Here are 100 books that Vehicles fans have personally recommended if you like
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I have wondered about what goes on in the brains of animals and people since I was a youth. My research career began by studying how some genes affect behavior. Little surprise, it turns out, that many such “behavioral” genes influence the way the brain is built. So, I began to study brain development using embryos from a variety of experimental laboratory animals and developed a university course on this topic. When I retired, I decided to share what I learned. The other books on this list are great examples of readable books that would likely be exciting to anyone else interested in the story of how the human brain is built.
Not only does this book provide an up-to-date account of where science is at in terms of our basic understanding of how the brain works, but it also succeeds in putting this knowledge into a compelling history of basic discoveries. I really enjoyed this aspect of Cobb's book and tried to incorporate it into my book.
So, I found it to be an excellent introduction to neuroscience and a great book about the process of how science progresses in jumps. It engenders real excitement in this still very lively field of study and celebrates the key advances in our conceptual understanding of the brain.
This is the story of our quest to understand the most mysterious object in the universe: the human brain.
Today we tend to picture it as a computer. Earlier scientists thought about it in their own technological terms: as a telephone switchboard, or a clock, or all manner of fantastic mechanical or hydraulic devices. Could the right metaphor unlock the its deepest secrets once and for all?
Galloping through centuries of wild speculation and ingenious, sometimes macabre anatomical investigations, scientist and historian Matthew Cobb reveals how…
I’m a British neuroscientist and writer who’s been using computers to study the brain since 1998, and writing about it since 2016. How I ended up a neuroscientist is hard to explain, for my formative years were spent devouring science books that were not about the brain. That’s partly because finding worthwhile books about the brain is so hard – few delve into how the brain actually works, into the kinds of meaty details that, for example, Hawking offered us on physics and Dawkins on evolution. So I wrote one to solve that problem; and the books on my list are just that too: deep, insightful works on how the brain does what it does.
A magnificent synthesis of Bialek and colleagues’ research into how spikes from neurons send information. A strong contender for the most readable serious science book ever published. Even if you only understand a quarter of it (as I did on first reading as a math-shy grad student), the sheer quantity of ideas and the flow of the prose is mind-blowing. As essential a read now as it was in 1997, these ideas have not dated one bit.
What does it mean to say that a certain set of spikes is the right answer to a computational problem? In what sense does a spike train convey information about the sensory world? Spikes begins by providing precise formulations of these and related questions about the representation of sensory signals in neural spike trains. The answers to these questions are then pursued in experiments on sensory neurons. Intended for neurobiologists with an interest in mathematical analysis of neural data as well as the growing number of physicists and mathematicians interested in information processing by "real" nervous systems, Spikes provides a…
I’m a British neuroscientist and writer who’s been using computers to study the brain since 1998, and writing about it since 2016. How I ended up a neuroscientist is hard to explain, for my formative years were spent devouring science books that were not about the brain. That’s partly because finding worthwhile books about the brain is so hard – few delve into how the brain actually works, into the kinds of meaty details that, for example, Hawking offered us on physics and Dawkins on evolution. So I wrote one to solve that problem; and the books on my list are just that too: deep, insightful works on how the brain does what it does.
The authors hilariously claim in their acknowledgements that this is a short book. It is not. Instead, it is a volume that explains ten key principles of why brains work the way they do, from why they do so much computation with chemistry to the irreducible smallness of a brain’s components. A densely argued, fiercely detailed book, not one for the faint of heart – but one that has pride of place on the shelves of many neuroscientists, mine included.
Two distinguished neuroscientists distil general principles from more than a century of scientific study, “reverse engineering” the brain to understand its design.
Neuroscience research has exploded, with more than fifty thousand neuroscientists applying increasingly advanced methods. A mountain of new facts and mechanisms has emerged. And yet a principled framework to organize this knowledge has been missing. In this book, Peter Sterling and Simon Laughlin, two leading neuroscientists, strive to fill this gap, outlining a set of organizing principles to explain the whys of neural design that allow the brain to compute so efficiently.
I’m a British neuroscientist and writer who’s been using computers to study the brain since 1998, and writing about it since 2016. How I ended up a neuroscientist is hard to explain, for my formative years were spent devouring science books that were not about the brain. That’s partly because finding worthwhile books about the brain is so hard – few delve into how the brain actually works, into the kinds of meaty details that, for example, Hawking offered us on physics and Dawkins on evolution. So I wrote one to solve that problem; and the books on my list are just that too: deep, insightful works on how the brain does what it does.
We neuroscientists know a lot about how brains are, but not how they come to be. This book fills that huge hole: it explains how genetics and development shape the growing brain, and the consequences this has for our personalities and our mental disorders. Mitchell’s thesis is that the stochastic nature of development is key to understanding much of the variation between brains, and it has changed the way I think about the wiring of brains.
A leading neuroscientist explains why your personal traits are more innate than you think
What makes you the way you are-and what makes each of us different from everyone else? In Innate, leading neuroscientist and popular science blogger Kevin Mitchell traces human diversity and individual differences to their deepest level: in the wiring of our brains. Deftly guiding us through important new research, including his own groundbreaking work, he explains how variations in the way our brains develop before birth strongly influence our psychology and behavior throughout our lives, shaping our personality, intelligence, sexuality, and even the way we perceive…
I am fascinated with the relationship between our individual behaviors and the social structures and institutions in which we live—and how these influence each over time. I think this sort of understanding is important if we want to consider the kind of world we want to live in, and how we might get there from where we are. I take insights from many disciplines, from physics and biology to the cognitive and social sciences, from philosophy and art to mathematics and engineering. I am currently a professor of cognitive and information sciences at the University of California, Merced, and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute.
In 2016 I went to a conference in Leuven, Belgium, on computational approaches to understanding science. There I presented a model showing how selection for productivity (good old “publish or perish”) could, over time, degrade the quality of methods used by scientists.
I also met Cailin O’Connor, a philosopher and game theorist who was also studying science with formal models, with a focus on equity, or lack thereof. In this terrific book, Cailin uses game theory and evolutionary dynamics to consider how some social institutions lead to entrenched inequality among people or social classes, as well as how one might combat the forces of unfairness.
In almost every human society some people get more and others get less. Why is inequity the rule in these societies? In The Origins of Unfairness, philosopher Cailin O'Connor firstly considers how groups are divided into social categories, like gender, race, and religion, to address this question. She uses the formal frameworks of game theory and evolutionary game theory to explore the cultural evolution of the conventions which piggyback on these seemingly irrelevant social categories. These frameworks elucidate a variety of topics from the innateness of gender differences, to collaboration in academia, to household bargaining, to minority disadvantage, to homophily.…
I am fascinated with the relationship between our individual behaviors and the social structures and institutions in which we live—and how these influence each over time. I think this sort of understanding is important if we want to consider the kind of world we want to live in, and how we might get there from where we are. I take insights from many disciplines, from physics and biology to the cognitive and social sciences, from philosophy and art to mathematics and engineering. I am currently a professor of cognitive and information sciences at the University of California, Merced, and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute.
I had the good fortune to go to graduate school at UC Davis, where I got to know Peter Richerson, who co-led a group of people working on cultural evolution.
Pete, along with his long-time collaborator Rob Boyd, pioneered the theoretical framework of dual inheritance theory, or how genes and culture act as twin transmission channels for human evolution. In this book, they use mathematical models to explore the various ways in which humans might learn from one another, and how natural selection can shape the evolution of a psychology that facilitates various forms of social learning.
This book, more than any other, launched contemporary research on cultural evolution.
How do biological, psychological, sociological, and cultural factors combine to change societies over the long run? Boyd and Richerson explore how genetic and cultural factors interact, under the influence of evolutionary forces, to produce the diversity we see in human cultures. Using methods developed by population biologists, they propose a theory of cultural evolution that is an original and fair-minded alternative to the sociobiology debate.
I am fascinated with the relationship between our individual behaviors and the social structures and institutions in which we live—and how these influence each over time. I think this sort of understanding is important if we want to consider the kind of world we want to live in, and how we might get there from where we are. I take insights from many disciplines, from physics and biology to the cognitive and social sciences, from philosophy and art to mathematics and engineering. I am currently a professor of cognitive and information sciences at the University of California, Merced, and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute.
Peter Turchin has gotten famous recently for predicting the US political upheaval of 2020 way back in 2012.
This book represents the first landmark of Turchin’s attempt to understand the ebbs and flows of history using dynamical models. The book’s centerpiece is a formalization of a theory about how empires rise and fall, first conceived by the 14th century (!) Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun.
The book inspired me to replicate the computational model it presents, and it was remarkably illuminating to watch empires grow, fight, and collapse on my computer screen.
Many historical processes are dynamic. Populations grow and decline. Empires expand and collapse. Religions spread and wither. Natural scientists have made great strides in understanding dynamical processes in the physical and biological worlds using a synthetic approach that combines mathematical modeling with statistical analyses. Taking up the problem of territorial dynamics--why some polities at certain times expand and at other times contract--this book shows that a similar research program can advance our understanding of dynamical processes in history. Peter Turchin develops hypotheses from a wide range of social, political, economic, and demographic factors: geopolitics, factors affecting collective solidarity, dynamics of…
I am fascinated with the relationship between our individual behaviors and the social structures and institutions in which we live—and how these influence each over time. I think this sort of understanding is important if we want to consider the kind of world we want to live in, and how we might get there from where we are. I take insights from many disciplines, from physics and biology to the cognitive and social sciences, from philosophy and art to mathematics and engineering. I am currently a professor of cognitive and information sciences at the University of California, Merced, and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute.
I have always been fascinated by how people join and leave groups.
What are the benefits of joining a particular group? Which group should I join? What happens if someone wants to join a group, but its current members don’t want them to? I once thought such questions were merely qualitative, and when I was a graduate student I thought I’d be the first to tackle them quantitatively.
I was humbled when I stumbled upon this book, written years earlier, in which two behavioral ecologists review game theoretic models that address questions of just this sort, starting simple, and building up models of increasing nuance and complexity. I think anyone interested in the dynamics of group formation in humans or other animals should read this book.
Although there is extensive literature in the field of behavioral ecology that attempts to explain foraging of individuals, social foraging--the ways in which animals search and compete for food in groups--has been relatively neglected. This book redresses that situation by providing both a synthesis of the existing literature and a new theory of social foraging. Giraldeau and Caraco develop models informed by game theory that offer a new framework for analysis. Social Foraging Theory contains the most comprehensive theoretical approach to its subject, coupled with quantitative methods that will underpin future work in the field. The new models and approaches…
My sister once remarked that listening to our mother’s stories about living during World War II made it sound like we missed something really exciting. That is what history has always been for me–something I missed out on, for better or worse. What would it really have been like? Could I have survived? Family genealogies bring history to me on a personal level; archaeology and paleontology extend that wonder much deeper into the past. During the time I taught anatomy and human evolution at the University of Indianapolis, I tried to be as interdisciplinary as possible, both in study and teaching. I continue this in my retirement.
This is a fascinating book that gives clarity to a difficult topic: how does our brain make decisions? I taught neuroscience before I retired, and I understand that when the semester turns to the cerebrum, details fade into vague and general statements. I confess to cribbing lecture notes from Sapolsky’s popular book because he explains things much more effectively than any textbook. Of course, our behaviors are influenced by immediate circumstances and by past experiences. And, yes, ancestral genetic patterns and molecular dynamics within the neurons also play a role. But so does something as simple as fatigue–and we all know that making lots of decisions can be exhausting and leave us as much in need of food and rest as digging a ditch. Now, I can justify an afternoon nap even if I have only been working at my desk all morning.
I was hooked on brain science from the moment in the 1980s when I saw the first blurry images that revealed the physical markers of thought. I set out to find out all I could about this astonishing new area of discovery, but there was practically nothing to be found – neuroscience as we know it barely existed. I pounced on every new finding that emerged and eventually wrote what was one of the first books, Mapping the Mind, that made brain science accessible to non-scientists. There are hundreds of them now, and these are some of the best.
This is the one to get if you are shipwrecked on a desert island – or forced into another lockdown. Or, for that matter, if you need a doorstop that happens to contain fascinating essays on aspects of brain and mind from Abacus to Wittgenstein. Dip into it for a guaranteed good read or use it as a superior Google when you want to know things like why mirrors only reverse one way or the origin of the phrase “mad as a hatter”. It won’t disappoint.
The Oxford Companion to the Mind,edited by Richard L. Gregory, is a classic. Published in 1987, to huge acclaim, it immediately took its place as the indispensable guide to the mysteries - and idiosyncracies - of the human mind. In no other book can the reader find indiscussions of concepts such as language, memory, and intelligence, side by side with witty definitions of common human experiences such as the 'cocktail-party' and 'halo' effects, and the least effort principle.
Richard Gregory again brings his wit, wisdom, and expertise to bear on this most elusive of subjects. Research into the mind and…
