Book Review-Brainscapes by Rebecca Schwarzlose

I am a neophyte in the area of cognitive neuroscience, the brain, and psychology. I became curious about the general area after I read Physical Intelligence by Scott Grafton (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2020/08/book-review-physical-intelligence-by.html), as it dealt with connection between our minds, nervous system, and our bodies. It was after reading that book that I decided to work on learning more about the general area of mind-body connections: the how’s, and the why’s. I tried to create an autodidact’s  course into how we think about learning, and how we learn about learning.

As a part of this effort, I picked three books to focus on as a starter set of readings. The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2022/02/book-review-extended-mind-by-annie.html) , Mind in Motion by Barbara Tversky, and Brainscapes by Rachel Schwarzlose, supplemented by an undergraduate text in the area titled: Cognition, Brain, and Consciousness: Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience by Bernard J. Baars and Nicole M. Gage. I read the three together, more or less in parallel and consulted the undergraduate text, as my backstop reading. I knew I was taking on a challenge by reading all three books together, but I liked challenges. I tried very hard to keep the contents separate from each other in my head while still trying to integrate and coalesce the concepts from each book.

The author, Rachel Schwarzlose, is a neuroscientist at the Washington University in St. Louis and has the necessary credentials to write about this subject of brain maps. What is remarkable is her ability to communicate with amateurs trying to dive into the area. Her prose is clear and her explanations unfussy and to the point. She does it without smearing over the pertinent and salient details, she is  not afraid of explaining things that doesn’t seem to fit in.

The first two chapters explain why she's undertaking the writing of the book. These chapters lay out the answer to the question: Why should we want to learn about brain maps?

The next two chapters goes over the fundamental brain map for the visual sense V1, the touch map S1, and the auditory map A1 as the next chapter covers the taste and smell maps.

The next few chapters show how all the brain maps work as we function in our everyday lives doing the things that makes us sentient beings. The author dives deep into how we are able to take action, i.e., our M1 motor map; she delves into how the brain maps evolve, grow, and adapt as we mature, and how the brain maps develop to where we are starting from the womb.  It is followed by a chapter on how the brain maps work together in helping us recognizing people’s faces and places as well as a chapter devoted to how brain maps help us  pay attention. This section of the book ends with a chapter on how our comprehension  and communication faculties use brain maps.

I read the penultimate chapter as the contemplations and musings of a neuroscientist. It is full of the latest in research results, as with all of the chapters, but since it is on how the latest technology enables us to mind read and mind write with brain maps, the author does a bit of prognostication, extrapolation, and moral reckoning on the intended and unintended consequences from mind reading and mind writing, a prospect that made me quite uncomfortable, because if we had a way, someone will misuse it, guaranteed.  It was a sobering chapter to read.

The book ends with the author discussing the ways that brain maps has slowed us down, the downside of the maps, as well as how we all are able to overcome the drag on our cognition.

I found the organization of the book logical which made the book enjoyable to read, it is laid out in rational sequences which highlighted the nuanced description of the brain maps.

The illustrations by Paul Kim in the book is stellar, they complemented the descriptive text and brought forth the full and complete vision of what the author had intended, as well as making the text come alive in the readers mind, connecting the concept with the reader’s imagination.

Brainscapes is actually the closest to what I thought I needed in my autodidactic curriculum; it nicely connected the concepts with the physical brain. It was through this book that I was able to map out the physical locations of where the cognitive functions “reside” in our brains. Yet the book also revealed that my naïve, mechanical, and didactic mind did not adequately understand the breadth of the cognitive sciences, nor the depths that it reaches. The positive is that I happily revised my initial assumptions and corrected my own cognitive dissonance; for which I am truly grateful.