Product Description

In this compelling, cutting-edge book, two generations of science writers explore the exciting science of “body maps” in the brain–and how startling new discoveries about the mind-body connection can change and improve our lives. Why do you still feel fat after losing weight? What makes video games so addictive? How can “practicing” your favorite sport in your imagination improve your game? The answers can be found in body maps.

Just as road maps represent interconnections across the landscape, your many body maps represent all aspects of your bodily self, inside and out. In concert, they create your physical and emotional awareness and your sense of being a whole, feeling self in a larger social world.

Moreover, your body maps are profoundly elastic. Your self doesn’t begin and end with your physical body but extends into the space around you. This space morphs every time you put on or take off clothes, ride a bike, or wield a tool. When you drive a car, your personal body space grows to envelop it. When you play a video game, your body maps automatically track and emulate the actions of your character onscreen. When you watch a scary movie, your body maps put dread in your stomach and send chills down your spine. If your body maps fall out of sync, you may have an out-of-body experience or see auras around other people.

The Body Has a Mind of Its Own explains how you can tap into the power of body maps to do almost anything better–whether it is playing tennis, strumming a guitar, riding a horse, dancing a waltz, empathizing with a friend, raising children, or coping with stress.

The story of body maps goes even further, providing a fresh look at the causes of anorexia, bulimia, obsessive plastic surgery, and the notorious golfer’s curse “the yips.” It lends insights into culture, language, music, parenting, emotions, chronic pain, and more.

Filled with illustrations, wonderful anecdotes, and even parlor tricks that you can use to reconfigure your body sense, The Body Has a Mind of Its Own will change the way you think–about the way you think.

“The Blakeslees have taken the latest and most exciting finds from brain research and have made them accessible. This is how science writing should always be.”
–Michael S. Gazzaniga, Ph.D., author of The Ethical Brain

“Through a stream of fascinating and entertaining examples, Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee illustrate how our perception of ourselves, and indeed the world, is not fixed but is surprisingly fluid and easily modified. They have created the best book ever written about how our sense of ‘self’ emerges from the motley collection of neurons we call the brain.”
–Jeff Hawkins, co-author of On Intelligence

“The Blakeslees have taken the latest and most exciting finds from brain research and have made them accessible. This is how science writing should always be.”
–Michael S. Gazzaniga, Ph.D., author of The Ethical Brain

“A marvelous book. In the last ten years there has been a paradigm shift in understanding the brain and how its various specialized regions respond to environmental challenges. In addition to providing a brilliant overview of recent revolutionary discoveries on body image and brain plasticity, the book is sprinkled with numerous insights.”
–V. S. Ramachandran, M.D., director, Center for Brain and Cognition, University of California, San Diego

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #148681 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-11
• Released on: 2007-09-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

From Publishers Weekly
What do golfer's yips, the ability to see auras and the hypnotic appeal of video games all have in common? Each arises from the brain's body map. New York Times science contributor Sandra Blakeslee and her son, science writer Matthew Blakeslee, begin with a quick overview of the sense of touch. According to the Blakeslees, body maps are created by the brain, using touch, to spell out the brain's experience of the body and the space around it. These maps expand and contract to include objects such as clothing, tools or even your car. Some of the more interesting subjects the Blakeslees cover include muscle tone disorders, phantom limb sensations in amputees and the inaccurate body images associated with anorexia. Sketches and sidebars explore topics in more detail, while a glossary explains technical terms. With its breezy this is so cool style, this entertaining book will appeal to readers who prefer their science lighthearted and low-key. (Sept. 11)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
This popular synthesis of a technical field in neuroscience explores how the brain constructs its models of the body. Entangled with the perception of self, these maps are multitudinous and dynamic, as experimenters have discovered. The Blakeslees ground the idea of mental maps in the work of Wilder Penfield, a 1940s researcher whose probes on the brains of living people localized which areas of the brain represent which parts of the body. Subsequently, scientists have refined the concept of body maps, a history that binds the Blakeslees' informative explanations of specific maps, case studies, and psychic disorders. Expressed in an amiable, we're-all-in-this-together manner, their tour describes one's personal space and its extension to one's clothes, tools, instruments, and sports gear. The body in motion generates its own set of changing mental maps, distinguishing the graceful from the clumsy. Maps are plastic, report the Blakeslees, yet they also have permanence: successful dieters may still feel overweight, and amputees retain a map of the missing limb. Varied and revealing, this will intrigue readers interested in the clinical perspective on self-perception. Taylor, Gilbert

About the Author
Sandra Blakeslee is a regular contributor to The New York Times who specializes in the brain sciences. She has co-written many books, including Phantoms in the Brain with V. S. Ramachandran, On Intelligence with Jeff Hawkins, and Second Chances: Men, Women and Children a Decade After Divorce with Judith S. Wallerstein. She is the third generation in a family of science writers.

Matthew Blakeslee is a freelance science writer in Los Angeles. He represents the fourth generation of Blakeslee science writers. This is his first book.

Customer Reviews

current neuroscience
This well organized and clearly written book presents complex information on the brain and nervous system in an articulate and clear fashion that is comprehensible for the laymen but not in any way "dumbed down". The authors use many fascinating anecdotes to illustrate the incredible neural systems of primates, and how indeed the body does have its own mind. This is accessible and intriguing neuroscience.

The mandala of the mind
Research on the brain has come far since the 1930s when Wilder Penfield of the University of Montreal was compelled to cut open the skulls of epileptic patients. The process meant the epileptic victim remained awake. It was the only way Penfield could learn from the subject who would describe their reactions to his gentle probing. The information, however, often led to relief resulting from Penfield's later precise surgery based on his mappings. In this comprehensive account, the authors - a mother-son science journalist team - trace the research resulting from Penfield's early efforts. In clear, concise prose, they show the revolutionary advances that have come about since then and how Penfield's early "brain maps" provided the foundation for even more effective therapies.

Penfield's technique seems harshly cruel today, but the patients suffered far more from the disability than from the probing, as the brain has no nerves that transmit pain. The mapping became a guide for better understanding of how the brain and body interact. Some of this work was covered in Sandra Blakeslee's earlier collaboration with V. S. Ramachandran: "Phantoms In the Brain". That study pointed out how amputees can still sense the presence of a missing limb, even feeling "pain" that can have no discernible cause. This work carries the implications of Ramachandran's findings forward, expanding it to address other, less extreme examples. The body-brain links are many, varied and subject to constant change. The authors refer to this as "The Body Mandala", a graphic representation of a detailed, intensely interwoven network. In this mandala, however, change is constant and varying.

The hands and fingers play a large role in this book. Professional golfers are subject to a condition they refer to as "yips". Yips are a condition where the hand is unresponsive to your wishes, or move in unintended directions. Musicians, particularly violin players, have a similar affliction in the fingers used to press the strings down. For professionals, this can be disastrous, impairing or even destroying a career. Victims will hide the condition if possible, hoping exercise or other therapy will provide a cure. It rarely does, with the authors pointing out that such exercises may actually worsen the condition. Other professions, such as tennis or soccer, for example, may have an entirely different effect on the body's mandala. The reaching for anything, even with a bat or racquet in the hand, extends the brain's mapping to reflect the action. Your "body map", linked with the brain, expands as you seek the cup of coffee on your desk. The concept gives an entirely new meaning to the term "personal space". Do politicians make this projection when addressing crowds?

The revelations provided here will change drastically not only our view of ourselves, but provide the means of therapy for conditions once considered impossible to treat. Moreover, as the authors make clear, the centre of operations for our body is the brain. Because we exist in a variety of environments with our brain constantly adjusting to the changes, the authors spend much time on recent research in "brain plasticity". The concept of brain plasticity overturned a long-held belief among neurologists that brain maps were firmly set in adolescence. The Blakeslee team recounts Ramachandran's work on "phantom" limbs, but go on to show how therapies and prosthetic devices have given even amputees amazing new capabilities. The case of Aimee Mullins, who was born without the fibula bone in her legs, went on to become an Olympic runner using artificial "feet". This success was due to her constant practice remapping her brain's image of where her body could extend.

This book is an excellent summation of the research and clinical work performed over the past generation. It's skilfully written and amply illustrated with diagrams and photographs. However, no matter how outstanding a science journalist's talents, the entire lack of references strongly diminishes the value of this book. Also lacking is any explanation of how some of the recording techniques today actually work. A good science writer should be able to convey the mechanics without undue difficulty. With the number of works on brain science now available to the non-specialist, these are inexcusable lapses. If no other work of writing skill or comprehensive coverage were on the market, this book would be a fine introduction to the topic. As it is, it might as well be a collection of New York Times Science Page columns, for which Sandra Blakeslee has an enviable reputation. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Excellent Book
Innovative ways of understanding how the brain/body works in an easy to read presentation