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89 of 93 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating description of how the brain/body work together, September 24, 2007
The Body Has a Mind of Its Own is a new book by Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee, a mother-son partnership with a history of writing good science books and articles. I found this book from an article they wrote for Scientific American's Mind magazine.
The book is a fascinating summary of current research on how the brain and body interact, well-written and enjoyable.
It starts with the brain map that processes incoming touch signals and the motor map that sends out signals to your muscles. We all have much larger areas for our fingers, lips and tongue relative to the rest of our bodies, because accurate input from these areas is so important.
These maps change dynamically with use, so that pianists have much larger area for all their fingers, violinists have a much larger area for just their left hand. When two fingers are taped together, their maps merge; when they are untaped the maps revert to normal. Improper overlapping of these sensory/motor maps can cause performance problems, such as the "yips" that some golfers develop that make them jerk erratically on some strokes.
Mental practice can be as good as physical practice in some circumstances. When you have something down, and know how to do it, mental practice has the same effect on your mental body maps as physical practice. So at a certain level, you can cut down on wear-and-tear on your body and continue to improve by phasing in some mental rehersal.
Your brain has a tremendous degree of flexibility in how it integrates what it sees into your sense of reality. In a virtual-reality world, you can be given longer arms, or lobster arms, or a tentacle in the middle of your stomach, and your brain will accept what it sees and you will feel as if these changes are "natural". Jaron Lanier, who coined the phrase "virtual reality", calls this "homuncular flexibility" (from the old idea of a homunculus in your brain, a little man who drives your body).
Mirror neurons are a recent discovery: when someone lifts a cup to their mouth, your mirror neurons will fire, and you can learn something new just by watching someone else do it. Mirror neurons respond to actions, to intentions, and also react to other people's emotion: when someone is sad or happy or angry, your mirror neurons give you the same feeling. When someone feels pain, you feel the same pain via your mirror neurons. Mirror neurons help babies and children develop and pick up the things they need to know in their culture. Autism may be cause by problems with mirror neurons, where autistic people don't produce the right brain signals to recognize other people's intentions or emotions.
The insula is the part of your brain where all of your internal sensory input comes together, from your heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, and so on. They signal needs such as thirst, hunger, and the need to breathe. The insula also gets input from a separate set of receptors on your skin and mouth: temperature, pain, itch, ache, and touch. Many inputs, such as being pinched, will signal both the insula and your body touch maps.
The insula is a critical part of what it means to be human, to have "sentiment, sentience, and emotional awareness". Of all the mamals, only humans and other primates have this rich set of input into the insula. "It is here that the mind and body unite. It is the foundation for emotional intelligence."
The insula plays a key role in pain management. Pain is handled in the same way as an emotion, both of which result in elevated activity in the insula. This is why meditation and biofeedback can both be effective ways to deal with chronic pain. By helping someone learn to turn down the activity in their insula, they can learn to reduce the ongoing sensation and stress from pain. The same kind of learning can help people who are anxious, and have a generally high level of arousal in their insula, to be less anxious and stressed.
Highly recommended.
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58 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent introduction to a complex and fascinating topic, October 29, 2007
This is an excellent book. The authors have a gift for making a complex subject understandable. Another plus is that, like the best of nonfiction authors, they stick to the subject and rely on facts rather than opinion. This book provides a wonderful introduction into an area of science formerly limited to neurologists and other highly-trained specialists.
Central theme
The central theme of this book is that the brain maps the body. In fact, different areas of the brain contain different kinds of body maps with different functions. These body maps in the brain determine such things as how you perceive reality and how you respond to that perception. One of the most fascinating aspects is the plasticity of these maps.
For example, have you ever noticed that you can "feel" with the end of a tool? You put a wrench on a nut, and you suddenly have several important bits of information about that nut. This is because your body map extends to include the tool. And it's why mechanics can accurately work without actually seeing what their hands or tools are touching. Body maps extend from the rider to include the horse and from the horse to include the rider. Lovers share body maps, and the book explores what goes on there also.
This book explores the effects of dysfunctional body maps, too, shedding light on such things as eating disorders and out of body experiences. And it looks at the interplay between body maps and culture, language, music, emotions, pain, and even parenting.
The brain and the body are not separate entities, but are intertwined, interdependent, and interfunctional. Understanding this fact is essential to understanding how and why body maps work. This book explains that lucidly.
You may have heard of the "little man" theory, or the homunculus theory. If not, perhaps you recall the drawing of the skull being opened to reveal a little man operating control levers. That drawing represents the theory. We all know there's not an actual physical person of tiny stature pulling levers in our heads. But it's commonly thought that the "me" of us is a central entity that works like that little man. Another common analogy for this theory is the symphony conductor.
Because of this theory, many early researchers of body maps looked for the master map. As it turns out, there isn't one. There is not "little man," no master homunculus, no conductor, no central authority. The brain is a collection of homunculi or body maps working together. If this doesn't sound possible, think of an ant colony. There is no master ant giving out directions. Each ant does its part in a concert of ants with no conductor. The many body maps of the brain are similarly independent yet cooperative. The brain also contains body maps that facilitate the communication between these disparate parts and the various body maps those parts use.
Only flaw
The book runs a couple hundred pages, in an unusually small typeface. It would be better, in a future release, to be produced in a larger font. I don't think anyone over about the age of 30 can read it unaided. This production issue is the one flaw in this book, and I hope the publisher decides to spend a bit more on paper to fix that in the next printing.
Summary of contents
The Body Has a Mind of Its Own consists of 10 chapters. The first chapter gives the reader the background about body maps and how they are everywhere in the brain. Chapter Two talks about the little man theory discussed earlier in this review.
Chapter Three talks about how body maps filter and change incoming information to conform to what the map expects to see. You've no doubt heard the expression "People hear what they want to hear." That is a basic aspect of our brain, which is a prediction machine. It's always looking for matches. Just as politicians change the data to match their statements, so quite often does the brain change or filter information so that it matches what the brain expects to see. This is the basis for illusions, and we all know those work.
Sometimes these illusions don't serve us very well. One example the book uses is the anorexic who feels fat. This prediction thing isn't all bad--many self-help experts advise us to imagine ourselves as having already achieved something or to take on some other enabling attitude.
Chapter Four takes the concepts of Chapter Three a step further, and looks at why mental practice--long used by martial artists--is nearly as effective as physical practice and why when both are done you get a 2 + 2 = 5 effect.
Chapters Five and Six explore what happens when body maps blur or break. Some of the manifestations are bizarre.
Earlier, I mentioned that when you grasp a tool your body map extends to include that tool. Chapter Eight includes a discussion of this in the broader context of where body maps end. Chapter Seven also talks about where body maps end, but more in terms of how they seek to exclude things that are not part of the body.
Sales trainers talk about mimicking other people to win their agreement. In Chapter Nine, we see why this works.
Deep in the brain is a structure called the insula. Only mammals even have one. In humans, it's massive compared to those of other species (relatively speaking--in whales, body parts are just plain bigger on an absolute scale). The consensus now is the insula is the seat of emotional awareness. Chapter Ten, in discussing the insula, is a fitting last chapter because it is, at least to me, the most profound part of the book.
The authors tie everything together in the Afterword, but also raise additional questions that are worth pondering as we search for meaning and purpose in life.
Descartes concluded that because he thinks he must exist. Has your human mind has ever contemplated itself, trying to answer the question, "Who am I? Or have you wondered about where in your body your mind actually resides? The Body Has a Mind of Its Own will help you bring some fascinating information to bear on those concepts and many others. Not only is this book thought-provoking, but it helps explain thought itself. How you perceive reality may not be as straightforward as you once thought. Or still think, depending on your body maps.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The mandala of the mind, May 25, 2008
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]
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