Jay Ingram "Burning House. Uncovering the secrets of the brain"

Author: Jay Ingram Original title: The Burning House: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Brain. Genre: popular science Medical topic: brain, neurology Year of first publication: 1994 (worldwide), 1996 (Poland) Description: It is thanks to their shortcomings that we know so much about the brain. To all of them—known only by their initials—I dedicate my book. This book deals with very difficult and highly scientific matters, as it reveals the secrets of how the brain functions; however, it is written in such an accessible way that no prior knowledge of neurology is required to understand the topics discussed. We begin this fascinating journey with a visit to the world’s largest brain museum, the Yakovlev and Haleem Collection of Normal and Pathological Anatomy and Brain Development in Washington, D.C. We learn about the first attempts by 18th- and 19th-century phrenologists to deduce personality traits based on skull shape. The author briefly explains how a synapse works and how the brain is divided into functional parts. In the following chapters of the book, we meet patients: those with unilateral inattention, along with examples of tasks demonstrating that the brain can perceive reality even without the use of consciousness (the experiment with the eponymous burning house), phantom limbs, short- and long-term memory disorders (victims of lobotomies, a mutilating procedure popular in the mid-20th century). We will learn why face recognition is a function distinct from the recognition of other objects, where dreams come from and why people need them, and the answers to many other questions. ""The Burning House" is difficult to find on the Polish market due to the lack of a reprint, but it is worth seeking out and reading.