Livewired

I clearly had a David Eagleman phase. But I remember this book and enjoying it more than Incognito. It was a tough tie between Livewired and The Brain. But based on what I can remember, this book goes into more details on neuroplasticity. Highlighting some extreme capabilities of our brain when pushed to the limits - like how a blind person can see through their tongue, by sensing pressure difference! I know. It sounds like sci-fi. But it is true.

This book goes on to talking about how our brain is a really flexible signal processing unit, and all it needs is a signal, typically from any of our sensors (eyes, ears, mouth, skin) and it can be processed in totally unexpected ways. For example (I am recalling this after 5 years, I might be wrong) - feeling the stock market through our skin through some specialized wrist bands.

I also remember reading about eyesight in much detail - for instance we don’t just start “seeing” things if we are born with functional set of eyes. We “learn” to see through experiencing the world around us. Similarly for someone who was prenatally blind and is now surgically given a set if new functional eyes, they don’t suddenly start seeing everything, but eventually learn how to see. My final piece of memory from this book is David’s hypothesis of why we dream - when we sleep, the part of our brain that processes vision is essentially off, but the regions that processes other senses are active. Usually more active brain regions try to take over inactive (or less active) regions, and the brain region responsible for processing audio is close to the vision processing region. And perhaps that’s why blind folks have better hearing. So, when we sleep, the brain forces our vision region to be active so that it is not over-taken by other regions. That’s perhaps why we remember vision aspects from our dreams more vividly than auditory, olfactory or tactile sensations.

Phew, those were more words than I thought I would use. But that’s paraphrasing David Eagleman, what what vague memories I could recollect.