In the Palaces of Memory: How We Build the Worlds Inside Our Heads [Paperback]

George Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 3, 1992

Even as you read these words, a tiny portion of your brain is physically changing. New connections are being sprouted -- a circuit that will create a stab of recognition if you encounter the words again. That is one of the theories of memory presented in this intriguing and splendidly readable book, which distills three researchers' inquiries into the processes that enable us to recognize a face that has aged ten years or remember a melody for decades. Ranging from experiments performed on the "wetware" of the brain to attempts to re-create human cognition in computers, In the Palaces of Memory is science writing at its most exciting.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This elegantly written investigation of the memory-storing process includes reports from biologist Gary Lynch, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Cooper and philosopher Patricia Churchland. Illustrated.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"An eloquent foray into how our brains convert experience into knowledge. [Written] with all the alacrity of a detective gathering clues . . . with a lucidity that at times approaches artistry." -- Thea Singer, Boston Phoenix

"As a writer about the biological and human sciences, Mr. Johnson has few peers. . . . If I wanted to give readers a feel for the frontiers of cognitive neuroscience, I would send them directly to this book." -- Howard Gardner, New York Times

"Johnson has achieved a rare blend of scientific and literary sophistication. Faithful to its complexities and controversies, the book is a fully dimensional portrait, a hologram of the field." -- USA Today

"Johnson has written a fascinating book, which perhaps throws as much light on how science is done and on the scientists who do it as any book since 'The Double Helix." -- Stuart Sutherland, Nature

"Lucid, insightful. . . . Mr. Johnson imparts a huge amount of information in his clear descriptions of how the relevant experiments were conducted and interpreted. And he makes the reader feel the excitement that drives these people to devote most of their waking hours over a number of decades to the puzzle." -- John C. Marshall. New York Times Book Review

"One of the last great mysteries is the one we carry inside our heads: how we remember, what we remember, why we remember. In the Palaces of Memory is a rich and lucid guide to this entangled and enchanting domain." -- James Gleick, author of Chaos

"One of those rare books that explain to the layman in clear detail what is happening in a complex branch of science without trivializing the subject . . . fascinating and thought-provoking." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (March 3, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679737596
• ISBN-13: 978-0679737599
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #667,421 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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53 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Edifices: deliberate, fantasmagorical, neural, January 25, 2000

By 

C. Joanna Sheldon - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the Palaces of Memory: How We Build the Worlds Inside Our Heads (Paperback)

"Whenever you read a book or have a conversation, the experience causes physical changes in your brain. In a matter of seconds, new circuits are formed, memories that can change forever the way you think about the world. [...] I'll never forgive David Lynch for his movie Erasorhead." The first two pages of In the Palaces of Memory introduce remembrance as an act not only of acquisition but of self-exposure. Memories make it possible for us to function; they may also lodge themselves in us "like a shard of glass healed inside a wound," never to be expelled. Some memories are desired and some become a part of the structure of our minds against our will.

Memory's palaces, though, may be as much the edifices the theorists construct as they are the ones inside our heads. This slim volume is not only an analysis of the way memory works but also an exposé of the way memory morphs depending on who's studying it. The underlying question, as in so much of Johnson's work, is really "how a theory matches up with some kind of real world," and what the world (in this case the brain) looks like from the point of view of the brain-children, scientific or philosophical, that purport to explain it. In this book the "unruly, creative art of theory-building" occupies center stage with memory.

What is remarkable about Johnson's writing is the uninhibited intimacy he seems to have with his subjects and with us, his readers, so that we can feel ourselves to be as close to the Thing, whatever it is, as he is. Johnson has granted me the delightful illusion of being nose to nose with a neuron, with Gell-Mann, with Planck's constant -- almost as though the experience were unmediated by an author. The man's a master story teller. But what comes across is also -- and here's the clincher -- a profound sense of amusement. If I'm not mistaken George Johnson is given to quiet chuckles in the dark over theoreticians and theorems. He infuses his translations of science in the making with a persistent, ironic-affectionate grin.

How can we resist.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb popular intro to neuroscience circa 1990, July 31, 2011

By 

Michael J Edelman (Huntington Woods, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In the Palaces of Memory: How We Build the Worlds Inside Our Heads (Paperback)

George Johnson is not only a superb writer, he's one of those rare writers of popular science books who actually seems to have a very good understanding of what he's writing about. In this case it's the basics of what was, at the time of the writing of this book, the emerging new multidisciplinary Neurosciences. During the 1980s psychologists, neurobiologists, computer scientists, philosophers and even engineers started talking together and even working together on models of the complete spectrum of neuroscience, ranging from models of individual neurons and neural networks to models of cognitive functions and human performance. This was an exciting time to be in the neuroscience, with new and often competing models emerging, it seemed, every month.

Johnson begins with the question of how learning occurs at the lowest levels- that is, what is the biology and the chemistry that enables permanent changes to be made in how and when an individual cell alters its response to stimuli? By means of illustration- and to introduce a bit of drama to the story- Johnson plays the competing theories of two groups, those who believed changes occurred prior to the synapse (i.e., in the cell sending the signal) and those who believed changes occurred after the synapse- and personifies these two groups in the competing theories of Eric Kandell, a major figure to this day, and Gary Lynch, then a young and up-and-coming challenger. This first part of the book is outstanding in the clarity of its presentation of material.

Form there Johnson takes us into the worlds of simulation and neural networks, which involves a trip back to the 1950s, when a small group of engineers at MIT and a few other schools began looking into ho neural functions could be instantiated in hardware. McCullogh and Pitts realized that it was possible to describe a calculus of neurons and neural function in humans and other animals, and some researchers even built artificial neurons and neural networks out of the analog hardware of the era- vacuum tubes, potentiometers, resistors and capacitors. This work was ignored by biologists and physiologists of the time, and only began to be rediscovered in the 1980s, when neural networks started emerging at the hottest topic in cognitive and (as it was called then) physiological psychology.

The last section of the book is concerned with the philosophers like Patricia Churchland who increasingly found herself troubled that those doing philosophy of mind and those doing psychology were working on the same problems, and yet never spoke to one another- even though each group had much to contribute to the other in refining what sorts of questions could be asked about human cognition and perception.

If there is a flaw in this book it's that it's now (2011) twenty years old. Some of the theories being put forward then have found support, some have been rejected, and some have been replaced by newer models. Some, like the question of the role of NMDA receptors in Long Term Potentiation (LTM) of synapses, are still not completely understood. Tools like functional MRI (fMRI) have given the upper hand to the physiologists (for the moment, at least) and the neurophilosophers don't have quite the influence they had in the late 1980s.

Yet this is still an excellent book, well worth reading. Understanding what has happened in the neurosciences in the last 20 years requires a firm knowledge of how we got here, and to that end, I would strongly recommend this book to interested lay readers, and undergraduates and high school students with and interest in the philosophy, psychology, medicine or neurophysiology..

4 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars can't judge a book by its cover, May 12, 2011

By 

jbsdad - See all my reviews

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This review is from: In the Palaces of Memory: How We Build the Worlds Inside Our Heads (Paperback)

an interesting book, to be sure: well researched and adequately written. BUT: Don't think from the title you're going to learn more about how to use the "memory palace" technique. Not gonna happen. The book is technical, almost bio-medical, in its treatment of memory. Interesting, as I said...but not if your goal is to learn a little about how memory works and a lot more about how to improve YOUR memory.