Narrator Patrick Lawlor's genial tone helps make this production accessible and meaningful to the listener. Gay explores the latest scientific breakthroughs that are allowing humans to gain the ability to control machines with their minds. Though slow and expensive, the progress is ratcheting up, in particular with mind-controlled appendages. Embedded throughout the text are complex explanations of exactly how scientists are hacking into the brain to connect it to machines, and Lawlor's emphasis and deliberation smooth out these challenging passages. Additionally, his tone proves welcoming and projects the sense of curiosity about how far the science has come that characterizes Gay's prose. L.E. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

08/17/2015
Journalist Gay observes the brilliant, fiercely competitive, and unnervingly entrepreneurial neuroscientists who seek the means to bring humans one step closer to the transhuman realm. These researchers (many of whom receive Defense Department funding or have their own startups) implant electrodes in subjects’ brains to allow thoughts to control computers, prosthetic limbs, and potentially even human exoskeletons. Gay breathlessly but expertly recounts one experiment, which took place around the year 2000, that marked a milestone in the revolutionary new technology of neuroprosthetics: scientists successfully connected a rat’s brain to a computer, allowing the rat to produce a chemical reward by means of thought alone. Though he clearly admires these men (and all the scientists he profiles are men), Gay has done his homework. His graphic but comprehensible descriptions of struggles with devices of Rube Goldbergian complexity make it clear that this technology is still largely confined to the lab. Gay is reassuringly skeptical of the tabloid-style hype surrounding neuroprosthetics, but he makes a convincing case that, sooner rather than later, neuroprostheses will become more commonplace. (Nov.)

An ambitious, well-researched book,The Brain Electric illustrates the field's exciting potential not just to aid the disabled but one day, perhaps, to enhance human abilities altogether.” —Jennifer Latson, The Boston Globe

“One of the most fascinating . . . books you will ever read.” —Robert Epstein, Scientific American MIND

“The Brain Electric convincingly illuminates the ways current biomedical research and breakthroughs in neuroprosthetics are steadily gaining ground on what was once wild science fiction” —Booklist

“Gay observes the brilliant, fiercely competitive, and unnervingly entrepreneurial neuroscientists who seek the means to bring humans one step closer to the transhuman realm . . . Gay is reassuringly skeptical of the tabloid-style hype surrounding neuroprosthetics, but he makes a convincing case that, sooner rather than later, neuroprostheses will become more commonplace.” —Publishers Weekly

“To most, the notion of joining the human mind to a machine exists only in science fiction, yet revolutionary research combining medicine and technology has moved past proof of concept to demonstrate potentials for life-altering cures and military applications. First-time author Gay tells the emotional tale of scientific efforts in which neural implants, brain mapping, and advanced technology allow humans to control computers with their minds and instruct, for example, a prosthetic arm to hold someone's hand. While brimming with extensive and well-cited research studies, scientific background, and current events, the book comprises a collection of stories . . . The human side moves the narrative forward and will engage not just science readers but those who love inspiring people.” —Library Journal

“In The Brain Electric, Malcolm Gay has brilliantly opened the door to a new and startling world of engineering that will eventually transform many thousands of lives for the better. He brings the creative scientific process to life with vibrant prose, an unerring eye for the telling human detail, and a flair for capturing the drama of intellectual discovery. This is a masterpiece of reporting, and science writing at its best” —Fergus M. Bordewich, author of America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union

“What seemed the realm of science fiction just a few years ago is now real: the ability of a human being to manipulate a prosthetic arm fluidly and spontaneously, using only thought. So too can one person now think a movement and 'touch' another over a computer network. The human brain, it turns out, can learn with breathtaking speed to use digital networks and the machines they control as an extension of the mind and body. Malcolm Gay's The Brain Electric is a fascinating and thorough study of the fast-evolving science behind this inevitable mating, as well as of the recent revelations of neuroscience that we perceive all objects first in terms of how we can manipulate and move with them. At root, Gay's authoritative account is an exploration of consciousness and the concept of self at the cutting edge of science. A must-read for anyone who wonders just how far we've come.” —Peter Heller, author of The Dog Stars and The Painter

09/15/2015
To most, the notion of joining the human mind to a machine exists only in science fiction, yet revolutionary research combining medicine and technology has moved past proof of concept to demonstrate potentials for life-altering cures and military applications. First-time author Gay tells the emotional tale of scientific efforts in which neural implants, brain mapping, and advanced technology allow humans to control computers with their minds and instruct, for example, a prosthetic arm to hold someone's hand. While brimming with extensive and well-cited research studies, scientific background, and current events, the book comprises a collection of stories. Readers will get to know the medical researchers advancing the field. They will also meet the courageous volunteers participating in medical experiments, whose experiences of living with debilitating seizures, amputated limbs, paralysis, and even locked-in syndrome highlight the significance pursuing this type of research. VERDICT This is the first work on the subject for the general audience except for a few memoirs by patient-volunteers. The human side moves the narrative forward and will engage not just science readers but those who love inspiring people.—Heidi Uphoff, Sandia National Laboratories, NM

Narrator Patrick Lawlor's genial tone helps make this production accessible and meaningful to the listener. Gay explores the latest scientific breakthroughs that are allowing humans to gain the ability to control machines with their minds. Though slow and expensive, the progress is ratcheting up, in particular with mind-controlled appendages. Embedded throughout the text are complex explanations of exactly how scientists are hacking into the brain to connect it to machines, and Lawlor's emphasis and deliberation smooth out these challenging passages. Additionally, his tone proves welcoming and projects the sense of curiosity about how far the science has come that characterizes Gay's prose. L.E. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine