Moheb costandi biography channels
This is my review of the book “Body am I“ on the topic of brain-body interaction and perception. It is authored by Moheb Costandi, a British science writer who specialises on neuroscience.
The book is a classical popular science treatise about the history of research and the recent discoveries in a specific field. Here, it is the neuroscience of bodily perception, the bidirectional feedback between the brain on one side and the limbs and the rest of the body on the other.
Much of the book is dedicated to the experiences of limb amputees: phantom pain, phantom limbs, struggle with prostheses etc. The history of the neuroscience is narrated, starting with the the surgeons’ experiences with the limb amputees in the 19th century. Early pioneers of brain-body neuroscience are introduced at length. Scientific progress in the bionic prosthesis technology is presented in the book’s final chapters. In between there are people who are convinced that their own limbs are foreign, or controlled by foreign powers, some only find peace when their otherwise perfectly healthy limb is amputated. Other psychiatric disorders are discussed, like anorexia, Alice-in-Wonderland syndrome and other misconceptions about own body.
Since it is a popular neuroscience book, there is a lot information about brain structure, the anatomy of the motor cortex and the somatosensory cortex, the famous “homunculus” on the brain is discussed. It becomes clear that patients with limb amputations and psychiatric disorders are the main source of neuroscientific insights for scientists. And sometimes, brain surgeries on anaesthetised but awake patients provide a unique opportunity to study somatosensory and motor functions by targeted stimulation of the open brain.
The book seeks to dispel the concept of the duality of mind and body, because the brain needs the body just like the body needs the brain to function. Not just to provide the brain with oxygen an Neurons are the fundamental cells of the nervous system. They're able to communicate with one another and with cells in other types of tissues (e.g., muscles, glands), and they can carry information from the rest of the body (e.g., sensory information) to the brain. This diverse functionality forms much of the basis for the extensive capabilities of the nervous system. Estimates vary, but most neuroscientists agree there are about 86 billion neurons in a typical human brain. Each of those neurons forms many connections—about 7,000 on average—with other neurons. This interconnectivity creates large networks of neurons that can transmit messages from one side of the brain to the other in a fraction of a second. If you look in any neuroscience textbook, you’ll likely see an image of a neuron that looks something like the image to the right. This is the image we’ll be using for our discussion of the neuron in this article. It’s important to mention, though, that while there are neurons in your brain that might vaguely resemble the one in the image, there are many more that don’t. That’s because neurons come in all shapes and sizes. There are tiny neurons of microscopic lengths and there are neurons that stretch to a meter (about 3 feet) long. There are neurons that have so many processes extending from them that they look like little bushes (Purkinje cells), others that look a bit like baskets (basket cells), and many others. So, while we’ll use an image of the prototypical neuron that is most likely to appear in a textbook in this article, just remember that the brain contains a wide array of neurons, and most of them look quite different from this one. It makes it a bit easier to grasp the anatomy of the neuron if we talk about some physiology first. While anatomy involves identifying body parts and where they are found, physiology is concerned with how those body p National University of Singapore Biography University of Cambridge Biography Fifty years ago, neuroscientists thought that a mature brain was fixed like a fly in amber, unable to change. Today, we know that our brains and nervous systems change throughout our lifetimes. This concept of neuroplasticity has captured the imagination of a public eager for self-improvement -- and has inspired countless Internet entrepreneurs who peddle dubious "brain training" games and apps. In this book, Moheb Costandi offers a concise and engaging overview of neuroplasticity for the general listener, describing how our brains change continuously in response to our actions and experiences.Know Your Brain: Neurons
Structure of neurons
Introduction to how neurons communicate
Participants
Professor Alastair Campbell
Professor Alastair V Campbell is the Director of the Centre for Biomedical Ethics in the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine of the National University of Singapore. He has been the Director of two other bioethics centres, in the University of Otago, New Zealand and the University of Bristol, UK. He is a former President of the International Association of Bioethics, and has been responsible for the academic programme of two World Congresses, in London in 2000 and in Singapore in 2010. He is a recipient of the HK Beecher Award, a Fellow of the Hastings Centre, New York and of the Ethox Centre, University of Oxford, Honorary Vice President of the Institute of Medical Ethics, and elected Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His recent books include Health as Liberation (1996), Medical Ethics (with D.G. Jones and G. Gillet, 3rd Edition 2005), The Body in Bioethics (2009) and Bioethics: the Basics (2013). He was formerly chair of the Ethics and Governance Council of UK Biobank and is currently a member of the Bioethics Advisory Committee to the Singapore Government. Dr Annette Brühl
Annette graduated in medicine at the University of Mainz (Germany), where she also did her thesis in Neuropsychopharmacology. Afterwards, she started her training in neurology, then moved to old age psychiatry at the Psychiatric Hospital at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and finally finished her training as a specialist in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. In parallel, she has done research on the neurobiology of emotion, emotion regulation and the interaction of emotion and cognition in affective and anxiety disorders, using primarily functional magnetic resonance imaging, and also pharmacological and psychotherapeutic interventions. During a postdoctoral fellowship at the Uni Neuroplasticity
About this audiobook
Costandi discusses key experimental findings, and describes how our thinking about the brain has evolved over time. He explains how the brain changes during development, and the "synaptic pruning" that takes place before brain maturity. He shows that adult brains can grow new cells (citing, among many other studies, research showing that sexually mature male canaries learn a new song every year). He describes the kind of brain training that can bring about improvement in brain function. It's not gadgets and games that promise to "rewire your brain" but such sustained cognitive tasks as learning a musical instrument or a new language. (Costandi also notes that London cabbies increase their gray matter after rigorous training in their city's complicated streets.) He tells how brains compensate after stroke or injury; describes addiction and pain as maladaptive forms of neuroplasticity; and considers brain changes that accompany childhood, adolescence, parenthood, and aging. Each of our brains is custom-built. Neuroplasticity is at the heart of what makes us human.