Livewired by David Eagleman EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Authors: David Eagleman
- Language: English
- Genre: Neuropsychology
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
THE DELICATE PINK MAGISTERIUM
I magine this: instead of sending a four-hundred-pound rover vehicle
to Mars, we merely shoot over to the planet a single sphere, one that
can fit on the end of a pin. Using energy from sources around it, the
sphere divides itself into a diversified army of similar spheres. The
spheres hang on to each other and sprout features: wheels, lenses,
temperature sensors, and a full internal guidance system. You’d be
gobsmacked to watch such a system discharge itself.
But you only need to go to any nursery to see this unpacking in
action. You’ll see wailing babies who began as a single, microscopic,
fertilized egg and are now in the process of emancipating themselves
into enormous humans, replete with photon detectors, multi-jointed
appendages, pressure sensors, blood pumps, and machinery for
metabolizing power from all around them.
But this isn’t even the best part about humans; there’s something
more astonishing. Our machinery isn’t fully preprogrammed, but
instead shapes itself by interacting with the world. As we grow, we
constantly rewrite our brain’s circuitry to tackle challenges, leverage
opportunities, and understand the social structures around us.
Our species has successfully taken over every corner of the globe
because we represent the highest expression of a trick that Mother
Nature discovered: don’t entirely pre-script the brain; instead, just
set it up with the basic building blocks and get it into the world. The
bawling baby eventually stops crying, looks around, and absorbs the
world around it. It molds itself to the surroundings. It soaks up
everything from local language to broader culture to global politics.
It carries forward the beliefs and biases of those who raise it. Every
fond memory it possesses, every lesson it learns, every drop of
information it drinks—all these fashion its circuits to develop
something that was never pre-planned, but instead reflects the world
around it.
This book will show how our brains incessantly reconfigure their
own wiring, and what that means for our lives and our futures. Along
the way, we’ll find our story illuminated by many questions: Why did
people in the 1980s (and only in the 1980s) see book pages as slightly
red? Why is the world’s best archer armless? Why do we dream each
night, and what does that have to do with the rotation of the planet?
What does drug withdrawal have in common with a broken heart?
Why is the enemy of memory not time but other memories? How can
a blind person learn to see with her tongue or a deaf person learn to
hear with his skin? Might we someday be able to read the rough
details of someone’s life from the microscopic structure etched in
their forest of brain cells?
THECHILD WITH HALF A BRAIN
While Valerie S. was getting ready for work, her three-year-old son,
Matthew, collapsed on the floor.1 He was unarousable. His lips
turned blue.
Valerie called her husband in a panic. “Why are you calling me?”
he bellowed. “Call the doctor!”
A trip to the emergency room was followed by a long aftermath of
appointments.
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