The Spike
An Epic Journey Through the Brain in 2.1 Seconds
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Narrated by:
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Anand Jagatia
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By:
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Mark Humphries
About this listen
This audiobook narrated by Anand Jagatia tells the extraordinary story of a neural impulse and what it reveals about how our brains work.
We see the last cookie in the box and think, can I take that? We reach a hand out. In the 2.1 seconds that this impulse travels through our brain, billions of neurons communicate with one another, sending blips of voltage through our sensory and motor regions. Neuroscientists call these blips “spikes”. Spikes enable us to do everything: talk, eat, run, see, plan, and decide. In The Spike, Mark Humphries takes listeners on the epic journey of a spike through a single, brief reaction. In vivid language, Humphries tells the story of what happens in our brain, what we know about spikes, and what we still have left to understand about them.
Drawing on decades of research in neuroscience, Humphries explores how spikes are born, how they are transmitted, and how they lead us to action. He dives into previously unanswered mysteries: Why are most neurons silent? What causes neurons to fire spikes spontaneously, without input from other neurons or the outside world? Why do most spikes fail to reach any destination? Humphries presents a new vision of the brain, one where fundamental computations are carried out by spontaneous spikes that predict what will happen in the world, helping us to perceive, decide, and react quickly enough for our survival.
Traversing neuroscience’s expansive terrain, The Spike follows a single electrical response to illuminate how our extraordinary brains work.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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"The Spike gives a brilliant overview of our current understanding of brain function, from perception to action, based on our knowledge of systems neuroscience. Conveying ideas and concepts with impressive clarity, Humphries covers an astonishing amount of scientific literature. A joy to read." (Matthias Hennig, University of Edinburgh)
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You've probably seen it before: a human brain dramatically lit from the side, the camera circling it like a helicopter shot of Stonehenge, and a modulated baritone voice exalting the brain's elegant design in reverent tones... to which this book says: Pure nonsense.
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Best general-public Brain Science book to date
- By Francisco on 02-14-11
By: David J. Linden
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The Master Algorithm
- How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World
- By: Pedro Domingos
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Under the aegis of machine learning in our data-driven machine age, computers are programming themselves and learning about - and solving - an extraordinary range of problems, from the mundane to the most daunting. Today it is machine learning programs that enable Amazon and Netflix to predict what users will like, Apple to power Siri's ability to understand voices, and Google to pilot cars.
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Great book, irritating narration
- By N. G. PEPIN on 09-24-15
By: Pedro Domingos
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The Complete (Short) Guide to Absolutely Everything
- Adventures in Math and Science
- By: Adam Rutherford, Hannah Fry
- Narrated by: Hannah Fry, Adam Rutherford
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Geneticist Adam Rutherford and mathematician Hannah Fry guide listeners through time and space, through our bodies and brains, showing how emotions shape our view of reality, how our minds tell us lies, and why a mostly bald and curious ape decided to begin poking at the fabric of the universe.
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Humour and understandability.
- By Chris B on 09-08-24
By: Adam Rutherford, and others
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The Performance Cortex
- How Neuroscience Is Redefining Athletic Genius
- By: Zach Schonbrun
- Narrated by: Thomas Vincent Kelly
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Why couldn't Michael Jordan, master athlete that he was, hit a baseball? Why can't modern robotics come close to replicating the dexterity of a five-year-old? Why do good quarterbacks always seem to know where their receivers are?In this deeply researched book, sports and business reporter Zach Schonbrun explores what actually drives human movement and its spectacular potential. The groundbreaking work of two neuroscientists in Major League Baseball is only the beginning.
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Excellent!
- By MD on 07-01-23
By: Zach Schonbrun
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101 Theory Drive
- A Neuroscientist's Quest for Memory
- By: Terry McDermott
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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It's not fiction: Gary Lynch is the real thing, the epitome of the rebel scientist - malnourished, contentious, inspiring, explosive, remarkably ambitious, consistently brilliant. He is one of the foremost figures of contemporary neuroscience, and his decades-long quest to understand the inner workings of the brain's memory machine has begun to pay off.
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Pretty Dang Funny
- By Will on 05-14-10
By: Terry McDermott
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Mind Wide Open
- Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
- By: Steven Johnson
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Brilliantly exploring today's cutting edge brain research, Mind Wide Open allows readers to understand themselves and the people in their lives as never before. Using a mix of experiential reportage, personal storytelling, and fresh scientific discovery, Steven Johnson describes how the brain works and how its systems connect to the day-to-day realities of individual lives.
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A totally new perspective on life
- By Jonathan on 09-16-04
By: Steven Johnson
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Louder Than Words
- The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning
- By: Benjamin K. Bergen
- Narrated by: Benjamin K. Bergen
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Whether it’s brusque, convincing, fraught with emotion, or dripping with innuendo, language is fundamentally a tool for conveying meaning - a uniquely human magic trick in which you vibrate your vocal cords to make your innermost thoughts pop up in someone else’s mind. You can use it to talk about all sorts of things - from your new labradoodle puppy to the expansive gardens at Versailles, from Roger Federer’s backhand to things that don’t exist at all, like flying pigs.
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Fun But Technical--Glad I Got It On Sale
- By Gillian on 05-22-17
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Autopilot
- The Art & Science of Doing Nothing
- By: Andrew Smart
- Narrated by: Kevin Free
- Length: 3 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Andrew Smart wants you to sit and do nothing much more often - and he has the science to explain why. At every turn we’re pushed to do more, faster, and more efficiently: That drumbeat resounds throughout our wage-slave society. Multitasking is not only a virtue, it’s a necessity. But Andrew Smart argues that slackers may have the last laugh. The latest neuroscience shows that the “culture of effectiveness” is not only ineffective, it can be harmful to your well-being.
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Not worth it.
- By B Lee on 04-30-14
By: Andrew Smart
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Herding Hemingway's Cats
- Understanding How Our Genes Work
- By: Kat Arney
- Narrated by: Kat Arney
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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The language of genes has become common parlance. We know they make your eyes blue, your hair curly or your nose straight. The media tells us that our genes control the risk of cancer, heart disease, alcoholism or Alzheimer's. The cost of DNA sequencing has plummeted from billions of pounds to a few hundred, and gene-based advances in medicine hold huge promise. So we've all heard of genes, but how do they actually work?
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A non-scientists misguided interpretation
- By AraSevera on 05-15-16
By: Kat Arney
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Out of Our Heads
- You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness
- By: Alva Noe
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Alva Noë is one of a new breed - part philosopher, part cognitive scientist, part neuroscientist - who are radically altering the study of consciousness by asking difficult questions and pointing out obvious flaws in the current science. In Out of Our Heads, he restates and reexamines the problem of consciousness, and then proposes a startling solution: Do away with the 200-year-old paradigm that places consciousness within the confines of the brain.
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A bold, yet ultimately unsupported, hypothesis
- By Keith Pyne-Howarth on 01-17-10
By: Alva Noe
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Mind in Motion
- How Action Shapes Thought
- By: Barbara Tversky
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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In Mind in Motion, psychologist Barbara Tversky shows that spatial cognition isn't just a peripheral aspect of thought, but its very foundation, enabling us to draw meaning from our bodies and their actions in the world. Our actions in real space get turned into mental actions on thought, often spouting spontaneously from our bodies as gestures. Spatial thinking underlies creating and using maps, assembling furniture, devising football strategies, designing airports, understanding the flow of people, traffic, water, and ideas.
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Physically difficult to listen to
- By Claire Hay on 11-08-19
By: Barbara Tversky
What listeners say about The Spike
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Gabriel Kendjy Koike
- 04-27-22
Entertaining and Dense
great book, exploring low level neuroscience in a very informational and dense way. even though the book is very short, it explores a lot of very modern concepts in neuroscience and physiology of the brain.
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- Jose T Garcia-Cobian
- 09-23-21
fantastic read!
highly recommended. easily followed and really interesting. a book to re read again and again
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- Philip Savva
- 08-10-21
Read this a year ago, very handy info
This book was great and timely. The stait forward 1.2 seconds was in my mind and super helpful in many, most behavior science reading I've done since.
Good time investment for audio-science.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Tam Hunt
- 08-28-21
Great overview of what we know about the spike code
The punchline at the end however is surprising: we know almost nothing about the spike code and human consciousness. A strange omission in the book was not even a mention of EEG and measuring the brains local and global electrical fields that are related to but different than the spike code. He mentions fMRI which measure blood flows through the brain. But nothing about EEG or the likelihood that the brain’s large scale electric fields play a role in function and consciousness.
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2 people found this helpful