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

"The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better" by Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee, is a book I found in the Chicago O'Hare airport while waiting for the flight back to New York City.

I am very curious about it. I just started reading it, and would love to share some quotes and ideas as I go along. So for now, here's what 2 reviews wrote:

From Publishers Weekly

What do golfer's yips, the ability to see auras and the hypnotic appeal of video games all have in common? Each arises from the brain's body map. New York Times science contributor Sandra Blakeslee and her son, science writer Matthew Blakeslee, begin with a quick overview of the sense of touch. According to the Blakeslees, body maps are created by the brain, using touch, to spell out the brain's experience of the body and the space around it. These maps expand and contract to include objects such as clothing, tools or even your car. Some of the more interesting subjects the Blakeslees cover include muscle tone disorders, phantom limb sensations in amputees and the inaccurate body images associated with anorexia. Sketches and sidebars explore topics in more detail, while a glossary explains technical terms. With its breezy this is so cool style, this entertaining book will appeal to readers who prefer their science lighthearted and low-key. (Sept. 11)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

This popular synthesis of a technical field in neuroscience explores how the brain constructs its models of the body. Entangled with the perception of self, these maps are multitudinous and dynamic, as experimenters have discovered. The Blakeslees ground the idea of mental maps in the work of Wilder Penfield, a 1940s researcher whose probes on the brains of living people localized which areas of the brain represent which parts of the body. Subsequently, scientists have refined the concept of body maps, a history that binds the Blakeslees' informative explanations of specific maps, case studies, and psychic disorders. Expressed in an amiable, we're-all-in-this-together manner, their tour describes one's personal space and its extension to one's clothes, tools, instruments, and sports gear. The body in motion generates its own set of changing mental maps, distinguishing the graceful from the clumsy. Maps are plastic, report the Blakeslees, yet they also have permanence: successful dieters may still feel overweight, and amputees retain a map of the missing limb. Varied and revealing, this will intrigue readers interested in the clinical perspective on self-perception. Taylor, Gilbert --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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