Brain Science Podcast discussion

I just listened to BSP 23, "Sandra Blakeslee (Follow-up on Episode 21): Discusses plasticity and body maps."

My specific area of interest is finding dramatic improvements to how the mind does learning/education - albeit this may be impossible. My understanding is that one of the barriers to humans gaining more education is simply our inability to take in information from multiple sources at a single time - I can't read a book about neuroscience while at the same time listening to a lecture about history. Our senses and neural pathways don't manage full awareness of multiple subjects, at least not to the degree that would be needed for me to accomplish the above example. What struck me about this Blakeslee's interview is her description of how the body mapping allows the brain to sense what is happening around it in its personal space. So my question is, does the capability to use a body map constitute an additional path or method for the body to take in information, and if yes, is that a path or method humans could take advantage of for greater learning?

I just finally got around to listening the audio book "The Body Has A Mind Of Its Own." It's really well done and I would give it 4.5 stars out of 5. It has one of the best descriptions of multimodal representations and examples to support their description. There's far more than this in this book that makes it one of the better books on how the brain and mind work. Highly recommended.

I agree that this book is still highly relevant even though it was featured on the podcast several years ago.