The Island of the Colorblind and the Cycad Island

The Island of the Colorblind and the Cycad Island by Oliver Sacks

Rare genetic traits may become prominent in isolated populations with significant intermarriage. Deafness became common in Martha's Vineyard thanks to two founders that had a recessive gene. In Micronesia, there is an island (Pingelap) many people are achronotopes. This trait occurred due to a population bottleneck. Colorblindness can be a nerve or a an eye issue. In Micronesia, the colorblind have difficulty seeing during the day, but actually have a better ability to see at night. The book also explores cycads. These seeds are fairly poisonous. However, are consumed after processing to remove the poison. Could this result in some neurological problems? The book covers some interesting topics, but it wanders a bit, with parts travel, genetic and neurological.

The Winner Effect: The Neuroscience of Success and Failure

The Winner Effect: The Neuroscience of Success and Failure by Ian H. Robertson

Dopamine helps lead people to take risks and seek to be winners. There are some drugs that can lead people to be compulsive gamblers. High level leaders need to seek greater and greater control. This can sometimes lead to them being out of touch. (The car company CEOs that flew on corporate jets to Washington DC to ask for a bailout are an example.)

The book contains a number of examples of how the neuroscience leads to people making risks in the name of "winning", however, it feels somewhat disjointed and overly long. 

The Book of Minds: How to Understand Ourselves and Other Beings, from Animals to AI to Aliens

The Book of Minds: How to Understand Ourselves and Other Beings, from Animals to AI to Aliens by Philip Ball

This book takes a long balanced exploration of the mind, sentience and freewill. What does separate humans from other animals? Do we have freewill? What does the mind do? Where does artificial intelligence fit into this? There are more questions than answers. For AI, it does seem that it is great at analyzing patterns and making logical responses, but this does still seem a far cry from the true intelligence. It also requires vastly greater computing power. Can we really attempt to have a single measure for intelligence? Computer are great at solving certain types of problems. Different animals are great at computing what they need to compute. Bees have a jiggle dance that shows others where to go, birds fly, animals identify prey. They all have intelligence optimized for their purpose. They all process the environment in different ways, with differing sensitivities to smell, colors and more. We have a tendency to try to anthropomorphize, but we can learn a lot from others. As for freewill? As far as human interaction is concerned, it doesn't really matter, the law will still need to act the same. It will also be difficult to come to a definitive conclusion. Similarly with extraterrestrials. Are we a backwater not worth exploring? Or perhaps we are so different that we don't realize we have been in contact. There is likely more diversity in minds than we can comprehend.

Being You: A New Science of Consciousness

Being You: A New Science of Consciousness by Anil Seth

What makes you you? What is consciousness? What is intelligence? These are topics that we think we understand, yet cannot explain well. The latest scientific research is evolving. We can look at activity in the brain. Different types of thoughts cause the brain the "light up" in different ways. You could ask somebody in a motionless states to think of different things for "yes" or "no" and see the results in their brain. 

We are getting a better understanding of consciousness. Being unconscious is very different from being asleep. We are also better understanding intelligence. Current artificial intelligence can match patterns and generate new content based on how it has been trained. However, it is still a long way away from consciousness. 

The Neuroscience of You: How Every Brain Is Different and How to Understand Yours

How does the brain work? In Neuroscience of You, Chantel Prat attempts to answer the question in an open, conversational manner. 

There are many differences in individual brain function. There are also different things that provide pleasure to different brains. Some people love novelty, while others thrive more on sameness. Our definition of "abnormal" brain function is arbitrary. We draw a line and say "anything past this line is abnormal". However, it is not that clear. Brain functionality is on a spectrum. Even something seemingly straightforward like being "right handed" or "left handed" is actually a continuum. Some people are "more left handed" than others. 

Language is a key part of human brain development. Once people can read, it is difficult not to read characters that are seen. Learning a second language provides important benefits in brain functionality. (It seems to be more related to the quality of skill in the second language than the number of languages learned.) People have developed skills to understand the great complexity of language.

The book goes into theory of mind and development. The goal is not so much to provide novel research as to provide a relatable summary of where we are today.  The author does mention exercises in "brain control" that have been done, but acknowledges that these are very limited in capability, and require a willing participant. Understanding the brain relies on both the "physical understanding" of relationship with neurons as well as the psychological big picture understanding. There are many different ways that our brains can work, with "normal" being an arbitrary standard.

On the Move: A Life

Oliver Sacks was a gay motorcycle-riding author who happened to be an accomplished neurologist. On the Move is a history of his life. He spent time as a drug addict, motorcyclist and bodybuilder before focussing on his medical career. From a young age, he found that he had a talent for writing. In college, he was near the bottom of his class, yet won a prestigious award due to his skills writing on scientific topics. He came from a family of doctors, and was steered towards medical school. (I have a suspicion he would have had a very different career otherwise.)

After medical school, he went to the United States. He tolerated the east coast, but fell in love with California. He lived much of his adult life in America, but remained a British citizen. He grew up at a time when being homosexual was a crime. He was somewhat active in the gay scene in his youth, but had a multi-decade period of celibacy later in life. He also experimented with drugs and and recorded his experiences before giving up drugs and moving.

He has a very personal approach to his medical practice. He has written many works on his medical experiences that focus on the individual case histories. He writes about many patients in which he has had a closer relationship. He sought to know the whole patient. In some cases this allowed him to identified nuances of the diseases and treatments. He also treated himself as a patient, writing about some of the interesting conditions that he had experienced.  

A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence

A Thousand Brains is an interesting mishmash of a book. At first, it discusses the intelligence theory. This says that brain uses large numbers of different models to process information. It takes in various inputs and uses the past learning to build new understanding. This contrasts to the more linear understanding and the use in artificial intelligence. The author stresses that this is just a model that can be used to come to a true understanding with more research.

The book then goes off on science fiction and social policy. There is discussion of extra-terrestrial life, and the challenge of intelligent life meeting up. Intelligent human life capable of interstellar communication has only existed for a mere blip in the lifespan of the earth. What are the odds we could find other life? The author has the optimistic stance that any society that has conquered long distance space travel has probably also conquered the base characteristics that lead to warfare.

The author is optimistic about artificial intelligence. We still have a long way to go before adopting intelligence similar to the human brain. Most artificial intelligence uses simple learning process that must be relearned to be able to carry out new tasks. Computers have beat humans at narrow tasks, but not at overall intelligence. AI would probably need to undergo a significant change to make the leap forward. He sees great potential for robotic intelligence, with minimal risk.

For society, the author is concerned with "fake learning". People often adopt models that are proven to be true. However, he also acknowledges that many models serve their purpose. When people only travel by foot, the flat earth model is perfectly adequate. The subsection of the earth they can travel is for all practical purposes flat. Only once long distance and higher speed travel comes about is a round earth model needed. Even today, most people are fine thinking of the earth as "flat". 

The book compares these models to other knowledge that is "proven" to be bad. This is where things start to get tricky. The link between autism and vaccination is given as an example. People cling to the belief that the vaccines lead to autism in spite of scientific evidence to the contrary. However, just as the scientific community can produce evidence refuting the vaccine/autism connection, the anti-vaxers produce evidence to their side. How can that be? The book claims that they are continuing to advocate "bad" beliefs. But, I'm guessing they would call others following "bad" science. Today science has obtained a level of "religion". The scientific method arbitrates all truth. It has become akin to the pope in the medieval Europe. Science tends to denigrate religion as "outdated" just as Christianity christianized pre-Christian religions as pagan. Have we really advanced? Or are we just seeing a new religion gain prominence?  

Other areas like global warming and birth control and religion are seen as areas of concern. Global warming could be an existential crisis for humanity. The earth could potentially be uninhabitable like Mars is today. Religions can be dangerous when they look forward to an afterlife and the destruction of the world. Hmm. These two actually seem similar. Birth control was advocated as a way for the logical brain to overcome the gene-spreading behavior of the instinctive brain. However, will that really result in massive decrease in population? There still does seem to be a strong desire for reproduction.

The social policy implications distract from the earlier message of the book. It does go more into science fiction (including discussion of the laws of robotics.) That may be interesting. However, that is most likely focussing on problems that will not be at the forefront of the future. When the author was launching Palm, few people could see a purpose of handheld computers. Now it is not unusually for people to carry around multiple computing devices (watches, phones, etc.) that are much more powerful than early Palm Pilots. Similarly, the implications for a future once we further understand the brain and can reproduce it will be much different than anything we can think of today.

The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention

"If-and-then" is the key to human innovation and domination. That point is repeated over and over in Pattern Seekers. The second half of the book dives down into the evolutionary history of homo sapiens and analyzes how humans came to dominate.

The first part of the book focussed more on the different types of people and what they excel at. Most people are near the center of the bell curve for systematizing and empathy (with women skewing more empathetic and men more systematizing) However, inventors tend to be very high on the systematizing end. Their brains are often the scientific method in action. Autism is often manifest as high systematizing with low empathy. Studies have shown that children of engineers tend to be overrepresented on the autism spectrum. There was a plan to do a detailed study of MIT graduates to see autism correlation. However, the president of MIT stopped it, for fear that it would cast the university in a bad light. The end of the book includes a short quiz to scale yourself on the two spectrums. (I came up heavily skewed towards systematizing.) 

Our current education system does a great disservice to those on the autism spectrum. The conventional general education system has moved more to the "fuzzy" instruction and away from the more concrete. This often results in very smart students struggling. (Ironically, at the same time, we are super concerned about the lack of people in STEM.)  It would be better for us to focus on the strengths of those strong in the "in-built" scientific method. These people may coast through some classes in school, but struggle greatly with the social interactions. As a society it would benefit everyone to acknowledge the different ways in which people think. Future Edisons may by languishing as we spent effort trying to make them something they are not rather than let them move the human race forward.

The Brain: The Story of You

The brain is a really complex piece of machinery. We understand it much better than we used to, but there is still a lot more that we don't understand. The number of possible data-points and connections is so vast that we just don't have the computing power to fully map out a brain right now. We seem to have free will, yet there is a lot that is programmed. Our world is filled with different waves, yet our brain adapts these signals into sight, sound and other phenomena. The brain does a good job of "stabilization", "synchronization" and "noise cancellation". Even though inputs may come at different times, they are synchronized to paint a coherent picture. We may "remember" things somewhat differently than we actually experienced them. (Memory can also be manipulated to help us remember things that did not occur.) We also only take in what we need for the given task. When we master skills, the brain does not need to spend as much effort and can put things on "autopilot". This book is a nice, short work with a lay-persons introduction to the science and complexity of the human brain. Like the human brain itself, our understanding of the brain is evolving. Many animals have brains that are mostly pre-programmed. Humans are more akin to a bare-metal computer with just a kernel. We must load the OS and programs on top. This makes us flexible, but also makes it challenging to understand the complexities.

Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

Time sleeping seems to be a waste. After all, we are not engaging in what could be more productive activity. Alas, that is not the case. Paradoxically, sleep actually aids in performance. Many studies have shown improved problem solving, memory and creativity after getting sufficient sleep. Lack of sleep also severely limits our performance. Drowsy driving is actually a much more serious danger than drunk driving. Not getting enough sleep can also decrease the number of chemicals that tell us we are full while increasing the ones that tell us we are still hungry. People think they are acting fine when they don't get enough sleep, but they are not. The immune system and memory also suffer when there is not enough sleep.
How do you get sufficient sleep? For one, you stay away from drugs. Sleeping pills knock you out, but don't help you get quality sleep. Alcohol is somewhat similar in that it helps you into "fake sleep". Nicotine and Caffeine are also detrimental. A slightly lower temperature can help you sleep at night. (Hmm. I always seem to like it warmer, but then I wake up sweaty.) It is also useful to be consistent. You can't fully "make up" lost sleep.
Sleep can be one of the best "performance enhancing drugs." We should try hard to maximize it.

Louder Than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning

Louder Than Words provides a brief overview of the philosophy and physiology of language. The human concept of language is more advanced than anything in the animal kingdom. Humans are often creating "mental images" of the language as they are hearing it. Athletes can improve heir performance by visualizing their activity because it is the same part of the brain that activates. People also process the language as they hear it, even guessing the remainder of a partially uttered word. The grammatical structures of various language do, however, influence how they are processed.
The book contains a mixture of interesting information about language, but reads more like a research summary than a book.

Gratitude

Gratitude is a short work containing a few essays written by Oliver Sacks shortly before he passed away. He takes stake of his life and helps. He details finally taking a trip to Israel after shunning it for a long time, and finding he and his partner were warmly received. The overall work is very short and tends to serve the writer more than the reader.

The Minds Eye

In The Mind's Eye, Oliver Sacks explores some "interesting" cases of vision. Some people have lost the ability to read, while still having the ability to recognize letters and even write. In other cases, people don't have stereoscopic vision and can't make out the richness of the three dimensions. (And sometimes, like those who are color-blind, they may not recognize what they are missing.) Near the end of the book, the author details his own experience losing visual ability. He had cancer in his eye that caused him to lose all but peripheral vision in an eye, before losing everything. Finally, the book ends with "internal vision". Some blind people "see" and think in vivid images, while others that see do not have the "mind" images. Vision loss can also be different for various people. Vision as a whole is not a simple "on or off", but has many different aspects of physical and neurological ability. Since people only tend to know the way that they experience the world, it can be difficult to generalize a common experience.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat covers odd neurological conditions. The eponymous man was a music professor that could communicate great with music. However, visually he was lost. He could not tell the difference between his wife and a hat. He had difficulty with all things visual, but no problem with music. Another man was stuck in 1945. He would forget anything new that happened more than a minute ago. There were also tales of people that lost their sense of "self". A man would find a foreign leg in the bed and throw it out, only to throw himself out of a bed. A woman lost her sense of self, and only with great difficulty would force her body to move. However, unlike losing the sense of sight, she did not appear to be so disabled, and thus suffered from harassment from others. There is also the tale of twins that were very low on the intelligence meter, but could identify large primes and calculate the day of the week over thousand year time spans. One man used his nervous ticks to improvise on drumming. When medication helped him not have the ticks, he skipped taking it on weekends so he could continue to have the creative impulses.
With many of these people they have lost some basic ability that we see common, yet they still have other areas that they can contribute to society. We can help them to utilize their special talents. Society has this narrow understanding of "normal". We like to pride ourselves on accepting "differences". However, these differences seem to be in the narrow band of standard behavior. Some of the more extreme differences may make it much more difficult for us to interact with others. However, these could also provide positive experiences for the people and society as a whole.

Hallucinations

There are a number of different neural conditions that can cause hallucinations. Different senses can also be involved. Visual hallucinations are well documented. However, sound and smell also occur. People may be reluctant to admit to "hearing voices" for fear of being branded crazy. Some medical conditions such as migraines and epilepsy may be associated with hallucinations. They can also be triggered by drugs (including recreational ones as well as others lake that used to treat Parkinson's disease.) The author of Hallucinations did some self-experimentation with various drugs in the 50s, but found he had to stop before his "experimentation" started creating problems in his life.
Hallucinations are usually outside the control of the person. Somebody may see people multiple or hear people where there are none. With some, it is common to see hallucinations based on past experiences. Musical notes appearing randomly seems to be a fairly common manifestation for those that spend a great deal of time reading music.
Some religious experiences may be scientifically explained as types of hallucinations. (If God works through natural means, then this could be a logical means that are used.) A final type of hallucination covered is "false limbs". People often "feel" a limb still present even after it has been amputated. However, when they start to lose other sensual confirmation, they gradually lose control of it. This can be counteracted by seeing visual confirmation of the activities (by a prothesis or other tricks.)
The book has a somewhat random assortment of stories and descriptions of cases where people's senses show them something that is not actually there, and seems to be written primarily to entertain.