About the Book
‘Forget the hype you’ve heard about “brainwaves.” Read R. Douglas Fields’s facile account of the role of brain electrical activity in mind and behavior.’ – Joseph Ledoux, author of The Deep History of Ourselves
With modern instruments, neuroscientists can eavesdrop on electrical transmissions flashing through your brain. The most intimate details of your mind are theirs to see. They can read your thoughts before you have them. They can watch your brain learn. All by tracking your brainwaves.
Analysing brainwaves, the imperceptible waves of electricity surging across your scalp, has been possible for nearly a century. But only now are neuroscientists becoming aware of the wealth of information brainwaves hold about a person’s life, thoughts and future health.
From the moment a reclusive German doctor discovered waves of electricity radiating from the heads of his patients in the 1920s, brainwaves have sparked astonishment and intrigue, yet the significance of the discovery and its momentous implications have been poorly understood.
Written by R. Douglas Fields, a premier neuroscientist on the cutting edge of brainwave research, Electric Brain tells a fascinating and obscure story of discovery, explains the latest science and looks to the future – and the exciting possibilities in store for medicine, technology and our understanding of ourselves.
About the Author :
Douglas Fields, PhD, is a neuroscientist and an international authority on nervous system development and plasticity. He received advanced degrees from UC Berkeley, San Jose State University, UC San Diego, and he held postdoctoral fellowships at Stanford and Yale Universities before joining the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Maryland. He is also Adjunct Professor at the Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. He has published over 150 articles in scientific journals and books from his experimental research into how the brain is modified by experience, and the cellular mechanisms of memory. His scientific research has been featured internationally in newspapers, magazines, radio, and television, including the National Geographic, ABC News Nightline, andNPR Morning Edition. His research on nervous system plasticity involving non-neuronal cells (glia) in white matter regions of the brain, is recognized as pioneering a new non-synaptic mechanism of nervous system plasticity. In 2004, he founded the scientific journal Neuron Glia Biology, to advance research on interactions between neurons and glia, and he serves on the editorial boards of several neuroscience journals.
In addition to his scientific research, Dr. Fields is author of numerous books and magazine article about the brain written for the general reader, including The Other Brain, about brain cells that communicate without using electricity (glia), and Why We Snap, about the neuroscience of sudden aggression, as well as numerous articles in popular magazines including Outside Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, Scientific American and Scientific American Mind, Time, Undark, Quanta, and on-line columns for The Huffington Post, Psychology Today, Scientific American, the Society for Neuroscience, BrainFacts, and others, and he is scientific advisor to Scientific American Mind. Adam is a full time narrator and voice talent with over 200 titles recorded for companies such as HarperCollins, Recorded Books, Brilliance, Blackstone, AudioGo, Tantor, Oasis, Audible, Highbridge, eChristian, Dreamscape, and Zondervan. He is the recipient of AudioFile Earphones awards for Pavilion of Women, by Pearl S. Buck, The Good Cop, by Brad Parks, and The Big It, by A.B. Guthrie, Jr. In 2015 two audio book projects he was involved with were nominated for Voice Arts Awards from the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences. He holds his MFA in Acting from the Chicago College of the Fine Arts at Roosevelt University. Most recently he was handpicked by Disney/Pixar to narrate the new novel version of Finding Dory.
