Finding Places: The Search For The Brain's Gps PDF Download
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Author: Unni Eikeseth
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9811216932
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 135
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Book Description
Finding Places tells the story of the ground-breaking discovery of the cells that constitute the brain's positioning system — its GPS. The book takes you into the lab of neuroscientists May-Britt and Edvard Moser and lets you experience the work of the many researchers who revealed how certain incredible cells help rats and humans find their way. It details the discovery of the mind-boggling 'grid cells', which generate a hexagonal coordinate system and enable precise positioning and pathfinding. While giving a unique insight into the research process, the author also conveys what these insights mean for you and me. Have you ever wondered how your brain knows where you are, why your memories are tied to places, or why Alzheimer's disease causes people to lose their sense of place? These questions and many more are answered in this book.The author's goal is not only to document a fascinating scientific achievement that has revolutionized our understanding of the brain, but also to offer insight into the nature of science, and the imagination and creativity that lie behind topnotch research.Related Link(s)
Author: Unni Eikeseth
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9811216932
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 135
Get Book Here
Book Description
Finding Places tells the story of the ground-breaking discovery of the cells that constitute the brain's positioning system — its GPS. The book takes you into the lab of neuroscientists May-Britt and Edvard Moser and lets you experience the work of the many researchers who revealed how certain incredible cells help rats and humans find their way. It details the discovery of the mind-boggling 'grid cells', which generate a hexagonal coordinate system and enable precise positioning and pathfinding. While giving a unique insight into the research process, the author also conveys what these insights mean for you and me. Have you ever wondered how your brain knows where you are, why your memories are tied to places, or why Alzheimer's disease causes people to lose their sense of place? These questions and many more are answered in this book.The author's goal is not only to document a fascinating scientific achievement that has revolutionized our understanding of the brain, but also to offer insight into the nature of science, and the imagination and creativity that lie behind topnotch research.Related Link(s)
Author: M. R. O'Connor
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250096960
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 367
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Book Description
At once far flung and intimate, a fascinating look at how finding our way make us human. "A marvel of storytelling." —Kirkus (Starred Review) In this compelling narrative, O'Connor seeks out neuroscientists, anthropologists and master navigators to understand how navigation ultimately gave us our humanity. Biologists have been trying to solve the mystery of how organisms have the ability to migrate and orient with such precision—especially since our own adventurous ancestors spread across the world without maps or instruments. O'Connor goes to the Arctic, the Australian bush and the South Pacific to talk to masters of their environment who seek to preserve their traditions at a time when anyone can use a GPS to navigate. O’Connor explores the neurological basis of spatial orientation within the hippocampus. Without it, people inhabit a dream state, becoming amnesiacs incapable of finding their way, recalling the past, or imagining the future. Studies have shown that the more we exercise our cognitive mapping skills, the greater the grey matter and health of our hippocampus. O'Connor talks to scientists studying how atrophy in the hippocampus is associated with afflictions such as impaired memory, dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, depression and PTSD. Wayfinding is a captivating book that charts how our species' profound capacity for exploration, memory and storytelling results in topophilia, the love of place. "O'Connor talked to just the right people in just the right places, and her narrative is a marvel of storytelling on its own merits, erudite but lightly worn. There are many reasons why people should make efforts to improve their geographical literacy, and O'Connor hits on many in this excellent book—devouring it makes for a good start." —Kirkus Reviews
Author: Marc Jonathan Blitz
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331950004X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 145
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Book Description
This book examines the ethical and legal challenges presented by modern techniques of memory retrieval, especially within the context of potential use by the US government in courts of law. Specifically, Marc Blitz discusses the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and the Fifth Amendment's self-incrimination clause. He also argues that we should pay close attention to another constitutional provision that individuals generally don’t think of as protecting their privacy: The First Amendment’s freedom of speech. First Amendment values also protect our freedom of thought, and this—not simply our privacy—is what is at stake if government engaged in excessive monitoring of our minds.
Author: Michael Bond
Publisher: Belknap Press
ISBN: 0674244575
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313
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Book Description
A Wired Most Fascinating Book of the Year “An important book that reminds us that navigation remains one of our most underappreciated arts.” —Tristan Gooley, author of The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs “If you want to understand what rats can teach us about better-planned cities, why walking into a different room can help you find your car keys, or how your brain’s grid, border, and speed cells combine to give us a sense of direction, this book has all the answers.” —The Scotsman How is it that some of us can walk unfamiliar streets without losing our way, while the rest of us struggle even with a GPS? Navigating in uncharted territory is a remarkable feat if you stop to think about it. In this beguiling mix of science and storytelling, Michael Bond explores how we do it: how our brains make the “cognitive maps” that keep us orientated and how that anchors our sense of wellbeing. Children are instinctive explorers, developing a spatial understanding as they roam. And yet today few of us make use of the wayfinding skills that we inherited from our nomadic ancestors. Bond tells stories of the lost and found—sailors, orienteering champions, early aviators—and explores why being lost can be such a devastating experience. He considers how our understanding of the world around us affects our psychology and helps us see how our reliance on technology may be changing who we are. “Bond concludes that, by setting aside our GPS devices, by redesigning parts of our cities and play areas, and sometimes just by letting ourselves get lost, we can indeed revivify our ability to find our way, to the benefit of our inner world no less than the outer one.” —Science “A thoughtful argument about how our ability to find our way is integral to our nature.” —Sunday Times
Author: Christopher Kemp
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1782836535
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 186
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Book Description
"A NATURAL STORYTELLER" Mary Roach "BRILLIANT AND BEGUILING" Matthew Gavin Frank "CAPTIVATING ... WILL ALTER THE WAY YOU SEE AND MOVE THROUGH THE WORLD" M. R. O'Connor "AS ENTERTAINING AS IT IS ENLIGHTENING" Geographical Magazine, Book of the Month Within our heads, we carry around an infinite and endlessly unfolding map of the world. Navigation is one of the most ancient neural abilities we have - older even than language - and in Dark and Magical Places, Christopher Kemp embarks on a journey to discover the remarkable extent of what our minds can do. From the secrets of supernavigators to the strange, dreamlike environments inhabited by people with 'place blindness', he will explore the myriad ways in which we find our way. Kemp explains the cutting-edge neuroscience that is transforming our understanding of it - and tries to answer why, for a species with a highly-sophisticated internal navigation system that evolved over millions of years, do humans get lost such a lot? "I WAS THRILLED TO DISCOVER THIS BOOK" Robert Moor
Author: Tish Rabe
Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0375810994
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 49
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Book Description
Laugh and learn with fun facts about mapmakers, geography, compasses, and more—all told in Dr. Seuss’s beloved rhyming style and starring the Cat in the Hat! “You may travel the world, but no matter how far, with a map on your lap you will know where you are.” The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library series combines beloved characters, engaging rhymes, and Seussian illustrations to introduce children to non-fiction topics from the real world! Go on a journey and learn: • how to read the latitude and longitude lines on a map • why a hiker uses a topographical map • why mapmakers use a scale and legends • and much more! Perfect for story time and for the youngest readers, There’s a Map on My Lap! All About Maps also includes an index, glossary, and suggestions for further learning. Look for more books in the Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library series! If I Ran the Horse Show: All About Horses Clam-I-Am! All About the Beach Miles and Miles of Reptiles: All About Reptiles A Whale of a Tale! All About Porpoises, Dolphins, and Whales Safari, So Good! All About African Wildlife Oh, the Lavas That Flow! All About Volcanoes Out of Sight Till Tonight! All About Nocturnal Animals What Cat Is That? All About Cats Once upon a Mastodon: All About Prehistoric Mammals Oh Say Can You Say What's the Weather Today? All About Weather The Cat on the Mat: All About Mindfulness
Author: Arne Ekstrom
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691171742
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 213
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Book Description
The first book to comprehensively explore the cognitive foundations of human spatial navigation Humans possess a range of navigation and orientation abilities, from the ordinary to the extraordinary. All of us must move from one location to the next, following habitual routes and avoiding getting lost. While there is more to learn about how the brain underlies our ability to navigate, neuroscience and psychology have begun to converge on some important answers. In Human Spatial Navigation, four leading experts tackle fundamental and unique issues to produce the first book-length investigation into this subject. Opening with the vivid story of Puluwat sailors who navigate in the open ocean with no mechanical aids, the authors begin by dissecting the behavioral basis of human spatial navigation. They then focus on its neural basis, describing neural recordings, brain imaging experiments, and patient studies. Recent advances give unprecedented insights into what is known about the cognitive map and the neural systems that facilitate navigation. The authors discuss how aging and diseases can impede navigation, and they introduce cutting-edge network models that show how the brain can act as a highly integrated system underlying spatial navigation. Throughout, the authors touch on fascinating examples of able navigators, from the Inuit of northern Canada to London taxi drivers, and they provide a critical lens into previous navigation research, which has primarily focused on other species, such as rodents. An ideal book for students and researchers seeking an accessible introduction to this important topic, Human Spatial Navigation offers a rich look into spatial memory and the neuroscientific foundations for how we make our way in the world.
Author: George Michelsen Foy
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1250053897
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
Navigation is the key human skill. It's something we do everywhere, whether feeling our way through a bedroom in the dark, or charting a ship's course. But how does navigation affect our brains, our memory, ourselves? Blending scientific research and memoir, and written in beautiful prose, Finding North starts with a quest by the author to understand this most basic of human skills---and why it's in mortal peril. In 1844, Foy's great-great grandfather, captain of a Norwegian cargo ship, perished at sea after getting lost in a snowstorm. Foy decides to unravel the mystery surrounding Halvor Michelsen's death---and the roots of his own obsession with navigation---by re-creating his ancestor's trip using only period instruments. Beforehand, he meets a colorful cast of characters to learn whether men really have better directional skills than women, how cells, eels, and spaceships navigate; and how tragedy results from GPS glitches. He interviews a cabby who has memorized every street in London, sails on a Haitian cargo sloop, and visits the site of a secret navigational cult in Greece. At the heart of Foy's story is this fact: navigation and the brain's memory centers are inextricably linked. As Foy unravels the secret behind Halvor's death, he also discovers why forsaking our navigation skills in favor of GPS may lead not only to Alzheimers and other diseases of memory, but to losing a key part of what makes us human.
Author: David Barrie
Publisher: The Experiment
ISBN: 1615196692
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
“Just astonishing . . . Our natural navigational capacities are no match for those of the supernavigators in this eye-opening book.”—Frans de Waal, The New York Times Book Review Publisher's note: Supernavigators was published in the UK under the title Incredible Journeys. Animals plainly know where they’re going, but how they know has remained a stubborn mystery—until now. Supernavigators is a globe-trotting voyage of discovery alongside astounding animals of every stripe: dung beetles that steer by the Milky Way, box jellyfish that can see above the water (with a few of their twenty-four eyes), sea turtles that sense Earth’s magnetic field, and many more. David Barrie consults animal behaviorists and Nobel Prize–winning scientists to catch us up on the cutting edge of animal intelligence—revealing these wonders in a whole new light.
Author: John Edward Huth
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674072820
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 539
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Book Description
Long before GPS, Google Earth, and global transit, humans traveled vast distances using only environmental clues and simple instruments. John Huth asks what is lost when modern technology substitutes for our innate capacity to find our way. Encyclopedic in breadth, weaving together astronomy, meteorology, oceanography, and ethnography, The Lost Art of Finding Our Way puts us in the shoes, ships, and sleds of early navigators for whom paying close attention to the environment around them was, quite literally, a matter of life and death. Haunted by the fate of two young kayakers lost in a fog bank off Nantucket, Huth shows us how to navigate using natural phenomena—the way the Vikings used the sunstone to detect polarization of sunlight, and Arab traders learned to sail into the wind, and Pacific Islanders used underwater lightning and “read” waves to guide their explorations. Huth reminds us that we are all navigators capable of learning techniques ranging from the simplest to the most sophisticated skills of direction-finding. Even today, careful observation of the sun and moon, tides and ocean currents, weather and atmospheric effects can be all we need to find our way. Lavishly illustrated with nearly 200 specially prepared drawings, Huth’s compelling account of the cultures of navigation will engross readers in a narrative that is part scientific treatise, part personal travelogue, and part vivid re-creation of navigational history. Seeing through the eyes of past voyagers, we bring our own world into sharper view.
