The Man Who Wasn't There - Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self

Zusatztext 85037694 Informationen zum Autor ANIL ANANTHASWAMY is former deputy news editor and current consultant for New Scientist . He is a guest editor at UC Santa Cruz’s renowned science-writing program and teaches an annual science journalism workshop at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore! India. He is a freelance feature editor for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science’s “Front Matter” and has written for National Geographic News! Discover ! and Matter . He has been a columnist for PBS NOVA’s The Nature of Reality blog. He won the UK Institute of Physics’ Physics Journalism award and the British Association of Science Writers’ award for Best Investigative Journalism. His first book! The Edge of Physics ! was voted book of the year in 2010 by Physics World .  He lives in Bangalore! India! and Berkeley! California. Klappentext *Nominated for the 2016 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award* *An NBC News Notable Science Book of 2015* *Named one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2015* *A Book of the Month for Brain HQ/Posit Science* *Selected by Forbes as a Must Read Brain Book of 2015* *On Life Changes Network's list of the Top 10 Books That Could Change Your Life of 2015* In the tradition of Oliver Sacks! a tour of the latest neuroscience of schizophrenia! autism! Alzheimer's disease! ecstatic epilepsy! Cotard's syndrome! out-of-body experiences! and other disorders-revealing the awesome power of the human sense of self from a master of science journalism. Anil Ananthaswamy's extensive in-depth interviews venture into the lives of individuals who offer perspectives that will change how you think about who you are. These individuals all lost some part of what we think of as our self! but they then offer remarkable! sometimes heart-wrenching insights into what remains. One man cut off his own leg. Another became one with the universe. We are learning about the self at a level of detail that Descartes ("I think therefore I am") could never have imagined. Recent research into Alzheimer's illuminates how memory creates your narrative self by using the same part of your brain for your past as for your future. But wait! those afflicted with Cotard's syndrome think they are already dead; in a way! they believe that "I think therefore I am not." Who-or what-can say that? Neuroscience has identified specific regions of the brain that! when they misfire! can cause the self to move back and forth between the body and a doppelgänger! or to leave the body entirely. So where in the brain! or mind! or body! is the self actually located? As Ananthaswamy elegantly reports! neuroscientists themselves now see that the elusive sense of self is both everywhere and nowhere in the human brain.   An allegory about a man who was devoured by ogres first appears in an ancient Indian Buddhist text of the Madhyamika (the middle-way) tradition. It dates from sometime between 150 and 250 CE and is a somewhat gruesome illustration of the Buddhist notion of the true nature of the self. A man on a long journey to a distant land finds a deserted house and decides to rest for the night. At midnight, an ogre turns up carrying a corpse. He sets the corpse down next to the man. Soon, another ogre in pursuit of the first arrives at the deserted house. The two ogres begin bickering over the corpse. Each claims to have brought the dead man to the house and wants ownership of it. Unable to resolve their dispute, they turn to the man who saw them come in, and ask him to adjudicate. They want an answer. Who brought the corpse to the house? The man, realizing the futility of lying to the ogres—for if one won’t kill him, the other one will—tells the truth: the first ogre came with the corpse, he says. The angry second ogre retaliates by ripping off the man’...

Product details

• Authors: Anil Ananthaswamy, Anil (Anil Ananthaswamy) Ananthaswamy
• Publisher: Dutton Books
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.08.2015
• EAN: 9780525954194
• ISBN: 978-0-525-95419-4
• No. of pages: 320
• Dimensions: 160 mm x 237 mm x 28 mm
• Subject: Guides > Health