A book about the way we perceive our bodies and the neurological processes related to self-perception. This was good, but it was an advance copy and the formatting was really wonky and made it hard to get into a good flow of reading. I enjoyed it but didn't actually finish the whole thing. 3 stars.

In this book you’ll learn about: a man who wanted a perfectly healthy leg amputated, a fisherman who felt like his hands were crab claws, a woman who felt she wasn’t responsible for the actions of her hand, various people who’ve experienced “Alice in Wonderland Syndrome” [i.e. feeling one has shrunk or stretched,] and about many other issues stemming from the body’s sensory and motor integration with what we think of as the mind. For most of us, the most powerful take-away to be gained from this book is just how wonderful and awe-worthy it is that we have bodies that are so well integrated and coordinated that we can go about life engaging in all sorts of fascinating and productive activities.

While this isn’t the only book that addresses this subject, I think it’s a topic worth learning more about and reflecting upon in depth. We can get so out of touch with the fact that our body is integrated with our mental and sensory experiences that we take “brain in a vat” scenarios as a given for the near future, as if one is the sum of one’s neuronal connections. This book will disabuse one this notion. In fact, the final chapter (Ch. 10) questions the proposition that copying consciousness is a matter of mastering such neuronal mapping. It’s easy to miss how much of our emotional experience is rooted in what’s happening in our guts and heart, and how much all the non-central nervous system parts of the body play in our conscious experience of the world.

I learned a great deal from this book and would highly recommend it.

It is a deep read for science lovers. It needs focus and effort to get through it. would say this is a much advance reading talking in details about research, published papers and descriptions related to our body which tries to give a brief description on different phenomena like phantom limbs and such.
I would say this book is much more science even though some of us might expect it to be a little more towards the spiritual or philosophical aspect as it focuses on self-consciousness.
The book is short yet I would suggest you to take your time while reading.
If you find some parts difficult to understand or digest, there are reliable sources and references with description of the terms used given towards the end.

A very informative, up-to-date read.

In Body Am I. The New Science of Self-Consciousness, neuroscientist and writer Moheb Costandi examines how the brain generates maps and models of our body, how those maps translate into our conscious experience of the body and how that experience contributes to our sense of self. Another key theme of the book is the malleability of bodily awareness. Every day, social relations, accidents, traumas and other experiences can alter these maps and bodies in subtle ways.

The book helps readers understand the curious forms that disturbances in body perception can take. Some of them include the alien hand syndrome endured by people who feel that some external force is controlling the movement of their arm or hand; the phantom limb condition (including rare cases of subjects who had lost their penis and who reported phantom erections); or the condition suffered by people who believe that their body changed into the body of an animal. Completely or in part (one patient was convinced he had crab hands.)

I was morbidly fascinated by the paragraphs on Body Identity Integrity Disorder(BIID), a condition suffered by patients who feel the need to amputate a perfectly healthy limb in order to restore their true identity. It might sound contradictory to us but some BIID patients declare that they feel “incomplete” with two arms and two legs. The disorder poses an ethical dilemma for physicians. On the one hand, physicians feel very uncomfortable with the idea of amputating a healthy limb without any medical reason. On the other, many patients will try anything to self-amputate, often risking their lives. Surgical amputation would thus minimise the harm they might cause themselves. It also has the potential to improve the quality of life of the sufferer. As the title of the documentary by Melissa Gilbert suggests, the patients feel whole once the limb they do not recognise as being part of themselves has been removed. Another term used by people who have undergone a voluntary amputation is transabled.

The book never turns into a freak show though. Chapter after chapter, Costandi methodically analyses the inextricable link between the brain and the rest of the body by tracing the historical milestones from classical neurology, and then by describing the latest cutting-edge research. He even suggests how the research is opening up new avenues of future treatments for neurological and psychiatric conditions and how it allows for the development of next-generation prosthetic limbs that will be fully integrated into their user’s nervous systems so that they feel part of the body.

Body Am I. The New Science of Self-Consciousness is packed with remarkable scientific facts about neuroplasticity. I learnt how the brain can rewire itself and how this reconfiguration affects the representations of the body and our self-perception. Musicians, for example, have larger finger representations. And if you wear a cast for a few weeks, the cortical representations of the fingers will shrink, reducing their brain activity. That shrinkage is reversible.

Our understanding of how the brain actually represents the body comes largely from the work of neurosurgeon and cartographer of the brain Wilder Penfield. The “homunculus” drawing he commissioned to medical illustrator Hortense Cantlie for his 1950 book The Cerebral Cortex of Man is captivating and visionary. It is, however, too male-centred to adequately reflect how the female body is represented in the brain.

The chapter on how tool use alters body representation was another gem. It seems that the representations of tools occupy a special place in the brain where they are closely associated with those of the hand. Surprisingly, this hand-tool region is intact both in people who are born without hands and in those who are born blind which indicates that the region is innate to serve an important evolutionary function. The brain treats the tool, not as an external object, but as an extension of the body, endowed with sensing capabilities.

Body Am I. The New Science of Self-Consciousness sums up the latest advances in self-consciousness and bodily awareness with a language that is both clear and engaging. Costandi’s forays into the future are also illuminating. Like when he explains how the ability to transfer the sense of body ownership could be useful for tele robotics or how a finer grasp of body representations could contribute to our understanding of the biological basis of gender identity. Or when he expresses doubts about the advent of lab-grown mini brains and about the transhumanist dream to upload the mind’s architecture onto a computer using a high-resolution mapping of all the connections existing within the brain.

I just wish I hadn’t read the horrific treatments animals are submitted to in laboratories. I knew they were basically tortured for scientific purposes. I had no idea it could be so cruel. Poor kittens, rats and monkeys. I wonder how long we will allow these practices to continues at a time when, as Costandi notes, growing evidence demonstrates that cognitive abilities once thought to be unique to humans can be identified in wide variety of animals. Including insects.

Fascinating deep dive into the science of self-consciousness. Synthesizes relevant research and connects lessons learned to interesting case studies.

Thank you, MIT Press, for the advance reading copy.

I would say this is a much advance reading talking in details about research, published papers and descriptions related to our body which tries to give a brief description on different phenomena like phantom limbs and such.

I would say this book is much more science even though some of us might expect it to be a little more towards the spiritual or philosophical aspect as it focuses on self-consciousness.

The book is short yet I would suggest you to take your time while reading.

If you find some parts difficult to understand or digest, there are reliable sources and references with description of the terms used given towards the end.

A very informative, up-to-date read.