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In 'Making Space', Jennifer M. Groh explores how the brain processes spatial relationships, emphasizing the significant computational effort involved in everyday tasks like navigating to the grocery store. The book argues that spatial processing is integral to all cognitive abilities, influencing memory and reasoning. Groh, a professor at Duke University, combines accessible writing with solid scientific insights to reveal the brain's complex mechanisms for understanding space.

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2 views

pdfIEhd7x3yrh

In 'Making Space', Jennifer M. Groh explores how the brain processes spatial relationships, emphasizing the significant computational effort involved in everyday tasks like navigating to the grocery store. The book argues that spatial processing is integral to all cognitive abilities, influencing memory and reasoning. Groh, a professor at Duke University, combines accessible writing with solid scientific insights to reveal the brain's complex mechanisms for understanding space.

Uploaded by

Omar Yussry
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Making Space

How the Brain Knows Where Things Are


Jennifer M. Groh

“A terrific book; very imaginative, yet based on solid science.”


—Michael Gazzaniga, author of Who’s in Charge?

“Making Space is written with a light touch, but with impeccable scholarship. It
is extremely readable.”
—Randy Gallistel, Rutgers University
Belknap Press
cloth • $27.95 Knowing where things are seems effortless. Yet our brains devote
ISBN 9780674863217 tremendous computational power to figuring out the simplest de-
256 pages • 12 color illustrations, tails about spatial relationships. Going to the grocery store or finding
13 halftones, 71 line illustrations our cell phone requires sleuthing and coordination across different
sensory and motor domains. Making Space traces this mental detec-
tive work to explain how the brain creates our sense of location. But it
goes further, to make the case that spatial processing permeates all
our cognitive abilities, and that the brain’s systems for thinking about
space may be the systems of thought itself.

Our senses measure energy in the form of light, sound, and pressure
on the skin, and our brains evaluate these measurements to make
inferences about objects and boundaries. Jennifer Groh describes
how eyes detect electromagnetic radiation, how the brain can locate
sounds by measuring differences of less than one one-thousandth of
a second in how long they take to reach each ear, and how the ear’s
balance organs help us monitor body posture and movement. The
brain synthesizes all this neural information so that we can navigate
three-dimensional space.

But the brain’s work doesn’t end there. Spatial representations do


double duty in aiding memory and reasoning. This is why it is harder
to remember how to get somewhere if someone else is driving, and
why, if we set out to do something and forget what it was, returning to
the place we started can jog our memory. In making space the brain
uses powers we did not know we have.

Jennifer M. Groh is Professor in the Department of Psychology and


Neuroscience and the Department of Neurobiology at the Center for
Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University.

H A RVA R D U N I V E RS I T Y P R E SS www.hup.harvard.edu email: [email protected] tel: (800) 405-1619

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