Brains Aflame: Out on the Frontier of Neuroscience with a World-class Researcher

By Daniel, Tony

Book Id: WPLBN0003548794
Format Type: PDF eBook:
File Size: 0.1 MB
Reproduction Date: 2014

Title:	Brains Aflame: Out on the Frontier of Neuroscience with a World-class Researcher
Author:	Daniel, Tony
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Nonfiction, Neuroscience, Educational
Collections:	Science Fiction Collection, Baen Library Collection
Historic Publication Date:	2011
Publisher:	Baen Publishing Enterprises


Citation APA MLA Chicago Daniel, B. T. (2011). Brains Aflame. Retrieved from http://gutenberg.cc/

Description
Description: There are whole millennia of human history filled with gibberish spoken about the mind, the soul, the brain, and about what it means to be a conscious person. For science fiction in particular, such speculation seems to be the first and last refuge of the writer with not much to say and it has produced a distinct genre of bellybutton-lint gazing literature over the years. Most of these products (I hesitate to call them books or stories) are about as interesting as having to sit through an inescapable encounter with someone who insists on recounting a particularly random dream to you—that is, they are tales full of logic holes (and therefore not fantasy, which depends on consistent internal logic for the magic to be any fun) and devoid of plausible storylines (and therefore not SF, which lives and breathes plausibility).

Summary
Summary: Tony Daniel picks apart the brain of Dr. Michael Devous, a Dallas-based brain scientist who is the powerhouse researcher in neuroimaging and neuro-pharmacology. Michael touches into many neurological disorders that people have gotten and how the continuous development and research done through neuroscience. He explains how with continuous research it has only benefited us in many ways in order to understand certain diseases or disorders that wouldn't have been possible in the past.

Excerpt
Excerpt: “There are ten billion nerve cells in an average human brain each branching into about ten thousand connections. A baby is born with many, many more of these connections than an adult. Maturation cuts connections rather than adds them. The technical term is dendritic pruning. One of the things we’ve learned recently is that you can grow more neurons and you can regain a good deal of brain plasticity and functionality. It’s all a matter of creating the proper conditions.”

Table of Contents
Table of Contents: