Download Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, by Sebastian Seung
The advantages to consider reviewing guides Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, By Sebastian Seung are pertaining to boost your life quality. The life quality will certainly not only about just how much expertise you will gain. Also you read the enjoyable or entertaining books, it will certainly assist you to have improving life high quality. Really feeling fun will lead you to do something perfectly. Moreover, guide Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, By Sebastian Seung will provide you the driving lesson to take as an excellent reason to do something. You could not be worthless when reviewing this publication Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, By Sebastian Seung
Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, by Sebastian Seung
Download Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, by Sebastian Seung
Schedule Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, By Sebastian Seung is one of the priceless worth that will make you always abundant. It will not imply as abundant as the cash give you. When some individuals have absence to deal with the life, people with numerous e-books in some cases will certainly be wiser in doing the life. Why need to be publication Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, By Sebastian Seung It is really not suggested that book Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, By Sebastian Seung will certainly provide you power to get to every little thing. Guide is to read and also what we implied is guide that is read. You can also view exactly how the book qualifies Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, By Sebastian Seung as well as varieties of publication collections are giving below.
Do you ever understand the e-book Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, By Sebastian Seung Yeah, this is a really fascinating book to review. As we informed formerly, reading is not kind of obligation task to do when we need to obligate. Checking out should be a routine, a great behavior. By reading Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, By Sebastian Seung, you can open the new world and get the power from the globe. Every little thing can be gained with the publication Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, By Sebastian Seung Well in brief, book is extremely powerful. As just what we offer you right below, this Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, By Sebastian Seung is as one of reviewing book for you.
By reviewing this publication Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, By Sebastian Seung, you will obtain the most effective point to get. The brand-new thing that you do not have to invest over cash to reach is by doing it by on your own. So, what should you do now? Check out the web link web page as well as download the e-book Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, By Sebastian Seung You could obtain this Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, By Sebastian Seung by on-line. It's so simple, right? Nowadays, technology truly supports you activities, this online book Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, By Sebastian Seung, is too.
Be the first to download this publication Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, By Sebastian Seung and let read by surface. It is very simple to review this publication Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, By Sebastian Seung because you don't require to bring this printed Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, By Sebastian Seung anywhere. Your soft file e-book can be in our gadget or computer so you can appreciate checking out almost everywhere as well as each time if required. This is why whole lots numbers of individuals also review the publications Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, By Sebastian Seung in soft fie by downloading and install guide. So, be just one of them who take all advantages of reviewing guide Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, By Sebastian Seung by on the internet or on your soft documents system.
“This is complicated stuff, and it is a testament to Dr. Seung’s remarkable clarity of exposition that the reader is swept along with his enthusiasm, as he moves from the basics of neuroscience out to the farthest regions of the hypothetical, sketching out a spectacularly illustrated giant map of the universe of man.”—Abigail Zuger, M.D., New York Times
Every person is unique, but science has struggled to pinpoint where, precisely, that uniqueness resides. Our genome may determine our eye color and even aspects of our character. But our friendships, failures, and passions also shape who we are. The question is: how?
Sebastian Seung is at the forefront of a revolution in neuroscience. He believes that our identity lies not in our genes, but in the connections between our brain cells—our particular wiring. Seung and a dedicated group of researchers are leading the effort to map these connections, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse. It’s a monumental effort, but if they succeed, they will uncover the basis of personality, identity, intelligence, memory, and perhaps disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.
Connectome is a mind-bending adventure story that presents a daring scientific and technological vision for understanding what makes us who we are, both as individuals and as a species.
“Accessible, witty, imminently logical and at times poetic, Connectome establishes Seung as an important new researcher, philosopher and popularizer of brain science. It puts him on par with cosmology’s Brian Greene and the late Carl Sagan.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer
- Sales Rank: #104848 in Books
- Published on: 2013-02-05
- Released on: 2013-02-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x 5.50" w x 1.00" l, .75 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 384 pages
Review
Wall Street Journal's 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2012
Amazon's Top 100 Editor's Picks for 2012
Publishers Weekly Top Ten in Science for Spring 2012
“The best lay book on brain science I’ve ever read.”
— Wall Street Journal by Daniel Levitin, Professor, McGill University; author of This Is Your Brain on Music and The World in Six Songs.
“This is complicated stuff, and it is a testament to Dr. Seung’s remarkable clarity of exposition that the reader is swept along with his enthusiasm, as he moves from the basics of neuroscience out to the farthest regions of the hypothetical, sketching out a spectacularly illustrated giant map of the universe of man.”
— New York Times
“[A] bracing, mind-expanding report from neuroscience’s razor edge. Accessible, witty, [e]minently logical and at times poetic, Connectome establishes Seung as an important new researcher, philosopher and popularizer of brain science. It puts him on par with cosmology’s Brian Greene and the late Carl Sagan.”
— Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Seung argues intelligently and powerfully that the self lies in the totality of the brain’s wiring.”
— Nature by Christof Koch, Professor, California Institute of Technology; Chief Scientific Officer, Allen Institute for Brain Science; author of Quest for Consciousness and Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist
“With the first-person flavour of James Watson’s Double Helix—an account of how DNA’s structure was discovered—Connectome gives a sense of the excitement on the cutting edge of neuroscience.”
— NewScientist by Terry Sejnowski, Professor and Director, Computational Neurobiology Lab, Salk Institute; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Member, National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering USA.
“An elegant primer on what’s known about how the brain is organized and how it grows, wires its neurons, perceives its environment, modifies or repairs itself, and stores information. Seung is a clear, lively writer who chooses vivid examples.”
— Washington Post
“Sebastian Seung scales the heights of neuroscience and casts his brilliant eye around, describing the landscape of its past and boldly envisioning a future when we may understand our own brains and thus ourselves.”
—Kenneth Blum, Executive Director, Center for Brain Science, Harvard University
“Sebastian Seung can do it all. He’s widely recognized as a superb physicist, a whiz with computers, and a path-breaking neuroscientist. Connectome shows that he's also a terrific writer, as inspiring as he is clear and good humored.”
—Steven Strogatz, Cornell University, author of Sync: the Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order
“In Connectome, Sebastian Seung reminds us that the human brain has contemplated itself for centuries. This is an important book, full of refreshingly new science and engaging history, about the essential quest to understand ourselves.”
—Phillip A. Sharp, MIT, 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
“A landmark work, gorgeously written. No other researcher has traveled as deeply into the brain forest and emerged to share its secrets.”
—David Eagleman, author of Incognito and Sum
“Connectomics is emerging as a crucial and exhilarating field of study. Sebastian Seung takes you by the hand and shows you why. Connectome is a page turner—a book that should be read by anyone who lays claim to be thinking about the nature of life.”
—Michael Gazzaniga, University of California at Santa Barbara and author of Human and The Ethical Brain
Review
Publishers Weekly Top Ten in Science for Spring 2012
“the best lay book on brain science I’ve ever read.” — Wall Street Journal by Daniel Levitin, Professor, McGill University; author of This Is Your Brain on Music and The World in Six Songs.
“This is complicated stuff, and it is a testament to Dr. Seung’s remarkable clarity of exposition that the reader is swept along with his enthusiasm, as he moves from the basics of neuroscience out to the farthest regions of the hypothetical, sketching out a spectacularly illustrated giant map of the universe of man.” — New York Times
“[A] bracing, mind-expanding report from neuroscience’s razor edge. Accessible, witty, [e]minently logical and at times poetic, Connectome establishes Seung as an important new researcher, philosopher and popularizer of brain science. It puts him on par with cosmology’s Brian Greene and the late Carl Sagan.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Seung argues intelligently and powerfully that the self lies in the totality of the brain’s wiring.” — Nature by Christof Koch, Professor, California Institute of Technology; Chief Scientific Officer, Allen Institute for Brain Science; author of Quest for Consciousness and Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist
“With the first-person flavour of James Watson’s Double Helix—an account of how DNA’s structure was discovered—Connectome gives a sense of the excitement on the cutting edge of neuroscience.” — NewScientist by Terry Sejnowski, Professor and Director, Computational Neurobiology Lab, Salk Institute; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Member, National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering USA.
“an elegant primer on what’s known about how the brain is organized and how it grows, wires its neurons, perceives its environment, modifies or repairs itself, and stores information. Seung is a clear, lively writer who chooses vivid examples.” — Washington Post
From the Inside Flap
The bold and thrilling quest to finally understand the brain
We know that each of us is unique, but science has struggled to pinpoint where, precisely, our uniqueness resides. Is it in our genes? The structure of our brains? Our genome may determine our eye color and even aspects of our personality. But our friendships, failures, and passions also shape who we are. The question is: how?
Sebastian Seung, a dynamic professor at MIT, is on a quest to discover the biological basis of identity. He believes it lies in the pattern of connections between the brain’s neurons, which change slowly over time as we learn and grow. The connectome, as it’s called, is where our genetic inheritance intersects with our life experience. It’s where nature meets nurture.
Seung introduces us to the dedicated researchers who are mapping the brain’s connections, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse. It is a monumental undertaking—the scientific equivalent of climbing Mount Everest—but if they succeed, it could reveal the basis of personality, intelligence, memory, and perhaps even mental disorders. Many scientists speculate that people with anorexia, autism, and schizophrenia are “wired differently,” but nobody knows for sure. The brain’s wiring has never been seen clearly.
In sparklingly clear prose, Seung reveals the amazing technological advances that will soon help us map connectomes. He also examines the evidence that these maps will someday allow humans to “upload” their minds into computers, achieving a kind of immortality.
Connectome is a mind-bending adventure story, told with great passion and authority. It presents a daring scientific and technological vision for at last understanding what makes us who we are. Welcome to the future of neuroscience.
Most helpful customer reviews
101 of 105 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating and Unusual
By Book Fanatic
This is a very good book with a very strange name. "Connectome" means the entire collection of our brain's neuronal connections, the totality of how we are wired together. The subtitle "How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are" is a fairly accurate representation of what the book is about. I believe this is the author Sebastian Seung's first book and he demonstrates quite a talent for explaining complex topics to a general popular audience.
What I particularly like about this book was the material was not at all the usual popular neuroscience stuff. This book covered new ground for me and I think will for most other readers. Seung spends a decent amount of time in the beginning explaining some basics about neurons and how the brain works, but it is when you get into the central ideas of the book that it gets really interesting.
One thing I really liked about the book was how the author explained the technologies and challenges required to actually create a connectome of even simple brains much less a human. According to Seung we don't have computers powerful enough or the tools to even analyze a cubic millimeter of a bird brain's connectome, much less a complete human brain a million times that size.
The whole book was compelling and informative and I can easily recommend it to others. One thing to keep in mind however, is that it is very futuristic in a sense. Seung's ideas are very plausible to me but still unproven and speculative. The technology to validate them is not going to be available for many years.
50 of 55 people found the following review helpful.
Brain Matters
By J. A. Bell
I loved this absorbing book about neuroscience that took me through the past, present and future of the human brain. Though I'm not a scientist, I easily understood the challenges, clearly laid down by Dr. Seung, of finding connectomes. His very eclectic approach made it that much more interesting, as he argued from "first principles," and questioned all of his beliefs.
Prior to reading "Connectome," I had never heard the term, originally coined by Olaf Sporns and his colleagues in a 2005 paper. "A connectome is the totality of connections between the neurons in a nervous system. ... It is all of the connections." (xiii) "You may have heard of the $30 million Human Connectome Project, which was announced in 2010 by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). Most people don't realize that this project is only about regional connectomes, and has nothing to do with neuronal connectomes." (181) While Dr. Seung concedes that "in the immediate future, a regional connectome seems like the most useful kind for psychologists and neurologists" he is forward thinking to a day that all 100 billion neurons in the human brain are named, given a characteristic location and shape and are diagrammed. "To find connectomes, we will have to create machines that produce clear images of neurons and synapses over a large field of view." (140)
This is an ambitious goal. "We still don't know how many types [of neurons] there are, though we know the number is large. The brain is more like a tropical rainforest, which contains hundreds of species, than a coniferous forest with perhaps a single species of pine tree. One expert has estimated that there are thousands of neuron types in the cortex alone." (176) The connectome of a small roundworm (C. elegans) took seven years to "map" even though it has only 300 neurons scattered throughout its body. (xi) Seung imagines the human connectome could be completed by the end of this century thanks to rapid advances in technology for imaging the brain and slicing brain tissue, and high-speed computers to crunch the data.
This is all very fascinating and futuristic, but aside from connectome, this book is full of interesting information about intelligence, the effect of drugs on the brain, how the brain repairs itself after injury or stroke, as well as history and philosophy. For instance:
"Other animal species, such as lizards, are able to regenerate large parts of their nervous systems after injury. And human children regenerate better than adults do. In the 1970s, when physicians realized that children's fingertips regenerate like lizards' tails, they stopped attempting to reattach severed fingertips through surgery; now, they simply let the fingertips grow back. Hidden powers of regeneration might lie dormant in adults, and the new field of regenerative medicine seeks to awaken them." (221)
And:
"Neurons continue to grow branches well after birth. This process is called the "wiring" of the brain, since axons and dendrites resemble wires. Axons have to grow the most, since they are much longer than dendrites. Imagine the tiny growing tip of an axon, known as a "growth cone" for its roughly conical shape. If a growth cone were blown up to human size, its travels would take it to the other side of a city. How is the growth cone able to navigate such long distances? Many neuroscientists study this phenomenon, and they've found that the growth cone acts like a dog sniffing its way home. The surfaces of neurons are coated with special guidance molecules that act like scents on the ground, and the interstitial spaces between neurons contain drifting guidance molecules that act like scents in the air. Growth cones are equipped with molecular sensors and can "smell" the guidance molecules to find their destination. The production of guidance molecules and sensors for these molecules is under genetic control. That's how genes guide the wiring of the brain." (106)
For some inexplicable reason, I found the following most interesting:
"The need for inhibition might be the chief reason why the brain relies so heavily on synapses that transmit chemical signals. There is actually another kind of synapse, one that directly transmits electrical signals without using neurotransmitter. Such electrical synapses work more quickly, since they eliminate time-consuming steps of converting signals from electrical to chemical and then back to electrical, but there are no inhibitory electrical synapses, only excitatory ones. Perhaps because of this and other limitations, electrical synapses are much less common than chemical ones." (56)
Any reader interested in preserving his or her brain in hopes of achieving immortality will want to read the chapter, "To Freeze or to Pickle?" Cryobiology is examined scientifically as well as from ethical and philosophical points of view.
39 of 43 people found the following review helpful.
The World Within Web
By Tracy Marks
"Worthwhile things that have never been done can only be done by means that have never yet existed," Sebastian Seung tells us in CONNECTOME. Mapping the 100+ billion neurons in the human brain is certainly one such project, and we are far from having the means to do so.
But already, with the mapping and study of the 300 neurons in the C.elegans roundworm and ongoing development in imaging technology (such as the automated ultramicrotome), we are making strides toward understanding the structure and function of diverse neurons, and how their interactive network operates.
Author Seung is a professor of neuroscience at MIT, and a leading researcher on neural networks and the still-theoretical connectome. The term connectome, first coined in 2005, refers to the totality of connections between neurons. The field of neuroscience involves learning how neurons are strengthened, weakened, weighted and eliminated and how they connect and reconnect, rewire, and regenerate.
The first half of his book begins with chapters about: 1) the structure and role of neurons; 2) connectomes and their interconnectivity; 3) how memories are impressed and stored; 4) and genes. The next sections cover the development of imaging technologies and the lifelong task of reading and interpreting the voluminous data acquired.
Unfortunately, at this point, Seung comes across less as a scientist and more as a science fiction writer as he resorts to speculation about cryonics (brain and body preservation), uploading brains into computers, and immortality. The book would be much more substantial if he omitted the last few chapters.
Seung, however, is a talented writer with the unique ability to impart scientific theory in understandable language. Obviously possessing a highly associative brain himself, he is skilled at explaining fundamentals of neuroscience through the frequent use of everyday analogies.
He compares the process of dendrites spiking to a weighted voting system influenced by favoritism. All votes must be in before dendrites know they can spike, he tells us, further explaining that some votes count more than others -some neurons and their synapses transport more important signals than others do, and therefore have greater impact.
"If the axons and dendrites in the gray matter are like local streets, the axons of the white matter are like superhighways of the brain," he writes.
In another chapter, he briefly takes us on a "fantastic voyage". "Perhaps you are a protein molecule sitting on a molecular motor car running on a molecular track. You are being transported on the long journey from your birthplace, the cell body, to your destination, the outer reaches of the axon... To find an entire connectome, though, you'd have to explore every passage in the brain's labyrinth."
I was especially pleased that he compared RAM and hard drive memory to short-term and long-term memory in the brain - a comparison I make in computer skills classes I teach.
But I wish that Seung introduced us to the brain as a whole before zeroing in on neurons, and that he provided a detailed, labeled map of the parts of the brain. He included a lot of rough illustrations and diagrams, but few quality photos.
I thought that his discussion of factors contributing to memory was incomplete - he didn't even mention the emotional intensity of a learning experience, multi-sensory involvement, and mindful attention and intention, all factors I found to be critical during graduate training in education and psychology, as well as my personal brain fitness "workouts".
My primary criticism of the book, however, is that Seung doesn't differentiate enough between proven facts, generally accepted theories, his own personal theories, and pure speculation.
Nevertheless, his often chatty and informal yet highly informative writing style is enjoyable. His numerous and sometimes humorous analogies help us envision neural activity, understand the intricacies of the connectome, and appreciate the immense accomplishments and challenges of neuroscience. I rate CONNECTOME 4 stars.
Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, by Sebastian Seung PDF
Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, by Sebastian Seung EPub
Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, by Sebastian Seung Doc
Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, by Sebastian Seung iBooks
Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, by Sebastian Seung rtf
Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, by Sebastian Seung Mobipocket
Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, by Sebastian Seung Kindle
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar