The Custom-Made Brain: Cerebral Plasticity, Regeneration, and Enhancement
ISBN: 9780231534215
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Columbia University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Brain -- Physiology; Brain stimulation; Neurophysiology;

Neuroscientists Vincent and Lledo challenge the popular idea that the human brain is a static organ and demonstrate its flexibility and capacity for growth and change in this sometimes entertaining, but often tedious study of brain science. The pair provide an informative overview of the evolutionary growth of the brain as well as a detailed description of each region of the brain and its function. Drawing on theirs and others' research, the authors then examine the critical ways that the brain begins to degenerate due to age or other pathologies and explore many of the methods that brain scientists are using to enhance and plasticity of the brain. For example, brain-machine interface technology establishes a relationship between "human thought and machine function, whether a computer or a robot," and allows for entertaining the possibility of a future where humans can move or communicate merely by thought. Vincent and Lledo point to ethical questions philosophers raise regarding brain enhancements: if we seek to enhance the brain directly and make it work better than normal, are we "meddling with man as a human being?" In spite of such questions, the authors enthusiastically embrace the possibilities inherent in brain enhancement and promote it as a path toward human happiness. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Jean-Didier Vincent is professor emeritus at the University of Paris-Sud-Orsay and a member of the Faculty of Medicine, Paris-Sud-Kremlin-Bicêtre. He is the author of the highly acclaimed Voyage extraordinaire au centre du cerveau ( Extraordinary Voyage to the Center of the Brain ) and Biologie des passions ( The Biology of Emotions ) and belongs to the French Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medicine.

Pierre-Marie Lledo is a research director specializing in neuronal stem cells and brain plasticity at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and chair the department of Neuroscience at the Pasteur Institute. He is recipient of a CNRS bronze medal and several Prizes from the French Academies of Medicine and Sciences. He belongs to the European Academy of Sciences.

Laurence Garey has translated several works from French and German, including Korbinian Brodmann's Localisation in the Cerebral Cortex , and publications by Jean-Pierre Changeux, Michel Jouvet, and Michel Meulders.

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