Creating a Space

As beings of flesh and blood, we all occupy a place in space. Moreover, whether we are aware of it or not, we register the space we are in, in many aspects, and adjust our movements accordingly. Locating objects, distinguishing them by perceiving their boundaries, measuring distances, and becoming aware of our own position are all indispensable skills related to our spatial perception. So, how does the brain do these things?

Jennifer Groh reveals how intricate the brain's mechanisms for spatial perception are, and how even the simplest detection involves complex activities on a microscopic scale. She also explains how spatial perception intertwines with many different functions of the brain; the relationship of sight, hearing, and touch, as well as memory and awareness, to spatial perception, through interesting and creative experiments.

"For me, the most interesting problem in science is how neural firing patterns create thought. I have always wanted to learn how our rich mental life of thinking, imagining, reasoning, worrying, desiring, planning, and decision-making is embodied in the electrical signals generated by microscopic cells within the brain. This book does not answer that, but it offers a powerful analogy: if we can grasp how the brain processes information about things we can measure (like sensory stimuli), perhaps we can understand how it processes things we cannot measure (like ideas)."