my mind on books

“Gravity is a harsh mistress” is one of my favorite quotes from The Tick and in Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense by Scott McCredie (Little, Brown, 2007) the intricacies of the human relationship with gravity are examined, from motion sickness to the balance feats of acrobats such as The Flying Wallendas. Topics include the role of balance in human evolution, spatial distortions that trouble pilots, the soothing effects of vestibular stimulation by rocking, and how balance exercise could help prevent falls in old age. Balance disorders also seem to be associated with certain cognitive difficulties, and there is some work suggesting that dyslexia can be treated by a program of balance exercises.

Books cited in this book include: The Brain’s Sense of Movement (Perspectives in Cognitive Neuroscience) by Alain Berthoz (Harvard, 2002) and Play as if Your Life Depends on It: Functional Exercise and Living for Homo sapiens by Frank Forencich (Go Animal Publishing, 2003)

This book has a website.

Related links:

Dr. Frank Belgau‘s work on balance exercises to improve cognitive functions

BrainPort Technologies – the sensory substitution method developed by Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita

“Vibrating insoles help people regain balance” (Sandra Blakeslee, New York Times, 1/17/06)

Two useful resources recently published by Pete Mandik:

Neurosemantics bibliography (a new neuro-term to me, “Neurophilosophy concerning representational content”)

Philosophy of Mind MetaResource – “links to definitions and discussions of key terms”

Nabokov scholar Brian Boyd (University of Auckland) in “The Art of Literature and the Science of Literature” suggests that “Art is a form of cognitive play with pattern….” (The article mentions an upcoming book called On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition and Fiction but it doesn’t appear to be in the “pre-order” stage yet.)

• spiked review of books reviews ‘On Consciousness’ by Ted Honderich
• ‘Proust and the Squid’ reviewed at the Telegraph
• also at the Telegraph: ‘We-Think’
• New Metapsychology reviews this week include ‘Explaining the Brain’and ‘A Critique of Naturalistic Philosophies of Mind’

The Limits of Dream: A Scientific Exploration of the Mind/Brain Interface by J.F. Pagel (Academic Press, 2008).

From the book description:

The Limits of Dream focuses on what we currently know of the human central nervous system (CNS), examining the basic sciences of neurochemisty, neuroanatomy, and CNS electrophysiology as these sciences apply to dream, then reaching beyond basic science to examine the cognitive science of dreaming including the processes of memory, the perceptual interface, and visual imagery. Building on what is known of intrapersonal CNS processing, the book steps outside the physical body to explore artificially created dreams and their use in filmmaking, art and story, as well as the role of dreaming in creative process and creative madness. The limits of our scientific knowledge of dream frame this window that can be used to explore the border between body and mind. What is known scientifically of the cognitive process of dreaming will lead the neuroscientist, the student of cognitive science, and the general reader down different paths than expected into an exploration of the fuzzy and complex horizon between mind and brain.