in Renaissance, 76–79
organization, of memories, 70, 72. See also mnemonics
P
Peek, Kim, 83
Pennsylvania, University of, 23
perception, 40–41, 48
Peter of Ravenna, 76, 94, 100
Phaedo (Plato), 136
Phaedrus (Plato), 92–93
photographs, resolution in, 30
photoreceptors, 36
physicists, 8–9
pineal gland, 138
pixels, 21–22, 24
place, as concept, 148
place cells, 147
Plato, 55, 75, 92–93, 136
Poole, Bobby, 61
primary visual cortex (V1), 39, 117
printing press, 93
procedural memory, 111
Proust, Marcel, 49–50
psychology, 51
Ptolemy, 41
public speaking, 98
Q
qualia, 130
questions, science and, 4
Quintilian, 74
R
Rain Man (film), 83
Ramón y Cajal, Santiago, 12
reality
assumptions about, 65–67
interpretations of, 68
reasoning, limited capacity for, 82–84
recognition, of people, 11
Renaissance, 76–79
repetition, 54–55, 99–100, 153
representation, 36, 42, 64
visual agnosia, 47–48
resolution, 30, 32, 65–66
retina, 35–38, 39
Retina display, 24
retinal ganglion neurons, 36–38
robots, consciousness/self-awareness and, 134, 140–145
rods, 35–36
S
saccades, 26, 39
Sacks, Oliver, 47–48
savants, 83, 84, 88
S.B. (patient), 45–46
schema, 57–58, 68, 155
science, questions and, 4
Scoville, William, 109
Searle, John, 144
self, 3–4. See also consciousness; identity; self-awareness
self-awareness, 4, 135–136
animals and, 148–150
computers/robots and, 134, 142–145
semantic memory, 112–113
sensation, vs. perception, 40–41
sensory memory, 107–108
Shannon, Claude, 20, 21–22
Shereshevskii, Solomon, 79–82, 88, 96–97
short-term memory, 54, 57, 106, 109–110
sight. See eye; vision; visual information
signs, 42, 47, 58, 155
Simonides, 69–70, 72, 73
Socrates, 92–93
soul, relation with body, 136–137
sound, 116
Sperling, George, 106–108
Spiller, Gustav, 53, 62
stimulus, 50
synapsis, 7
synesthesia, 79–82, 88
systems reply, 144
T
Tarkovsky, Andrei, 95
technology, 92, 93–95, 102
tension, 65–66
terminals, 7
Theaetetus (Plato), 55
Themistocles, 51
Thompson, Jennifer, 60–61
transcendental idealism, 41
Turing, Alan, 143
Turing test, 143–144
U
unconscious inferences, 42–43, 59, 65–67, 154
understanding, 144–145, 155. See also comprehension
universals, 52
V
VI(primary visual cortex), 39, 117
van Gogh, Vincent, 29–30
ventral visual pathway, 117
vision, 25–33. See also eye; visual information
after blindness since birth, 43–46
brain and, 36, 42
method of loci and, 73
relationship with memory, 47
visual agnosia, 47–48
visual fixations, 27–31
visual information. See also eye; vision
experience and, 42, 43–46
processing of, 40, 47
retina and, 35–38
transmission to brain, 23, 25, 32
visual process, 117. See also eye; vision; visual information
Vygotsky, Lev, 153
W
Wallace, John, 45–46
Wiesel, Torsten, 117
working memory, 109
writing, 92–93
Y
Yarbus, Alfred, 28
Z
zombie of the philosophers, 140–142
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Iwrote this book a few years ago in Spanish, for a science dissemination collection directed by Nora Bär, arguably the most notable science journalist in Argentina. At that time, shortly after having published Borges and Memory, I remember wondering what I would like to achieve with this book and to whom it should be targeted. I then decided that my ideal reader should be a sophomore student, wondering about what to do in the future, with so many careers and options to choose from (although, of course, I wanted the book to be appealing to everybody, I kept the idea of such a student in mind when writing it). But my goal was not so much to discuss basic neuroscience knowledge; rather, I tried to spark the reader’s curiosity and show the fascination of studying neuroscience nowadays. Writing a book is a lot of work, but I thought that if I managed to help convince even a single person to choose to study neuroscience, I would be done. (And if in a few years’ time you end up being one of those people, please don’t forget to let me know somehow!)
As a high school student, I didn’t like books that told me how things are without explaining why—C’mon, I thought, don’t take it for granted that I won’t understand; give me a chance. Many years later, I learned the hard way (writing my own books) that it is a very hard balance to reach. The only way to do this is by simplifying things an awful lot. Otherwise, the book ends up being too technical, accessible to only a few specialized colleagues. But when simplifying information it is incredibly easy to make mistakes—even more so when trying to link current neuroscience ideas with discussions that have been going on for centuries in philosophy. In that regard, I thank all the friends, students, and colleagues who have read draft versions and spotted a few errors or inaccuracies.
With his refined sarcasm, Jorge Luis Borges once said that he first read Cervantes’s Don Quixote in English, and when he later read the original in Spanish, it sounded like a bad translation. Differences aside, I feel that the English version of this book has surpassed the Spanish original. First of all, a few years have passed between the two editions and, given the frenetic pace at which fields like artificial intelligence have been evolving in the last years, this gave me time to refine some of the claims I made before—no major changes, but a few edits to make the content more current and accurate. But most importantly, I have witnessed how my Spanish writing flourished in Juan Pablo Fernández’s translation, and how it started to flow more naturally after Alexa Stevenson’s editorial work. In Alexa’s case, these were not just grammatical changes, but substantial edits to how the information in the book is presented. Compared to the original in Spanish, I believe the book may now be appealing to a much broader audience thanks to Alexa’s work and enthusiasm.
Today is a national holiday and I came to the office to write these lines and finish a few other things. My wife and kids wanted to do something all together, but I asked for these hours so that the book can finally go to print. They understand; they always do. Without their love and support this book would not have been possible, and, finally, without the support of mis viejos, Hugo and Marisa, I would never have realized my dream to become a scientist and spend my time doing what I love to do.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rodrigo Quian Quiroga holds a Research Chair at the University of Leicester, in England, where he is the director of the Centre for Systems Neuroscience. He graduated with a degree in physics from the University of Buen
os Aires and obtained his PhD in applied mathematics at the University of Luebeck, in Germany. Before joining the University of Leicester in 2004, he was a post-doctoral fellow at Germany’s Juelich Research Center, was a Sloan fellow at the California Institute of Technology, and had short stays at RIKEN in Japan and the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. He has held visiting positions at the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology in Magdeburg, the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy, the University of California, Los Angeles, the California Institute of Technology, the University of Buenos Aires, and CONICET. He is the recipient of a Young Investigator Award from the American Epilepsy Society and a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award. In 2014 he was selected as one of the 10 UK RISE Leaders in Science and Engineering.
His primary research interest is in the principles of visual perception and memory. He discovered what have been named “concept cells” or “Jennifer Aniston neurons”— neurons in the human brain that play a key role in memory formation—a finding that was selected as one of the top 100 scientific stories of 2005 by Discover magazine. His work has been published in over 100 research articles and has received worldwide media attention, including in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Scientific American, New Scientist, and the Independent, among others. He is also the author of Borges and Memory, linking the ideas of Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges with the neuroscience of memory.
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