The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better by Sandra Blakeslee

The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better Reviews

• 
  Gretchen Rubin

  A fascinating look at how the body and the mind engage each other.
• 
  John Martindale

  Yet another science writer claiming the self and freewill are illusions. Normally when I hear this kind of thing, it sounds rather self-defeating. Just how much truth value does information contain when it is coming from an author who is merely an illusory automaton? If what she compulsively wrote accidentally happens to corresponds with reality, how unfortunate, for the illusion that is me has no choice but to think it is bunk.
  Fortunately, she, unlike others, did eventually define what she meant by illusions, she wrote: “The illusion of the self isn't that there is no such thing as you. Nor does the illusion of free will mean that you cannot make choices. Instead, the illusion is that the self and free will are not really what they seem to be from your, the “end user's” perspective. The illusion of free will is that free will has infinite scope, rather than being a flexible set of feedback loops between higher-order body maps and emotional and memory-storage systems in the brain. The illusion of the self is that self is a kernel, rather than a distributed, emergent system.”
  I wonder if this is what other science writers mean when they talk about free will and the self being illusions. If so, I think they should drop the word illusions all together, for it only confuses.
  
  Yet, after this, she wrote how there is no place in the brain "where things come together to produce the feeling of undivided sentience you enjoy and take for granted... the mind has no kernel, no “little man” sitting at the center of the fray directing the action."
  It seems she is implying that the most obvious thing in the world—our consciousness is a delusion, though maybe I am misunderstanding what she means by this "little man", this kernel.
  
  Science cannot adequately explain consciousness or show any place in the brain from where our a unified sense of self arises, but this doesn't prove it's absence. I think scientist are inclined jump to the ludicrous conclusion that it does, due to a fanatical commitment to philosophical naturalism. They are terrified of any gap in the scientific knowledge that could leave room for a soul. The soul, from the outset, cannot, absolutely MUST NOT exist, if it did, their whole entire worldview would pop like a bubble. Since they are driven to prove that we are nothing but hunks of meat in a merely material universe, they jump the gun and declare consciousness is illusory, since they can't explain it.
  
  She wrote: “A key point is that your mind feels like a seamless whole when “all you faculties” are working. But if your body mandala were to go on the fritz in one of a hundred ways, whether through damage to one map or several, or through a severing of between-maps connections, you might suddenly experience extra arms, a phantom leg, autotopagnosia (where you can point to your watch but can't find your wrist), hemineglect (where half the universe winks out of your awareness), alien hand syndrome, and all manner of delusions and mispreceptions. Case studies of brain damage like these are one of the biggest philosophical, not to mention logical, arguments against the idea of a unitary psychic core. When certain parts of the brain break, certain parts of the mind break; the illusion is spoiled, and the underlying multifariousness of the psyche is exposed.”
  
  I just don't see how any of this implies that there is no “unitary psychic core” for there is still a SELF to experience the phantom leg, the extra arm or the alien hand!
  
  The brain trapped within the dark skull is dependent upon bodily senses, if the brain was cut off from sight, touch, smell and sound, this would definitely limit what the brain could experience, but this wouldn't give us reason to think the brain is an illusion! The self may be as dependent upon the brain, as the brain is upon the bodily senses. But to state there is no self, because, when a part the brain goes on the fritz, the mind does too, doesn't prove the self is an illusion! The only thing it disproves is the notion that the soul is independent from the brain--completely impassible, and who is claiming this? Honestly, with the many curious things she mentioned, it is not like suddenly, when the brain malfunctions, that one has multitudes of conflicting illusory consciousnesses popping up simultaneously or simply none at all (unless one dies). There is still ONE self, though the "I" may now experience things in a very ODD, distorted and bizarre way. The “unitary psychic core” may feel severally limited and restricted when parts break, but it still exist.
• 
  Julie

  FAAAASCINATING. Honestly, I kept pestering Kent, "Listen to this..." and then reading a paragraph or two. It's about the science of how the brain and body connect. We have "body maps" in our brain, that tell us exactly where our body parts are, and how they are doing. (This is why we can touch our nose with our eyes closed.) It doesn't sound interesting, until you read what this means, in practical applications. And the stuff about how our homonulcus (body maps) go awry is just astonishing.
  
  Body mapping accounts for why we can ride a horse, why we duck a little when we drive our cars into a garage with low clearance, why we feel afraid in scary movies, and also things like autism (mirror neuron defects).
  
  Here's an example: if you took a perfectly healthy kitten, and then carried it around with you wherever you went, exposing it to many sights and sounds, but not allowing it to interact with it's environment, that kitten would be blind. It would still "see" colors and shapes and everything, but it's brain would have no context for interpreting that input, so the cat would be just as blind as a cat with no eyes. Bizarre, huh? Here's another: the women in Mali think it's important for their children to have straight legs so several times a day, from birth onwards, they massage and pull on their infants' legs, pulling them straight. Guess the average age of walking? EIGHT MONTHS. Because those kids' body maps of their legs got so much stimulation from the environment as they were developing. Contrast that with kids in orphanages in the Eastern Block countries who are left alone in their cribs for days on end. Those kids are unable to stand on one foot without toppling over. Why? Because their leg body maps are so woefully undeveloped because there was no opportunity for interaction with their environment.
  
  Anyhow, it's really an interesting read, runs a gamut of really diverse topics, all having to do with our body maps, and it's not very long (about 200 pages.) I really recommend it.
• 
  Martha Love

  The Body Has a Mind of It’s Own is a fascinating, easy read, particularly if you are interested in brain research. Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee explain in detail body mapping, and how we obtain our body image and why it is difficult to change it. I particularly found important and accessible their explanations of the feedback system of the lower and higher regions of the Cortex. Interestingly, as many as 10 times more fibers carry information processed by the higher area of the Cortex down to the lower regions of the Cortex than the sensory information being carried up to the higher regions. The result of this nearly one-way feedback system is that we generally see what we already believe, hear what we expect to hear, and have a difficult time ever having a new experience or beginner's mind. According to Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee, this explains why our reality is constructed in a large way according to our expectations and beliefs and holds the key to why it is hard to change one’s body image.
  
  The beauty of this book is that they give some physical exercises to actually change body image, although they also explain that much of our body image is set in our memory from past events and therefore body sensation is a key to healing trauma and recalibrating your body maps, feeling yourself from the inside out. My only complaint about the book was that they often give information without even a hint of references (for instance the 10 to 1 fibers for downward feedback in the Cortex) and this makes it difficult if you want to research more on a point they make.
  Martha Love, author of
  What's Behind Your Belly Button? A Psychological Perspective of the Intelligence of Human Nature and Gut Instinct and
  
  Increasing Intuitional Intelligence: How the Awareness of Instinctual Gut Feelings Fosters Human Learning, Intuition, and Longevity
• 
  Elliott Bignell

  The Blakeslees have produced a wonderful piece of popular science writing. Fascinating, clearly written and up-to-date, it eschews the more impenetrable specialist details of the neurologists' trade without speaking down to the reader or oversimplifying. I found it a dazzling follow-up read to Damasio's "Descartes Error", since whose publication so much new science has emerged.
  
  What that science has found is maps. Lots and lots of maps. They are referred to repeatedly as homunculi, but the book makes clear at the outset that these are not the dreaded homunculi of the philosophers' "homunculus fallacy". Rather that alleging that a human being is conscious because her head contains a little being or spirit which is conscious, these homunculi are representations - maps spread out in neural space corresponding to physical volumes and objects in external space. Some of these are very literal - a scientist can chisel a hatch in your skull and poke a section of your brain with a sharp stick and fingers and legs will twitch or tingle. He can then stick labels on the brain parts and, at the end, literally have a map of your motor cortex's representation of your skeletal musculature which he can pickle and show your family.
  
  Some of these maps are more abstract or more indirect. There are maps of your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system dealing with interoception - the perception of organ states - which impact on your emotional state. There are maps dealing with proprioception - perception of muscle tension and limb position - and maps dealing with motor functions for those muscles. There are premotor maps generating the intention to activate those motor functions. There are maps defining the interactions of these maps. There are maps dealing with facial expressions. There are maps in which mirror neurons - possibly the scientific find of the century - are active, modelling the actions and intentions both of yourself and of others, without which we could probably not learn by physical mimicry of others, empathy and introspection.
  
  Many or most of these maps are characterised by the principle of neurological plasticity, and this has some amazing implications. When you use a tool, hook up to a virtual reality interface or pilot a vehicle, your maps adjust to modify your model of your personal space. Extra space and extra capabilities are incorporated into your "you". Moreover, over time they become physical reality and yield measurable increase in the sizes of the associated maps. If you drive regularly, practice a martial art or work at a computer, your perception of your body space grows to include new domains and becomes increasingly automated and unconscious with time. Moreover, these maps are strengthened even by thinking in a coordinated fashion about using them - practice your sport assiduously in your mind and, under the right circumstances, you physically improve at it.
  
  The aspect which struck me perhaps most strongly is the devastating effect these findings have on any lingering or resurgent sympathies for dualism. Dualism is a dead letter anyway among philosophers and neuroscientists and has been for some considerable time, but the notion of the ghost in the machine holds on among the public. This is probably mainly for religious reasons and can therefore not be eradicated, but you cannot read this book and still seriously entertain the notion of a "soul" or a vis vitalis.
  
  The mind and the self are modular, and their modules can be selectively knocked out. Show test subjects a series of pictures of their own faces blended with that of a friend and they can reliably recognise themselves up to 50% and their friend above 50%. Knock out a portion of the correct map with a virtual lesion induced by transcranial magnetic stimulation and they can no longer recognise their face. Knock out another map section due to a stroke and the victim can no longer notice things on their left. Poke the motor cortex and the subject will move their hand. Poke the corresponding section of the premotor cortex and the subject will want to move their hand.
  
  There is clearly no ghost in this machine. Only machine parts. Knock the whole machine out and the whole self must go.
  
  The one slightly jarring little note came close to the end, where the book appears briefly to endorse the idea of "free will": "And crucially, you clearly have the precious faculty of free will." This cannot be, and is wildly inconsistent with the picture painted by the rest of the book. The authors' meaning rapidly becomes clear, and further reading overturns this impression of abdicated rationality: this is the "common sense view", not a notion compatible with the neuroscience elucidated in the remainder of the work. It felt a little like suddenly stepping on a thorn, a brief pain passing almost immediately.
  
  All in all, this is stellar science writing.
• 
  Marsha

  For some reason I found this book extremely fascinating. I listened to the audio book twice, then I got the print version. It explains how your brain perceives your own body, how that process is somewhat distorted, and how problems with body maps and body perception can affect our lives. Despite how that might sound, it's not a psychological treatise about how we should all love our bodies and somehow find a better body image through self acceptance. The book is scientifically oriented. I really do think that sometimes we become psychologically disassociated with our own bodies, and that physical activity can help us reconnect and feel more whole. I have seen a lot of this with all the adolescent girls that live in my house. If you like books about the brain and psychology, this is a good one.
• 
  Gregg Bell

  Okay, this is a fascinating book.
  
  Let's start with my own experience with the body having a mind of its own. I've been saying that the body has a mind of its own for years and I'll tell you why. When I'm out say driving home and I'm on the highway and I don't have to go to the bathroom at all (#1 for you sensitive types; micturation for you pre-med types), right? I'm a happy camper, driving along. So I get off the highway and let's say I'm just a couple of miles from home. Well, I now have the faint urge like I have to go. No big deal. But after I've gone a mile (and let's say I have one more mile to go), well, now I really need to go. And by the time I pull into my parking lot, I'm nearly wetting my pants. And this happens to me all the time.
  
  And as this whole ridiculous scenario unfolds, I'm telling my self, Chill, Gregg. You're almost home. But trust me, it does no good. And my mind has nothing to do with it. It's as if my body senses that I'm nearing a bathroom, and it starts generating the urge.
  
  One more instance. Let's say I'm brushing my teeth in the bathroom. Before long I need to go to the bathroom. Normal, right? Wrong. Because when I step out of the bathroom I no longer need to go. It's almost comical—I test it. Step in—need to go, step out—don't need to go. It's like the freaking Hokey Pokey.
  
  Okay, so needless to say this book title screamed at me. I was like, Yes, someone besides me finally realized this!
  
  The book's good. Fascinating really. From one page to the next the author explains how different areas of the brain have corresponding "maps" in the body. And the key thing is that this mind-body connection affects our lives in countless ways.
  
  I got rocked early on (and became a believer in what they were saying) when they talked about how if a cat is denied the ability to integrate its vision with body movement as it grows, when it reaches adulthood it will be functionally blind. In other words, its body maps don't get a chance to develop, and the ability to see is inherently connected with the body and its sense of orientating itself to the world at large. So please, don't hold Tabby on your lap as it grows into adulthood.
  
  Okay, a few of the things explained as being body map stuff: golfing yips, out of body experiences and phantom limbs, (I could have used an entry for phantom bladders).
  
  There is some really helpful and encouraging stuff in the book for stroke victims and amputees. I feel like monkeys get a raw deal in the book and in science in general. Monkeys are sitting around with electrodes in their brains watching videos, being taught to use joysticks. I mean, come on, they have to be thinking, What the hell, why can't I just be out in the jungle eating bananas. What am I going to do with a joystick?
  
  You empaths. You're for real. The authors explain that in tests of lovers that when one lover is shocked (in terms of being abused, lovers only come off slightly better than monkeys) the other lover experiences physical pain. (Of course women feel more pain than men in these tests.)
  
  The authors have a very strong belief in belief. Reiki healers, crystals, prayer, placebos—it's all just due to belief. There is no such thing as God. Of course, they're wrong about that, though—the Cubs finally won the World Series.
  
  The book was a little technical at times:
  
  

  Instead, her right orbitofrontal cortex and right anterior cingulate cortex lit up.

  
  
  I knew what six of those words meant. (If you know them all you should be writing books like these, not reading them.)
  
  But don't let that line throw you. The technical jargon is spaced out far and few between.
  
  Interested in your mind-body connection, or why you have to suddenly go to the bathroom as you approach home—you can't go wrong with this book.
• 
  Georgina

  getting a bit dated now
• 
  Leticia Supple

  I read several comments about this book before I bought it, and those were mainly in the context of dance and movement science.
  
  You could easily go two ways with a neuroscience book like this. You could read it purely for the information and interest factor, which would be fine. It would be a nice, joyous, easy read, and you'd learn a whole lot of things that you would soon forget. You would probably also not talk to many people about it because it's a weird sort of topic.
  
  Or, if you're like me, you can read and devour every little nuance of the text, with a deep understanding of creative visualisation, using the book to learn to control your neurology and your physical function.
  
  I have been gabbing about this book to everyone that will listen. The simple fact that my physicality - neurologically - is not my physical being, but also everything connected to it (hats, long dresses, vehicles), is mind-blowing, but also unsurprising. The fact that I can use this knowledge in a creative visualisation sense to improve my dance skills, reduce pain, recover easily from all types of maladies, and generally enhance my physical existence, is tremendously exciting.
  
  There is a whole lot of stuff in this book that I accepted would be written into a text like this, but which I did not take on board. Mainstream science is very much all about certain theories being definite, when in fact they are only theory. But it's such a minor point that one can easily move past it.
  
  The book is written in a highly conversational, accessible manner. I would have liked a bit more technicality in it - but any higher level language would easily have scared your average reader off. There is a lovely epilogue apologising to the scientific community for the simplicity of the works, and for the dumbing down of the science. Proferred explanations were as good as it was going to get.
  
  It was outstanding. I had my nose glued to this book every minute that I had spare, and was devastated when I left it at work by accident. I have also promised at least six people that I will lend it to them.
  
  Maybe I'll need to buy more copies.
  
  Now that I've gotten this far, I'm tempted to start hunting down some serious neuroscience texts, and work myself progressively further up the scientific tree.
  
  I also want to sit in a virtual reality environment and control tentacles with my belly button. This will make sense to you when you read the book.
  
  I highly recommend this work for everyone interested in movement, dance, physical arts, science, neuroscience, and for those whose family members have had strokes.
• 
  Katherine

  I bought this at a craniosacral therapy class I went to a few months ago. I gave it five stars partly because the subject is fascinating to me because of being a PT, but I think anyone who wants to know how their brain works would find it really fascinating as well.
  
  My absolutely favorite chapter was ch. 10, which was about the brain maps of the internal organs, which are found in a part of the brain called the insula. It talks about how people with good interoception (the ability to read and interpret sensations from within your own body) also have good emotional intelligence, because the interoception information from your right and left insulas is sent directly to the right frontal insula, which is where social emotions and moral intuitions are processed. To quote: "You detect the state of your body and the state of your mind together in the right front insula" (p. 189). An amazing insight into the mind-body connection! This chapter also has some really interesting insights about pain and the right frontal insula, and using neurofeedback to treat pain (it's like biofeedback but you are in a brain scanner so you are actually getting visual feedback of your brain activity). So cool!
  
  The book is also very well-written, engaging, and funny. I highly recommend it.
• 
  Cera

  This was a good overview of what is currently known about the way that the brain understands and tracks the body through a variety of maps -- and how, when the body or the brain is damaged, odd things can result due to the disconnection between the maps & reality. I was particularly fascinated with some indications that anorexia is correlated with a body mapping problem that's detectable through a simple experiment, which makes me wonder if you could detect people who are at risk for developing anorexia this way.
  
  Only three stars because I was disappointed that this book didn't take the trouble to cite its sources properly (it does reference where it gets things, but says things like 'A study by Name, during Date' in the text, so I'm going to have to do more work than I'd like in order to chase down things like the anorexia study & see exactly what they learned. This is probably not going to be an obstacle to most readers' enjoyment, though, so I highly recommend it; learning more about how your brain & body work is a good thing!
• 
  Rachel

  Great book for those who are interested in science but don't want to deal with all the jargon. I usually only read fiction, so you know a book is good when non-fiction can hold my attention. This book is filled with fascinating case studies and facts about ways the body and mind are connected not only within oneself but even the peripheral space around us! I can't say I will be a better runner or be able to "almost anything better" from reading this book, but I definitely understand it more and I was very entertained.
• 
  jenne

  i love reading books about the brain. this is the first book that ive read that has been able to marry neurons to action and make sense of the purely chemical reactions that make us alive. its missing a star because the authors missed a vital connection with the concept of bodymaps to spirituality and annoyingly chalked up belief to something less than nothing. that aside, totally facinating and now im more hyperaware of my personal space and senses than ever before (for better or worse.)
• 
  Karen Chung

  Full of lots of new, thought-provoking ideas about how the body and brain work together to enable us to do the things we do! Highly accessible and enjoyable to read.
• 
  Courtney

  Very interesting book. Provides a nice perspective of the whole body, the interactions between mind and body, and some useful information about the organization of the human brain.
• 
  Bernie Gourley

  This book examines the role of the nervous system in movement and bodily activity. It describes how one’s body is able to perform extraordinarily complex maneuvers that we often take for granted because they feel effortless. It investigates some of the ways in which the interface between body and brain go awry, as well as the various effects this can have. It also offers insight into how we can be deceived because we are experiencing the world less directly and more through the shaping activities of the brain than we feel is true.
  
  The book contains ten chapters, plus a little forward and back matter. The first chapter is entitled “the body mandala” and it provides an overview of how the nervous system can be thought of as a series of maps layered upon maps that routes various input from outlying areas to the brain and commands from the brain to the outlying areas. A “mandala” is a symbolic representation of the universe [from Hindu and Buddhist traditions], and this notion is repeatedly revisited throughout the book.
  
  Chapter 2 explores the mapping of the homunculus and its ramifications. If you’ve ever seen a 2-D or 3-D image /model of a human being that has gigantic lips and hands and disproportionally small torso and thighs, you’ve seen said homunculus (as the term is used in neuroscience.) The reason it’s scaled this way is that body part size is reflective of space in the nervous system dedicated to said parts and not their actual size. If you’ve ever seen one of those maps--called cartograms--in which the size of a country reflects a statistic, say, population (thus India, China, and Singapore are much larger than their physical size, but Canada is much smaller than its), you get the drift. This chapter also answers the question everyone wants to ask (and many do) which is “why--if the lips are so large because of their dedicated territory in the brain—are the genitals unexpectedly small in the homunculus?
  
  Chapter 3 describes how body maps can be in conflict and what effect this can have. It talks about why people who lose weight often still feel fat and move in ways that are not reflective of their actual figure. It also gets into anorexia (and the lesser known bigorexia) which reflect mismatches between perceived body image and actual body schema.
  
  Chapter 4 investigates a fascinating phenomenon in which visualization can often result in strength and performance gains. Said gains aren’t on the same scale as among those who actually exercise or practice, but the fact that one can make gains without moving a muscle is certainly intriguing. Of course, the takeaway is that one can get the best of both worlds by augmenting physical conditioning and practice with visualization—one has a more finite number of feasible physical training hours in a day (i.e. there are diminishing returns on physical training at some point.)
  
  Chapter 5 is the first of two chapters that deal with problems related to improper interaction between the nervous system and the body. Here we learn about “the yips” that plague golfers and other occupational dystonias. When one begins practicing any physical activity, the objective is to build up muscle memory so that the movements can be completed purely unconsciously. This works through neuroplasticity—the fact that sequences of neurons that frequently fire together become more strongly linked—but neuroplasticity can have a dark side at the extremes.
  
  Chapter 6 considers the way in which the system of maps can fail such that one fails to recognize one’s own limbs, one recognizes extra ones, or the like. Chapter 7 is about peripersonal space—i.e. the physical bubble of space that one needs to feel comfortable, and which varies both culturally and individually.
  
  Chapter 8 delves into the role that upcoming technology may have in changing how we look at the body-brain connection. Mirror neurons are the subject of the penultimate chapter. You’ve probably heard of these neurons which fire when we see someone else perform an action. Usually there is an inhibitory signal to keep our body from actual mimicry, but sometimes you may find yourself unconsciously mimicking the position or body language of another person when one is engaged in an engrossing conversation. (Yawning contagiousness is a featured example.) Mirror neurons play a role in how we learn so quickly, how we sometimes anticipate the behavior or emotions of others, and deficient activity in these cells has been speculated to be responsible for autism.
  
  Chapter 10 describes the role of the insula in human activities. The insula has been found to be involved in emotion and rewards system by which humans are motivated to engage in a number of bodily activities.
  
  The book has many graphics to clarify technical points, many of these being line drawings of the brain and other physiological structures. There is also a glossary of key scientific terms.
  
  I found this book to be fascinating. It was highly readable despite its technical subject matter, and it described these systems and the research about them in a clear manner. I’d highly recommend it—particularly if one is interested in movement, fitness, and optimal human performance.
  
• 
  Denise

  Really in depth review of how to human bodys mind maps, proprioception, and sensation and perception can affect us in ways we generally overlook. Almost all of this was review for me, but I appreciated how scientific and well explained it was! Sandra Blakeslee walks you through the more complicated subjects with clear and cogent explanations. This is a book i want to give all of my personal training clients so they understand how practice, visualization, and building a neuromuscular foundation, all go hand in hand with progress!
• 
  Kathy

  Super interesting exploration of how our brain connects to physicality. We learn how physicality is “mapped out” in our brain and what it could look like when either our brain or body is damaged. It seems we have a reciprocal method of repair or adaptation if either are damaged. Brains are flat out amazing, adaptable, mechanisms for learning new things throughout life! The “science writer” aspect got me annoyed a bit (the now debunked claim that lance armstrong was a legit super human) but really fascinating and compelling over all.
• 
  Diana Shaffner

  The body has a mind of its own is a very interesting read and introduction into the subject of body maps. The capacity of the brain to keep track and process the body's relationship to the surrounding space and time is amazing. Fascinating as well are the disorders resulting from disturbed or scrambled body mapping. This book by Sandra Blakeslee is a great step into this subject.
• 
  BMR, LCSW

  I read this book on the recommendation of an acquaintance. It was mildly interesting.
  
  Recommended only if you're really, really bored.
• 
  Clivemichael

  Fact-filled exploration inside and out. Accessible and entertaining.
• 
  Paul Gramling

  nueroscience is cool
• 
  Khara

  Really interesting book about how our minds make sense of things: through creating body maps.
• 
  Bob Nichols

  This is an unusual book. It's largely boring but with many gold nuggets tucked inside. Cognition, value and body are tied together. "Meaning," the authors say, is rooted in agency (acting and choosing) and agency "depends on embodiment." Feedback from bodily movements provide meaning that become "maps" within. We talk about muscle memory but memory is lodged in the brain as motor maps. Perception is active. It is predictive and we fill in the gaps with what we have learned before. People do have auras in the sense of a space that is an extension of themselves. When we point our finger, our self extends itself to the object. About 5% of the population are affected by a condition (synesthesia) whereby separate senses are joined. Numbers have colors; red smells; voices have flavors. That striking statistic helps to explain the paranormal, and makes the weird not abnormal. It's further evidence of our biologically based variability. Above our biological differnces, culture promotes fundamental variations as well. The Chinese can't understand the part without understanding the whole. Those in the West focus on straight lines and salient objects on those lines.
  
  As opposed to the fixed, behavioral structures favored by the evolutionary biologists, the authors note that mirror neurons allow us to experience others as extensions of ourselves, but this capacity produces negative as well as positive social interactions. The authors suggest that homophobia may be deeply ingrained because straight men can't help but to experience "in the mind's body" two gay men in a sexual act. They also say that sadists are able to experience pleasure in the pain of others because of these neurons. The authors go on to say that Von Economo neurons are fundamental to social intuitions. We make quick judgments involving "approach or retreat". Regarding William James' theory of emotions, our body reacts (and acts?) and we become aware of our body's reaction (and action?) as feeling. Here the body's mind is primary and our mind's awareness follows. The mind is infused with the body's energy and there is no such thing as "pure reason." They also say that the right frontal insula is active when one feels literal physical pain and when one experiences psychic pain such as social rejection.
  
  All in all, the mental maps we form are integrally tied to action, and action begins with our hands. The authors casually remark that permanent two-legged walking coincided with the appearance of the very first stone tools. Our hands become free, and free hands enabled us to extend our body's domain through what the authors say became an innate drive to augment our bodies with artifacts. That augmentation was "bred into us" and this, perhaps, enhanced our power and, with power, our freedom.
• 
  Grumpus

  This is based upon the audio download from [
  www.audible.com].
  
  Narrated by: Kate Reading
  
  It was an decent book and while I did find it interesting as I listened to it, there were only a couple of things that really stood out in terms of recall. As the title says, it’s about how your brain maps your body and brain flexibility.
  
  What I recall most is a condition called the “yips” and that reflexology seems to provide a truly effective connection to the brain.
  
  Yips is a movement disorder that is associated with sports activities such as putting in golf. I think of it as carpal tunnel of the brain—whereby long-time commonly repeated activities become nearly impossible to do properly due to things such as twitches and loss of timing.
  
  I have played (still do) softball for years and have always made my throws from shortstop to first base accurately. Then about 2 years ago, I lost it. My throws during warm-ups are fine but put me in a game situation, I have the hardest time getting an accurate throw no matter how much time I take to throw it. So, I tried explaining to my teammates that I have the yips, and well, you can imagine what they thought of my self-diagnosis.
  
  Reflexology, such as walking on smooth stones or putting a vibrating insole in your shoes does seem to somehow help the brain remap itself and help cure the yips. I have yet to try that in my case but it seems to help golfers when they experience this condition.
  
  If you are interested in brain science, this book is worth the read.
  
• 
  catherine

  in the afterwards, the authors apologize to the researchers for glossing over any details of their work for this presentation to a general audience. i think they should have apologized to the reader for presenting such obviously diluted reporting. it's an extremely interesting topic but so horrible presented in this book. the authors should have assumed that their reader knew nothing of the subject, but were intelligent. good science writing needs to explain the research, not reduce it, for the non-specialist.
  
  i have to admit, they really lost me half way through the book when they report on a study done with abandoned children from orphanages in eastern europe. they compared the differences in body maps among children who receive various levels of touch stimulation during development. at one point, they start talking about children in Mail. Mali? last time i checked a map, that country's in africa, not europe. i get what they were saying, but the book is rife with these kinds of errors.