Livewired by David Eagleman.

  • What we think of as you is a vessel of experience into which is poured a small sample of space and time. Who you are owes as much to your surroundings as it does to the DNA inside you.
    • each of us individually has seen but a small percent of world but that is what our entire world model is based on. although if the world is compressible due to laws, then a small sample can suffice.
  • Unconscious actions are more rapid than conscious deliberation…. It all just proceeds on its own, seemingly magically, because typing has become a part of your circutry…. The advantages are speed and energy efficiency.
  • The expert’s brain has developed neural circuitry specific to soccer, allowing him to make his moves with surprisingly little brain acitivity.
    • this is counter-intuitive. if you make a beginner play soccer against an expert, the brain doing more work is actually the beginner’s. the expert’s brain is using much less energy.
  • In an enriched environemnt, branches [dendrites] grow more lavishly. In a deprived environment, branches shrivel.
    • this is why childhood and schooling can make such a huge difference. human brains are especially plastic at that age.
  • Humans have only about 20,000 genes.

  • …Even so, he took some of the isolated females and had them impregnated to see how these disturbed monkeys would interact with children of their own. The results were disastrous. The isolated monkeys were completely unable to raise children.

  • margin note - Constraints. No one is sad about not going to mars. Indians are sad about not being able to go to foreign. Past indians must not have been sad.
    • this is interesting. you can’t be sad about not being able to do something that’s not practically possible yet. but we might have future children’s who’ll be fighting with their parents about how their friends have visited mars multiple times but they haven’t yet.
  • Maps of the body are found where inputs enter the brain (somatosensory cortex) and outputs leave the brain (motor cortex). Areas with more detailed sensation, and those that are more finely controlled, command more real estate.
    • the brain is magical is all i have to say.
  • …The map of the body had reorganized. The homunculus still looked like a monkey, but a monkey without a right arm….. The brain adapts to the body plan. When a hand is amputed, neighbouring cortical territories move in to usurp the hand’s previously held territory…..In fact, if you merely tie two fingers of your hand togethor - so they no longer operate independently, their cortical representation will eventually merge to a single area.