real tactile world is wonderfully messy and complicated, ” This quotation from David Linden applied to his book, Touch: The Science of the Sense that Makes Us Human, too, Linden, a neuroscientist, wrote an interesting and often overwhelmingly sciency book about how brain interprets its bodys surroundings through touch, But the book wasnt only about humans vampire bats and fire beetles, for example and it wasnt limited to touch, both of which added context and confusion as I worked my way through the book.
The book covers a range of sensations: itch, pain, and temperature, and explains how some touch carries additional emotional influences such as flirtation and revulsion.
He explains the anatomy and physiology of skin expertly, such as differences between hairy and glabrous skin and many of the nerves that provide information from the skin to the brain such as Merkel disk receptors and Ruffini endings.
I struggled when he described the electrical and chemical transmission of signals from skin to dozens of named zones in the brain, I understood enough, but people more knowledgeable about human anatomy than me will take away even more from this messy and complicated book,
Part of the value of this book will be as a reference for me, I didnt know that some nerves transmit information to the brain faster than others, Initial pain arrives far faster than a flirtatious caress, I learned that we humans pay less attention to touch signals that result from our own movement than externallygenerated stimuli, I learned that we can modify our brains touch map its ability to recognize where touch originates based on the amount of tactile stimulation over time.
The reduction is sensitivity isnt equal: the bottoms of feet lose sensitivity twice as much as fingertips, Could that be part of how falling risk increases with age Thus, if the concentration of Merkel disks decreases with aging, I wonder whether “exercises” or experiences can be designed to help us rebuild either the disks or the map to improve personal awareness and safety.
There was so much to absorb in this book, Linden asked and answered many questions, but he also identified countless questions where research as yet to even begin, The book also reminded me that what we dont know about ourselves and our world is ginormously vast, It was a tough read, but I plan to use it in my professional studies because it contains so much useful information and insight.
Gosh, was this bad! It was so incredibly scienceheavy, not approachable at all and I love science and biology, The interesting stories amp questions that are promised in the blurb were nowhere to be found and the author thought it was a FANTASTIC idea to use a REAL LIFE rape case to scientifically explain why a handjob might not feel good.
This was just so cruel and made me incredibly mad, What part of the author's mind was sitting in the courtroom while a completely traumatized teenage girl had to plead her case in front of strangers how she got violated in the worst ways and with the guy having zero regrets and blaming it on the freakin handjob: Yeah, nice, I am going to use this for my book!
Like.
. . WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!!
He also showed zero empathy with the survivor, not condemning the situation or the guy in the slightest and I bet that he did not ask for the consent of the survivor to publish her story.
I DNFed the book in the next chapter which was about "sexual touch" and which starts with him describing his own sex life in detail, describing bodies of women he had been with, etc.
Like dude. No. Just no. If I could give negative, I would,
What a shame, because I am obsessed with the cover, But yeah. The author and the editor should be ashamed to publish something like that, I read /Touch: The Science of the Sense that Makes Us Human/, by David Linden:
sitelink theguardian. com/books/
This book was fascinating, right after reading about taste, I should read about all the senses,
It covers the biology, physiology, chemistry, and more of sensation, and our perception of sensation, Skin, sensors, the spinal cord, nerves and the nervous system, and the cortexes in the brain that process sensation and perceived sensation,
I knew that the brain fills in missing details in the visual and hearing systems, such as in our blind spot, and the brain does the same with sensation no surprise.
Perhaps the most interesting part of this book, at least for those who have sex on the brain, was the physiology and psychology of sexual desire.
That could be useful.
I care less about which male and female sensory fields map to which nerves, and which areas of the brain process sensation from different body parts.
Even more useful and interesting was the physiology and psychology of orgasms, including innervated areas for women in the vagina, anus, and perineal areas.
Fact I was unaware of: in women, based on their distribution of neural pathway terminations, some women can come from anal penetration alone.
That distribution is what determines physically whether it's easiest for different women to come when you stimulate the clitoris or penetrate the vagina or anus.
Clearly research is in order, "The astonishing secrets of our senses, and how to harness them to change your personal and professional life, " Touch, David J. Linden
The synopsis and the blurbs of this book caught my attention, as i'm a person who really loves science
But this book.
. . Well It is a super hard science, Idk, the information is too much and complicated for me to absorb and understand, And plus i don't have any basic knowledge in biology, this book surely made me feel super clueless with all the jargons
Maybe if you are into biology, and have basic in it, you could read this book.
If you are clueless as me, i would not recommend this The New York Times bestselling author examines how our sense of touch and emotion are interconnected
Johns Hopkins neuroscientist and bestselling author of The Compass of Pleasure David J.
Linden presents an engaging and fascinating examination of how the interface between our sense of touch and our emotional responses affects our social interactions as well as our general health and development.
Accessible in its wit and clarity, Touch explores scientific advances in the understanding of touch that help explain our sense of self and our experience of the world.
From skin to nerves to brain, the organization of the bodys touch circuits powerfully influences our livesaffecting everything from consumer choice to sexual intercourse, tool use to the origins of language, chronic pain to healing.
Interpersonal touch is crucial to social bonding and individual development, Linden lucidly explains how sensory and emotional context work together to distinguish between perceptions of what feels good and what feels bad, Linking biology and behavioral science, Linden offers an entertaining and enlightening answer to how we feel in every sense of the word, Nice book, even though at times is too heavy on biology terms and descriptions and may find the normal human like myself a bit lost
The author also missed the opportunity to ask the reader whether he/she felt any itchiness while reading Chapter, because I itched all through it : I learnt too little from this book.
By taking scientific papers and wrapping them in a book cover, one can just obtain a journal or conference proceedings but not really a book.
I would have been captivated, if there were a story to get me through all of this information, The examples were present but didn't feel on spot most of the times, And what's up with all these diagrams More of a storyline and less graphs could have done miracles, Just take the story of two lab rats and tell us what they are going through, . . Yet, the topic is interesting : This has the subtitle The Science of the Sense that Makes Us Human, but nowhere in it will you find an explanation as to why touch apparently makes us any more human than, say, salmon.
Nevertheless, Touch has all you ever wanted to know about how we humans feel, This ranges from the physics of how it works to situations when theres nothing more involved than our mental assumptions, This is an engaging read for the most part, and theres lots here that Ill remember,
Ill not forget the story of M, the woman who lost feeling in her forehead but developed an itch there so bad that she literally scratched through her skull into her brain.
Ill not forget the cutaneous rabbit, Ill not forget how horrific Onchocersiasis is, although I might forget how to say it and Ill not forget that no other species has fiveyearold offspring that cannot survive independently.
Even salmon.
However, Ive already forgotten what TNF alpha signalling is, exactly what temperatures TRPVand TRPMare associated with and what the anterior cingulate cortex does.
But it doesnt matter, Theres an awful lot of interesting stuff here so that, if the technical explanations get the better of you, you can just gloss over that page or so and youll find yourself in something far more fascinating.
Linden writes pretty well and keeps things bouncing along,
However, while I dont object to the use of footnotes, he cant seem to make up his mind what theyre for, Because of that, you have to turn to every single one of them to see whether its a simple reference to an experiment or an entire page of information about what youve just read.
And as hispages have no fewer thanfootnotes, this gets, shall we say, on ones nerves,
I think its safe to say that you can probably skip over them completely or, if that makes you feel guilty, gloss over them at the end of each chapter.
Youll not miss out a huge amount by omitting them, This is an interesting book which, probably due to the large number of popular science books out there, will hardly make any impression in the annals of popular science literature.
Its worth a read though if you feel inclined,
For more reviews and theBooks Spreadsheet, visit sitelink com Touch is a pretty fascinating book, delving into the importance of the sense of touch for us and what it would mean to lose that sense.
Its not just losing the sensation of your skin touching something, after all: touch receptors also play a part in interpreting pain, heat, etc.
In a way, the book as a whole tells you about more than just touch, since it also gives a solid background in the nervous system and the brain.
Its also pretty focused on stuff like orgasms and sensual touching, sometimes with fairly explicit and somewhat unnecessary examples, e, g. a description of a couple having sex, You may or may not find that helps your understanding I found it intrusive to be told to imagine these things in which I have no interest! Particularly as some of these descriptions are addressed to you, the reader.
I felt that it got a bit scatterbrained at times sometimes I felt that it wandered away from touch onto other aspects of our sensory experiences, though thats almost to be expected.
We divvy up our senses into some rather artificial boxes at times just think of how linked scent and taste are, But mostly I found it interesting and easy to read,
sitelinkOriginally reviewed for The Bibliophibian, This book was terrible, None of the narrative flair or accessibility of neuroscientists like Norman Doidge, Incredibly boring. It's one of those books that walks right up to the line of interesting, . . aaaand end chapter. Every time.
And so many "we just don't know" cop outs, I've read a lot of science books about a lot of ambiguous subjects the best ones at least offer informed hypotheses even if more than one.
Throwing up your "we just don't know" hands is lazy,
I think he was really only interested in writing the parts about intimacy and sexual touch and his editors made him expand it, because the rest of it felt pretty mailed in.
I'm conflicted by this book, Some of this is filled with fantastic information but some of the personal stories are /too/ personal, I don't ever need sexual stories from
Someone in a book, Especially in the detail he gives, "Touch" turned out to be a very interesting book in understanding the anatomy of how we feel touches, Author brilliantly describes the mechanism of sudden, special and painful touches, explains how pain and
itching occur, Most notable part of the book is that it is not implicated with difficult information that you barely understand or after some minutes totally forget about rather David Linden gives us overall information with vast number of images.
However, there are some negative parts too that I did not like about, For example, the first chapter was redundant due to there author had counted several experiments to prove that touch has an important factor in our life.
I think it would be enough to include it in Introduction and contribute first chapter to some relevant information, Another example, yet very important, is irritating real life stories about particular problems related to touches was also redundant and we could without problem understand what he is going to tell about.
Overall, I highly recommend to read this book to get basic information about important sense in our body and understand how it works.
Personally, I eventually found an application of my knowledge about neuroscience in understanding how nerves and cells collaborate with spinal chord and brain, .