The Neuro Revolution: How Brain Science Is Changing Our World - Hardcover

Lynch, Zack; Laursen, Byron

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312378629 ISBN 13: 9780312378622

Verlag: St Martin's Press, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

Profiles recent breakthroughs in neuroscience and how they are being applied to numerous aspects of daily life from law enforcement and economics to artistic expression and religious beliefs, in an insider's report that cites the potential of emerging innovations. 20,000 first printing.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

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ZACK LYNCH is the founder and executive director of the Neurotechnology Industry Organization (NIO), a global trade association for companies involved in neuroscience, brain research institutes and patient advocacy groups. He is also the co-founder of NeuroInsights (www.neuroinsights.com), the world’s leading market research firm covering the neurotechnology industry. Please visit him at: http://www.theneurorevolution.com

BYRON LAURSEN, bestselling co-author of ShowTime and The Winner Within with NBA legend Pat Riley, joined forces with Zack Lynch to help gather the advanced thoughts, amazing stories and stunning predictions from brilliant minds that you will encounter within The Neuro Revolution.

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One Time’S Telescope

As I rolled into that narrow MRI tunnel in San Francisco, my body tightly surrounded by what was then the very newest scanning technology, I was like a caterpillar entering a chrysalis. My hope was to emerge eventually into a better existence, my chronic pain erased. That hope was fulfilled, something I’m still thankful for every day. But an even greater transformation was launched for me that day. I gradually came to see possibilities far greater than the positive impact of this superior imaging technology on medicine and surgery.

It was about recognizing a gargantuan historic inevitability: Vast changes are gathering from this new technology, propelling humanity toward a radical reshaping of our lives, families, societies, cultures, governments, economies, art, leisure, religion—absolutely everything that’s pivotal to humankind’s existence.

This gigantic wave of transformation will reach every corner of the planet. It will create a metamorphosis as complete as the changing of a larval worm into a butterfly.

If enough of us realize what is coming, and if we can infuse this emerging wave with practical and benevolent intelligence, continuously keeping our aspirations aimed high, it will let us create a future of greatly enhanced, better-balanced, and more satisfying individual lives within a vastly transformed society that we will build through an unimaginably powerful capability we’ve never had before: increasingly precise control over the most complex entity in the universe, the single most important determinant of the quality of the lives we lead—our human minds.

Scientists are now building a phenomenal body of knowledge, at an explosive rate, about how our brains respond the way they do, and why, and how we might leverage this accumulating knowledge into innovations that will impact every part of our lives. Better understanding our brains will lead to more solid and reliable decisions, as individuals and as nations, creating more lasting happiness. We will tap potentials humanity has dreamed of and reached for across aeons—to live comfortably, harmoniously, and prosperously with our physical environment, each other, and our own emotions. Literally knowing our own minds will create new ways of learning, working, distributing wealth, experiencing cultures, and being creative. We will be able to ease chronic pain on every level, from physical to spiritual. Life in this now-emerging neurosociety will be as advanced from current existence as the Renaissance was from the Stone Age. We will see enormous modification of our personal relationships, the bases of political power, expressions of art, religious experiences, modes of learning, physical and mental health, and business competitiveness.

Profound questions will arise all along the way, and major controversies will mount, as these personal and social transformations challenge deeply held beliefs about what it means to be human.

You may already have learned some aspects of neurotechnology and neuroscience from recent magazine and newspaper articles that have described how researchers now can see the workings of the human brain in real time. Most of these early stories are centered on medical possibilities. Medicine is both vital and fascinating, but it’s really just one facet of the world’s approaching transformation. Neuroscience now drives many fields of study. University department walls are shape-shifting as many brand-new combinations are being created outright, at a rapid pace. Neurotheology, neurolaw, neuromarketing, neuroesthetics, and neurofinance are among the examples. These developments are morphing so quickly that even the most brilliant scientific minds at work today are often just vaguely aware of the neuroscience-propelled changes revolutionizing areas beyond their own fields of expertise.

The popular press reports on neuroscience that you may already have seen are your proof that the neurosociety has already taken baby steps. In the pages to come you’ll find proof that the time is coming remarkably near for neuroscience to begin taking long, broad strides, and to become as unmistakable on our horizon of time as history’s other great transformations did in their time.

I’ve spent the last several years positioned in full view of the coming attractions now being projected by some of the world’s most brilliant minds. My job is to relentlessly track neuroscientific projects under way within the many businesses, universities, and independent labs now pursuing breakthroughs. My mission is to synthesize all the information that’s flowing, shaping it into the best-informed ideas possible about where the rubber is going to meet the road.

The forthcoming chapters will reveal vital pieces of what I have seen from this unique vantage point, and your own visions of our possible tomorrows will take shape.

Change brings tumult, and inevitably it also inspires fear. The challenges ahead are tremendous. Deep social and cultural conflicts will arise, terrifying consequences may erupt, even as incredible benefits come about.

During the onrush of this neuroscience wave, it may seem at times—just as it often does today—that we are headed for a catastrophic future. Why shouldn’t reasonable people be afraid of the future? Hellhounds are on our trail right now. Our news is a parade of horrific imagery: terrorists in continual and bloody resurgence; global climatic shifts; food shortages across the globe; the evaporation of the middle class; startling increases in suicide; radically volatile energy prices; human and financial assets hemorrhaging in wars being waged across the planet; currencies tanking; babies born daily into desperate poverty; visions taking shape of an unstable multipolar world. This hydra-headed malaise makes today’s widespread prophecies of massive die-offs and possible extinction feel all too believable.

But thanks to the curiosity and drive of our ancestors, and to billions of us who will be working together in the near future within the neurosociety, we will be able to build a bridge wide enough for all of us to survive. We will also have the means to go higher than just survival. Depending on how we deal with the tumult, we will enter a flourishing age, riding a wave characterized by nearly unlimited access to the aspects of our humanity Abraham Lincoln summed up as "the better angels of our nature."

Since the dawn of civilization, humanity has undergone three societal revolutions. Each was driven forward by newly invented tools. Each of these technological leaps let people control the world around them to a far greater degree than was previously imaginable. Those surges of expanded control created three new epochs for humankind.

You are about to begin understanding the fourth.

Nearly ten thousand years ago, agricultural society came into being. Plows pulled by oxen replaced human muscles as the primary energy source for food production. Our ancestors were no longer forced to continually hunt, gather, and migrate. They began to gather surpluses. Sparse settlements grew into cities and city-states of hundreds of thousands of people. Specialized occupations were born, and the complexity of human life increased enormously.

Less than two and a half centuries ago, steam-powered engines became a reality, ushering in industrial society. Our control over energy creation, goods production, and resource distribution multiplied many fold. Distance became easier to conquer. New markets opened up around the world. The interconnectedness of human life was again magnified to a far higher degree.

In our time, the microchip gave birth to today’s information society. We can tap into instantaneous global knowledge exchange. This...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: St Martin's Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0312378629
• ISBN 13: 9780312378622
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 245
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar