The Spark of Life

By Frances Ashcroft,

Book cover of The Spark of Life: Electricity in the Human Body

Book description

What happens during a heart attack? Can someone really die of fright? What is death, anyway? How does electroshock treatment affect the brain? What is consciousness? The answers to these questions lie in the electrical signals constantly traveling through our bodies, driving our thoughts, our movements, and even the beating…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Spark of Life as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This book tells the story of how bioelectricity was finally accepted in modern neuroscience, how it interacts with biochemical elements of the nervous signal, and how its manipulation led to great medica and scientific advances in the late 20th century.

The author knew several of the leading figures who made these discoveries and provides personal anecdotes about them, as well as illuminating episodes from the history of neuroscience. 

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Book cover of From One Cell: A Journey into Life's Origins and the Future of Medicine

From One Cell By Ben Stanger,

Everybody knows that all animals—bats, bears, sharks, ponies, and people—start out as a single cell: the fertilized egg. But how does something no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence give rise to the remarkable complexity of each of these creatures?

FROM ONE CELL is a dive…

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