exams and then there are some new things that deserve careful consideration.
For many but not for all.

Questo libro é stato interessante, ma anche un pochino noioso perché forse l'argomento non si prestava molto alla divulgazione e l'autrice non é proprio Oliver Sacks. Detto questo ci sono cose piuttosto note, che mi erano conosciute dai tempi dei miei esami di psicologia delle percezione e neuropsicologia e poi ci sono alcune novitá che meritano un'attenta considerazione.
Per molti ma non per tutti.

I received from the Publisher a complimentary digital advanced review copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.

[Yaaresse · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like ending my reading year with a really good book.

We got off to a slow start, this book and I, but that's OK. The author needed to lay some groundwork, and it paid off in the second half of the book. The most fascinating parts to me where how the brain processes actual experience versus imagined or witnessed experiences -- and, boy, that could be a great argument against violent games and movies! -- and the steps the brain takes to grasp abstract concepts such as time or math. It's a fascinating read.

[Teresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some parts were more interesting than others. The book was well researched and I liked how the brain mapping was translated into real life situations and helped people with learning disabilities and mental difficulties to have a better life.

[Lauren McDermott · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book was so cool, talking about how the brain works to perceive the stuff we take in through our senses. it’s making me question whether i should’ve gone into neuroscience lol.

[Megan Tegman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started this book in January 2023… and finally managed to finish it at the very end of December 😂😂

It’s not like the book was bad; objectively it was super interesting and I learned a lot! But something about the writing style was hard to get through. Too wordy in an attempt to simplify things, with metaphors that just made concepts more confusing (imo). Felt like it draaaaagggggged on and on. Maybe would be a better experience with a physical copy rather than reading on kindle.

I will say though, it successfully updated my core understanding of the brain!

[Irene · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I already knew a bit about brain mapping, I still learned a fair amount of new information, particularly about MRI imaging, technological advances regarding implants and the possible ramifications of their use when in the hands of private companies, and very early brain development and how it shapes future learning. Absolutely fascinating.

[Kristi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Some of it the content can be considered pretty common knowledge, and some is truly fascinating to read about (Inouye and how he came across neuro-eye relative to the brain,) it has some good content for someone who is brand new to what the brain can do.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

The illustrations were well thought out. Take the chapter on hearing; The Cochlea physiology as represented by the piano keyboard is a very artistic metaphor if not quite scientifically accurate. The 18 mm of Cochlea laid out flat (actually in fluid) seems to provide a time series synchronization so ALL frequencies then reach the brain `map` simultaneously although unless i missed something she never actually says that. I think the audiologists call that regeneration .

The chapter on recognition, attempts to answer the deeper questions about how maps conspire together to form consciousness. The author points out that most studies in the field of neurology start with extreme pathos for example prosopagnosia. Apparently author was a student of Nancy Kanwisher, or at least they collaborated on some work(s) where brain mapping for facial recognition was isolated to a particular brain region (FFA).

The term map itself is often misused more in the topological [brain real estate mapping] sense than neurologically. I suppose i picked up the book because of all it's from similarities to other neuro scientists Lisa Feldman Barrett and António Damásio. The introduction of Coding theory reminded me of some of Saploski's lectures which concentrated on this Categorical perception issue. The reason we categorize tastes and smells generally may have more to do with the neuronal pathway [bypassing the hippocampus] than with the map of the final destination.

Her insights that language & mathematics are somehow extensions to memory and communication lead one to wonder exactly what constitutes situational awareness. The letter from Turing to his parents in a very subtle way is showcasing the shortcomings in the "Turing Test" although she never actually has courage to say that. Writing can be used to focus more brain maps than just vision so communicating ideas [as feelings] might have been authors intent !.

So while taste & smell are perhaps only perceived categorically the sight and hearing maps are trying to enlarge the physical spectrum from which they derive stimulation. Her explanation of total smell loss incurred by her own mother was insightful. The brains' use of attention in order to focus the loci of any given map was a rather new concept to me.

Perhaps i misunderstood what she meant by coding theory, but the symbology of language seems to have a lot to do with both memory and learning so why wouldn't that begin with perception ?. Her representation of visual mapping was not as complete as Damasio's. However the idea a cloud of neurons need to receive a mass of signals from these brain external sensors seems overdone in some areas. The idea that the code is translation variant where the map is not, appears as a new way of thinking about the brain as a data storage device. Her understanding of machines mirrored Kanwischer's as well, but i thought the snippet from one of Alan Turing's personal letters was an interesting way to look at language in the context of somatic ideations.

To think of coding in a practical way consider the utube mangled string identifying Damasio's (or Saploski) clip above. There may in fact be no additional information in the code, but it provides a faster lookup of the identified visual. In a hardware sense the brain map only `listens` for some coded strings ignoring others.

The diagram of the Bat having a map of echo times in order to have sonar like perception was a very powerful analog. The visual field of man is as much tuned with eye (and head) motion as it is with the light actually hitting the retinue. How color is then added to this stream of consciousness is not just the mystery of how cones (not rods) translate "information" `towards` the V1 map.

This would make the Bat's sonar lookup table something akin to a ASpecificIntegratedCircuit (ASIC) whose only function is to calculate distance to target or perhaps angle of attack. So in a very real sense vision (or any somatic signal) is not what is, but merely memory of what previously was. AS she correctly points out the brain is really bad at measuring time.

Motion is of course the miraculous result of vision. Learning to tie a shoe is less about vision then it is about memory, and motivation(s). Again coding in issues of working memory. A topic blissfully beyond the scope of this book. It does seem rather obvious that to aim the fovea, one must first initiate movement.

The chapter on strokes focusing on the work of Penfield was insightful. The ideas that brain stimulation can produce the same visuals as when the memory was first acquired brought home the idea that consciousness is less about what is present than what was present when the memory was first acquired. Using the patients' consciousness as a diagnostic tool to locate a brain pathology fascinates.

The book seemed long on ideas, but short on the science. Kanwisher in one of her neurology lectures points out that the MRI is perhaps lagging the actual event by up to 6 seconds which makes fmri's ability to integrate energy consumption with actual events a poor pair of glasses when looking into brain activity.

Overall a very worthwhile read to understand some of the milestone events in the history of neuroscience.

[Rossdavidh · Rating 4 out of 5]

If there is one fundamental idea that Rebecca Schwarzlose wants you to take away from reading this book, it is this:

"Let me be clear. This book is about real maps in your brain. I am not being metaphorical or using artistic license; there are actual maps in your brain. And not just one or two maps. Your brain is a teeming atlas of them."

This means that, for example, it is quite different from how computers store things on their hard drive. It may sometimes be that similar content is stored near to one another on the physical medium of the hard drive, but more often it is chopped up and put here, there, and everywhere (more so on Windows than on Linux, btw). What physical address on the hard drive is used to store, say, the colors of an image, is more or less just a matter of chance, and if you were to store the same image on multiple computers, there is no particular reason to expect to see much similarity in where it gets put.

Your brain, is not a laptop computer. It does not work like a laptop computer. It does not store things like a laptop computer, and it does not learn new things in the same way you might install new software on your laptop computer.

Schwarzlose starts with relatively unsurprising cases of this, for example the parts of the brain that receive direct (or almost-direct) input from your eyes, which bears a pretty obvious relationship to the pattern of rods and cones on the back of your retina (although, not quite as obvious as you might think, in a number of ways which Schwarzlose does a good job of detailing). Then she goes through our other senses, where more or less the same plan is put to use, since evolution hates to redesign from scratch, and much prefers to self-plagiarize. Then we move on to much less obvious maps.

We have brain maps for actions that we (or others) might take. We have maps for recognition. We have maps for just about everything we think, do, or perceive, and they get progressively more abstract, but still bear the traces of what they were originally evolved for. Some concepts are "closer" together than others, in our brain.

I should acknowledge the excellent use of illustrations, in most cases from Paul Kim. The sensory maps, brain region diagrams, and "homonculi" (where the surface area of each part of the body is magnified or shrunk to match the percent of our brain devoted to it) for many species, were well done and added significantly to the reader's understanding. Also, the "homonculus" of the pig, with that big snout, was entertaining as well.

It is, because of the nature of this book, no "spoiler" if I give you the closing paragraph as well as the opening one:

"...I hope you will take a moment, at the close of our journey, to marvel with me at the tiny miracle we carried out together. I spoke to you in my head. Perhaps you listened to me in yours. I wrote by imagining what you might know and think. And you read by imagining what I meant. We communicated by inhabiting each other. We shared a multitude of brain states over time and space. It is entirely normal and mundane that we should do such a thing. But that doesn't make it any less astonishing."

[Matt Hutson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author cautioned me that I might not enjoy this book. She made it clear from the start that it is not a guide on how to enhance your cognitive abilities. Rather, it delves into the workings of the maps in your brain and emphasizes that they cannot be altered or optimized.

My notes below provide a glimpse of what the book is primarily about. The subsequent chapters explore the various regions of the brain and the body and their interrelations.

Introduction
-Brain Maps reveal that the brain devotes Brain Energy to specialties, which means there are sacrifices to other areas.
-What this could mean is that when you want to get really good at something, you need to devote enough energy to it to make it stick. Your brain only has enough power and room to develop a specific set of skills that can be applied throughout several fields.

Chapter 2: The Tyranny of Numbers: Why the Brain Map Exists
-The brain only makes up 2% of the body but takes up 22% of the Brain Energy of all the energy you take it.
-It's important to consider where you direct your mental energy, as your brain consumes over one-fifth of your daily energy. For instance, spending an hour scrolling through Instagram will deplete a portion of your energy for the day, which cannot be regained until you've slept for the night.
-A map of all the surfaces of your body is built into your brain.
-Because of this, your brain and body have been adapted to make quick choices based on your brain's ability to map out the body.
-The Perceived Perception of your brain fills in the gaps of what it does not see, hear, feel, or touch.
-Even if there is an error present, your brain will try to fill in the gaps based on previous experiences.

Chapter 3: How brain maps determine what we see and feel
-Sometimes distorting a map actually makes it better at representing what people need to know.
-I interpret this as when people are so (Focus) focused on one particular aspect, they miss out on other aspects. Distorting certain aspects allows us to see what we actually need to see or know.
In other words, making a map smaller or more focused on the main objectives allows a person to get more done than if they focus on the big picture all at one time.
-How did It matter so much how your maps are warped: these maps warp your conscious perception.

[Ma'Belle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This started out slow and a bit more technical than I wanted at the time I was listening to it. Then, I turned the audio speed up on Libby to 115% and began to get more out of it. The book does get more interesting as it progresses, but at times the author's choice of language is already outdated (Gender essentialist when it comes to pregnancy, somewhat ableist things like "impaired" rather than "hard of hearing" - I might be nitpicking, but these things bug me for an otherwise rather progressive popular neuroscience book from 2021.)

Overall, it didn't teach me a whole lot more than other contemporary books on the subject, but it complements them. I was a tad surprised she never talks explicitly about the umwelten of other animals when comparing our brains.

Notes I took while listening: Your mouth and tongue have 30 different kinds of taste receptors for bitterness, compared to one or two receptors for every other kind of taste (taste + texture etc. = flavor). To identify so many kinds of poison, she says. Tastes aren’t inherent to foods; they’re relative to taste receptors that vary in different species. There’s nothing about sugar that is inherently sweet, for example.

Infant motor development is culturally relative. Example given of Kenyan farming communities vs typical U.S. babies, due to the kinds of activities the newborn would experience (more sitting, less lying down).

Genetic expression is also super culturally and environmentally relative. Socioeconomic status, childhood traumas, etc. affect behavior much more than whatever supposed “warrior gene,” for example.

She posits that east Asian countries have tended to form collectivist cultures as opposed to the individualist cultures of the U.S. because of the differences in growing rice vs wheat! In parts of northern China, rice is too difficult to grow, so they grow wheat, and subsequently are more individualistic! Wild!

Here’s a conundrum/paradox: people who feel powerless are much less likely to join groups such as unions. The more income inequality, the lower the chance of social engagement or to help someone in experimental settings.

Furthermore, poor people have worse health (AND increased crime levels just as much), but only if they are amid abundance. It’s not so much that some people are poor and have worse access to healthcare (it happens in places with universal healthcare just as much), it’s more that if people FEEL poor that’s a predictor of poor health. It’s about the disparity/inequality of wealth where they live.

… much later on in the book …

It’s easier to make liberals think like conservatives than the other way around. When making snap judgments about different scenarios shown in an image, liberals/leftists tend to explain things just as conservatives; only when given more time (or when tired, stressed, or under the influence of alcohol) does their cognition take over and explain things in a dissonant way.

[Mary Payne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book! Dr. Rebecca Schwarzlose does a great job of explaining how she and other neuroscientists are on the cutting edge of mapping the inner landscapes of our human family, helping us to understand and manage the experiences that have shaped our lives.

The brain contains many maps. each one connected to its personal sensory system, taking input from all parts of the body to allow the person’s perception to rapidly update and respond accordingly. Schwarzlose makes the point that, while an adult’s brain can be changed to a small degree, it is not as pliable as that of an infant. She says that vision problems, hospitalizations, and abuse can re-map a child’s brain for life.

Brainscapes reads like a novel, because the author tells many stories about the history of brain mapping and how it is beginning to impact the lives of people for the better. One of the most surprising experiments was mapping the brain of a woman in a vegetative state. Because she couldn’t move or speak, they didn’t know if she was conscious. However, after hooking her up to an MRI machine, they asked her to think about being inside her house, and the region that mapped locations lit up in her brain. And when they asked her to think about playing tennis, the section of the brain that processes movement exploded on screen. The comatose patient was conscious!

Five stars. Kudos to Dr.. Schwarzlose for a wonderful book. I’m already looking forward to her next one. I can’t wait to see where the research goes from here.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book billed itself correctly. It is about brain maps. It is largely more neurological than psychological, so it wasn't exactly what I wanted because I was more after some psychological insight. However, learning how the maps in the brain work is helpful for lots of different reasons. The really helpful part of understanding how these maps connect and work with your body is understanding that they can be changed.

Schwarzlose sets the book up so that the first part describes what the maps are and what they do. The second part talks about various issues that can happen with the maps, what effects they have, and how we learned about them. The third part describes how they are developed and how they can be changed (if and when they can). You need to understand the first two parts in order to get the third, which I think is the most helpful piece of the puzzle.

That you can learn and adapt to the maps that seem hardwired in your brain is an amazing fact. Most of the information in this book is amazing, in fact. That our brains are capable of so much and can have such weird effects on our bodies is astounding. That's what I love about books like this. They remind me that what's going on inside of us all the time is incredible and awesome.

[Tom Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well presented introduction to the Brain’s Operations.

Schwarzlose does a very good job of laying out the concept of brain maps and how they allow us to process the signals sent by the senses. Sometimes, though, I was not sure of whom she considered to be the audience for her words as she descended into the weeds of the details of their operation. At other times she illustrated her points with clear and interesting stories from patient cases and research.

There was some repetition since the mechanism of mapping is very similar for one sense and another. At the same time, her stories made the functions ever more clear.

I’d make one last observation as an Audible Reader. The author makes repeated references to the various locations of areas of the Brain as S1, V1 etc. I tried to determine from Apple or Kindle versions of the eBook whether there was an illustration of the Brain showing these labeled areas, but could not find one. While it wasn’t critical for the reader to know where exactly the area was, a PDF accompanying the text would have helped our visualization. Perhaps a Neuroscientist or Brain Surgeon would not have needed it, but I did.

All in all, this book definitely added to my appreciation of the awesome complexity of the Brain. Four Stars. ****

[Ahri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brainscapes - love the title. :)

This book was a great read for me personally, but I am a psychology buff. I would say that this book would be better read by those that have a little more knowledge/insight into Psychology 101 first before diving into this book so that concepts and ideas are a little more familiar. This is definitely not a book for those that are seeking a lighthearted, nonfiction book to peak their interest - this is more along the lines of a scientific book with descriptions on animal experimentation, which can be triggering/intense for some readers if you weren't aware beforehand what was coming.

A solid 4 star book.

Thank you Netgalley, author, and publisher for providing an ARC of this book!

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A look at the maps our brains use to process information from our senses, this book was written by a neuroscientist with a true knack for making science accessible to those of us whose backgrounds in the subject matter are, shall we say, lacking. It took me a chapter of slow reading to grasp the underlying concepts, but after that I was hooked. I loved the whimsical illustrations and the many stories that explained how we know what we know about the brain. Most were due to someone turning to physicians after suffering serious harm (being blinded, becoming a vegetable, etc); how fitting that today some of the greatest innovations in this area help people suffering from similar maladies. A fascinating narrative that addresses not only how our brains work, but why that matters.

[Glenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

All educators should read this book !!! All of us actually because it helps us understand our own brain’s patterns and hitches that may obstruct our own critical thinking. Nature has hit upon a design scheme that is good for all brains, large and small - your brain maps. Visual blind spots are compensated for by our brains “filling in “ missing information or what is probable. Brain maps overcome visual and computational impediments so are the hallmarks of how you perceive the world. There are brain maps for all the senses, for knowing, remembrance, imagination, comprehension, and communication. But brain maps can weigh us down as well, but there are ways to prevent that. Much to learn in this book.

[Summer Meyers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I loved this book so much.

I have been on a real brain kick, and this book filled the holes from everything else I have picked up. I get that I might be in the minority reading books about the brain, especially since I have no prior knowledge or understanding of the brain. I mean, I studied poli-sci and I'm a current SAHM. This gave me a much sturdier foundation on how the brain works.
Well written, and thought out, I would have loved if the chapter about brain development was twice as long. Schwarzlose is an excellent writer and I really enjoyed Brainscapes. Looking forward to her next book.

[Jph12 · Rating 4 out of 5]

At its best when it sticks to the biological workings of the brain. When Rebecca Schwarzlose ventures outside of her specialty (particularly in the last chapter), however, she runs into problems. She claims that brain maps are central to making us who we are, but virtually nothing in the book discussed personality. And despite her claims about the importance of subsidized preschool for poor people, there's virtually no evidence that such intervention leads to lasting impact and substantial evidence that it produces short term gains that disappear over time.

And I never could find my blind spot.

[Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting as far as it goes, which explains how regions of the brain map to our various senses, relying mainly on fMRI for modern studies. But in a way, it shows how limited our knowledge of the brain really is, in that while we understand which parts of the brain are engaged for various activities, we don't know how the brain actually works. Also, there is no discussion of the autonomous part of the brain, or things like the pleasure center, so we don't learn anything about these important brain functions.

[Bogdan Bercea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Science writings are indeed quite difficult to be followed for a mere reader. However, this book laid a better understanding of how our own brains function and understand they whys and hows of it. It has also laid a foundation an interest that I have just discovered for the evolution of humans, animals and of course, as the book wishes to highlight, the brain.

"Brainscapes" took me through studies of the brain and examples of its maps. Its simple enough cases helped me to think with this new and discovered perspective about how our maps and the capabilities of our brains.

[nofuss.exe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent motivation and instills a great sense of purpose

Takeaways:
- promote living circumstances for all babies/children
- look into protecting brain data through state/federal laws when it comes to technology linked to the brain
- rekindling where my mind is at now, making peace with it, and moving forward by working with the brain I've come to have
- I could benefit from a second or third reading, in its entirety or by section
- look into the mentioned concepts and studies that piqued my interest