Book description
Listen. Can you hear an aircraft passing overhead? A dog barking? The
twittering of birds? In straining to listen, you have just sent a
surge of electrical activity through millions of brain cells. In
choosing to do this with your mind, you have changed your brain - you
have made brain cells fire, at the side of your head, above the right
eye. By the time you've read this far, you will have changed your
brain permanently. These words will leave a faint trace in the woven
electricity of you. For 'you' exists in the trembling web of connected
brain cells. This web is in flux, continually remoulded, sculpted by
the restless energy of the world. That energy is transformed at your
senses into the utterly unique weave of brain connections that is YOU.
New research has demonstrated the way in which the brain is shaped
by experience and sculpted by our interactions with the world around
us. As one of the world's leading authorities on brain rehabilitation,
Ian Robertson is uniquely placed to explore these ground-breaking
discoveries, that free us from the currently fashionable genetically
determinist view. Mind Sculpture is a singularly accessible and
imaginative book which communicates the excitement and challenge of
the most recent research, its consequences for how we understand the
brain and how we perceive ourselves.
Ian Robertson is Professor of Psychology at Trinity College, Dublin.
Formerly a scientist at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in
Cambridge, where he was a fellow of Hughes Hall, he is also a visiting
professor at University College London with a further appointment in
Toronto. One of the world's leading researchers on brain rehabilitation,
he has published numerous scholarly books and scientific papers on the
subject. He is the author of
Mind Sculpture
: unleashing your brain's potential and
The Mind's Eye
, which are published by Bantam Books.
