"We Know It When We See It" was an interesting read and I liked learning more about how our vision works, but the writing style and some of the author's tangents didn't really work for me.

The information itself was interesting (if incredibly complex in some places), but the presentation could have been improved upon in my opinion.

“There is nothing so sensible as sensual inundation.” — Mary Oliver
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Everyone has a theory for happiness. If not a theory, a deeply formulated subscription. “If I have x, y, and z, I will be happy and fulfilled.” Mine is this:

In analyzing the times when I’ve felt super down, and the times when I’ve been ecstatically happy, there’s been a vivid divide. The times when I’ve been in a bad place have been times when everything was shot through with the feeling of sameness. It would be hard to make one day feel different from another. Usually, my happiest moments are specific, especially if they’re simple.

One of my biggest fears — a fear that nags at me on the nights when I’m awake and worrying — is that I will forget the details. On one hand, I’m such a simplicity person. All I need is a sense of purpose, and to be able to love the people around me. But I also want to remember it all.

If you know me, you probably know that early 2019 was the worst period I’ve ever had. It felt impossible that so many tragedies could occur in a row — at a time when I didn’t have anyone around — and I had a rough time summoning the willpower to care about anything. It was difficult to remember other times, and it was impossible to remember what being happy felt like. 2020 has been (fingers crossed) way better and easier in comparison.

For me, learning to deeply analyze my senses — and to notice the variations in them even on days when everything feels stagnant — has been a secret to my enduring happiness.

For a clear example of why this works for me:

I spent all of my senior year gloriously happy during the four minutes or so it would take for me to drive to class for my 8 A.M. Because I’ve been reading all about how music and sound affect our brains this year, I spent the entire drive deeply listening to and dissecting a song I love. Although the experience of listening could be similar, the actual songs themselves vary so drastically when you learned to dive into them.

This probably isn’t a proper term, but it’s what I call it — sensory variation.

Sensory variation is probably why I’m such a seasonal person, and so location-oriented. Each place I am carries with it such distinctive and electrifying sensations. The exact scent of the olive-oil-and-gardenia soap in a specific family member’s home. The exact sound of the gravel grating under sneakers, bubbling up around the laughing during the summers. Isn’t the variety incredible?

One of my best friends was worried about stagnation when he was talking to me about it last year, because he happened to be working a job when most of his hours would be devoted to the same spot and endless workflow. How do you stay happy when everything will feel the same?

I’ve started to delve more into other senses. Taste. Touch. Scent. Sight. I’ve kept lists of sensory details ever since my nature drawing class junior year — and I’ve always kept lists of “human details” on my phone to incorporate into my fiction. Looking back at them is so refreshing. I pretty much stopped journaling after I learned that language can solidify false memories and feelings. I was sick of living an interior life. Being the “quiet” one. Marking the time via senses instead feels much healthier. I’ll post a few lists on the blog this week! I rarely post my sketchbook pages on here, but would love to elaborate on what I mean.

It feels like a deeply relevant part of the human experience, especially during times like now when it feels like it’s one of the few things that we can do. If you’re ever around me in person, you’ve definitely heard me talk about it this year. Here are some book recommendations if — like me — you want a little more variation in what you observe in your day to day.

For me, at least, it makes me deeply happy to notice more.

The Books
SCENT
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Novel: The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell by Luca Turin | Bookshop
Release Date: May 18, 2006
Publisher: Ecco

One man's passion for perfume leads him to explore one of the most intriguing scientific mysteries: What makes one molecule smell of garlic while another smells of rose?

In this witty, engrossing, and wildly original volume, author Luca Turin explores the two competing theories of smell. Is scent determined by molecular shape or molecular vibrations? Turin describes in fascinating detail the science, the evidence, and the often contentious debate--from the beginnings of organic chemistry to the present day--and pays homage to the scientists who went before. With its uniquely accessible and captivating approach to science via art, The Secret of Scent will appeal to anyone who has ever wondered about the most mysterious of the five senses.
I haven’t read this one but it’s next on my list.

This is really dorky, but I’ve never been able to use the same body wash twice. During a season of my life, I will spend agonizing moments over the shampoo bottles and body washes in the Walmart aisle, because I so vividly associate senses with specific segments of my life. I had to replace my shampoo right after my W&L experience was canceled, and it was an odd source of agony. What would I associate with my final days?

(It was a bright, tangy apple. I got deeply obsessed with having a clean house in May, and so the dish soap and lotion that I used from Public Goods will forever be imprinted on the experience.)

Maybe that’s overthinking. Many people know that scent is most closely associated with memory but few people try to consciously provoke it. And if I’m conscious of it, I can’t just ignore it.

I’ve also always loved the idea of going to a perfumerie once. I would love to know how to construct specific memories. How to evoke feelings.

I found an excellent Goodreads list of books about scent, for further reading.
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TOUCH

Novel: Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought by Barbara Tversky | Bookshop
Release Date: May 21, 2019
Publisher: Basic Books

An eminent psychologist offers a major new theory of human cognition: movement, not language, is the foundation of thought.

When we try to think about how we think, we can't help but think of words. Indeed, some have called language the stuff of thought. But pictures are remembered far better than words, and describing faces, scenes, and events defies words. Anytime you take a shortcut or play chess or basketball or rearrange your furniture in your mind, you've done something remarkable: abstract thinking without words.

In Mind in Motion, psychologist Barbara Tversky shows that spatial cognition isn't just a peripheral aspect of thought, but its very foundation, enabling us to draw meaning from our bodies and their actions in the world. Our actions in real space get turned into mental actions on thought, often spouting spontaneously from our bodies as gestures. Spatial thinking underlies creating and using maps, assembling furniture, devising football strategies, designing airports, understanding the flow of people, traffic, water, and ideas. Spatial thinking even underlies the structure and meaning of language: why we say we push ideas forward or tear them apart, why we're feeling up or have grown far apart.
Like Thinking, Fast and Slow before it, Mind in Motion gives us a new way to think about how--and where--thinking takes place.
This isn’t quite about touch but it’s the closest I can get. It pretty compellingly argues that we actually think through movement. Our thoughts aren’t words that we sort through, narrated by our inner voice. Having sat through dozens of dance classes in which choreographers speak of dance as a language — with textures, punctuation, cadences, all the attributes of a voice — the argument makes instinctual sense.

My 2019 really got better once I started dancing again. For one, endorphins. For another, it was such a physical way of processing trauma. Nothing was more cathartic than moving. My senior year, I was slightly addicted to working out. That hasn’t quite reared its head as much in quarantine, but I don’t feel right if I’m not obsessively active. I’ve thought a lot about movement, habit, and other elements of occupying our physical space.

The argument that action shapes thought rather than the other way around is one I actually completely believe, after reading this, and so it’s made me much more aware of how I move and touch the outer world.
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TASTE
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Novel: Flavor: The Science of Our Most Neglected Sense by Bob Holmes | Bookshop
Release Date: April 25, 2017
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company

Can you describe how the flavor of halibut differs from that of red snapper? How the taste of a Fuji apple differs from a Spartan? For most of us, this is a difficult task: flavor remains a vague, undeveloped concept that we don't know enough about to describe--or appreciate--fully. In this delightful and compelling exploration of our most neglected sense, veteran science reporter Bob Holmes shows us just how much we're missing.

Considering every angle of flavor from our neurobiology to the science and practice of modern food production, Holmes takes readers on a journey to uncover the broad range of factors that can affect our appreciation of a fine meal or an exceptional glass of wine. He peers over the shoulders of some of the most fascinating food professionals working today, from cutting-edge chefs to food engineers to mathematicians investigating the perfect combination of pizza toppings. He talks with flavor and olfactory scientists, who describe why two people can experience remarkably different sensations from the same morsel of food, and how something as seemingly unrelated as cultural heritage can actually impact our sense of smell.

Along the way, even more surprising facts are revealed: that cake tastes sweetest on white plates; that wine experts' eyes can fool their noses; and even that language can affect our sense of taste. Flavor expands our curiosity and understanding of one of our most intimate sensations, while ultimately revealing how we can all sharpen our senses and our enjoyment of the things we taste.

Certain to fascinate everyone from gourmands and scientists to home cooks and their guests, Flavor will open your mind--and palette--to a vast, exciting sensory world.
While sound is definitely the sense I know the most about, and scent is perhaps the one that evokes the most emotion for me, taste is one of the easiest ways to switch up a bland day for me. More so than how we taste, I’m fascinated by how we articulate taste. This is what I learned the most about in quarantine while I was piecing together how to cook for myself every night while living alone for three months. I was proud of how I started to detect the differences in specific spices, separating and organizing flavors in my head. Even that made me excited to try new recipes rather than being frustrated by another night of cooking alone.

My little is a bit of an expert on this, and is slowly doing the same with wine. (Bonus: I started to more crisply articulate a taste for certain wines!) I love it so much, and could go down this rabbit hole forever.

Like sound and music, there’s an rich amount of scholarship about taste. Sensory works are so lovely to me because they do blend science and art so precisely, and that intersection is generally my favorite kind of nonfiction. Flavor bibles.
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SIGHT
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Novel: We Know It When We See It by Richard Masland | Bookshop
Release Date: March 10, 2020
Publisher: Basic Books

A Harvard researcher investigates the human eye in this insightful account of what vision reveals about intelligence, learning, and the greatest mysteries of neuroscience.

Spotting a face in a crowd is so easy, you take it for granted. But how you do it is one of science's great mysteries. And vision is involved with so much of everything your brain does. Explaining how it works reveals more than just how you see. In We Know It When We See It, Harvard neuroscientist Richard Masland tackles vital questions about how the brain processes information -- how it perceives, learns, and remembers -- through a careful study of the inner life of the eye.
Covering everything from what happens when light hits your retina, to the increasingly sophisticated nerve nets that turn that light into knowledge, to what a computer algorithm must be able to do before it can be called truly "intelligent," We Know It When We See It is a profound yet approachable investigation into how our bodies make sense of the world.
In the spring, I was telling a friend about how I noticed the light glancing off of the lip of a wine glass and he told me he never would have noticed a detail like that. For me, it’s always been an integral part of my life (and my values, which prioritize finding beauty.) Many people know me as being an intensely visual thinker. For another, I’ve been collecting feedback on my Instagram to better tailor myself to clients, and that was a recurring theme: noticing odd beauties.

In Brain & Behavior this year, I learned about how your vision literally funnels your thought process. What you see is what you think about. It sounds simple, but has completely transformed the way that I look at everything. Knowing that it’s influencing my thought process.

I have SO many books on vision, art, and design — so those might be deserving of a whole separate post — but I’ll narrow it down and recommend a book about seeing, specifically. To understand the eye.
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SOUND
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Novel: This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin | Bookshop
Release Date: September 1, 2007
Publisher: Dutton Books

In this groundbreaking union of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin explores the connection between music--its performance, its composition, how we listen to it, why we enjoy it--and the human brain.

Taking on prominent thinkers who argue that music is nothing more than an evolutionary accident, Levitin poses that music is fundamental to our species, perhaps even more so than language. Drawing on the latest research and on musical examples ranging from Mozart to Duke Ellington to Van Halen, he reveals:

- How composers produce some of the most pleasurable effects of listening to music by exploiting the way our brains make sense of the world
- Why we are so emotionally attached to the music we listened to as teenagers, whether it was Fleetwood Mac, U2, or Dr. Dre
- That practice, rather than talent, is the driving force behind musical expertise
- How those insidious little jingles (called earworms) get stuck in our head

A Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist, This Is Your Brain on Music will attract readers of Oliver Sacks and David Byrne, as it is an unprecedented, eye-opening investigation into an obsession at the heart of human nature.
I adore categorizing my playlists by month. I could hear a song I placed on a playlist in June 2016 and be taken immediately back. Distinguish between January and June based purely on sound. This is one of my favorite topics to write about, and I have a ton to say about it. I’ve written about music a lot. I also think it’s fascinating that sound tends to be others’ favorite sense? There’s something universalizing about those of us lucky enough to be able to hear.

I’m so much more aware of ambient sounds than I was before. For example, I hadn’t realized that home felt like a specific kind of bird chirping in the mornings. Or that I didn’t sleep well at school until senior year because, in the country, I could finally fall asleep without background noise leaking through the walls. The clicking of keys, right now. Also, sound can go in so many different directions: ambient noise, silence, MUSIC, listening. I love to read about all of it. For now, I’ll start with music.
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AN OVERVIEW OF THE SENSES
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Novel: A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman | Bookshop
Release Date: September 10, 1991
Publisher: Vintage Books

Diane Ackerman's lusciously written grand tour of the realm of the senses includes conversations with an iceberg in Antarctica and a professional nose in New York, along with dissertations on kisses and tattoos, sadistic cuisine and the music played by the planet Earth.
I’m also fascinated by the relationship between senses — I have an absolute obsession with synesthesia, have researched it a ton, and prefer any writing that blends senses together — and so it’s an odd well of knowledge. Reading an overview would be helpful — and ya girl loves a good microhistory.
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I love thinking about our senses. I love books that incorporate lots of sensory detail, and I love perpetually complicating the way that I understand the world. I’m so passionate about this as a concept, and love to talk about it, so be sure to chat with me about it on Instagram or in the comments!

Regardless, take a minute. What precisely are you tasting, feeling, seeing, hearing

It was the tagline that got me interested in reading this book. I took an elective in my undergrad, which focused on Neural Networking, and I remember loving the course and for once taking great notes( despite not being able to recollect most of the content now). I leant it to a junior immediately after the course was over and every once in a while I think about how nice it would have been to be able to refresh the basics. That background did help me find a little something more, the deeper the author went into the subject.

The author's purpose is simple, as he mentions in the book. He intends to bring the process of investigation, analysis and a general introduction of the neurobiology of sight to the average public since the scientific community would probably compile the notes in scientific journals that may not reach us. The problem was my copy was an advance reviewers version and lacked a lot of the diagrams being discussed, so I missed out on following a few facts. The content is supposed to be primarily about how we see and how our brain processes it. Sometimes there was a tangent when the people in the field are described for longer than I expected. Personally, I think a basic understanding of nerves, nerve endings etc. at high school level would be needed to process the more complicated analysis but maybe Google could help the really interested get further background information. The topics covered in the book do not merge to a single goal but instead talk about a lot of things, the majority of which I found fascinating. One thing that stuck with me and probably will for a while is the 'face recognition' parts of our brain. The study that gathered information about it and the results found were truly intriguing (to me).

I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers. The review, however, is entirely based on my own reading experience and my prior minuscule amount of knowledge about some of the topics discussed here.

We Know It When We See It is a layman accessible examination of sight and the incredible neurobiology of its cooperation with the body. Released 10th March 2020 by Hatchette on their Basic Books imprint, it's 272 pages and available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. t's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

There are a handful of engaging and adept "everyman" science writers who manage to break down and convey complex, even profound, concepts into digestible parts for non-specialists. It's a distinct gift and not one that all science writers have in equal measure. Happily, Dr. Masland seems to be quite adept at instruction without obfuscation, and I really enjoyed reading this densely instructive (and entertaining) treatise.

The book proceeds logically, building and defining the concepts from perception, through sight, how neurons are built up and interact, signaling pathways, some brain physiology and moving along to how the brain interprets the sent signals, what that means for the body in general and more widely, possible applications for machine learning and AI. (Exciting / fascinating stuff)!

The text throughout is meticulously annotated and full of links to further more specialized/complex reading for the especially interested. The author also includes short chapter notes at the end of the book with expanded info on chapter subjects. There is a comprehensive bibliography and further reading list, as well as a good glossary, but no index.

This book reminds me a lot of some of the best classes of my university career; enlightening and educational lectures with an engaged and competent professor. The text is never overly academic or pedantic (or dull), but it will take some effort to extract and learn the presented information.

Five stars, fascinating and worthwhile book for everyone.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Thanks to Perseus Books, Basic Books for the ARC!
I apologize that I wasn't able to post my feedback before the pub date.

Very interesting read. It's out of my comfort zone, but I truly enjoyed it.

One might think that the clinical study of neuroscience would be akin to watching paint dry, until it is considered that only these slow, painful gains of knowledge lead to greater understanding of how our bodies and minds work. I consider the content of this book to be dense, jam-packed with knowledge on how our eyes work. Author Richard Masland realizes his audience, and does his best to walk us through the harder parts. The pictures and drawings throughout the book are a definite aid.

Along the way, Mr. Masland stretches out and examines other related paths, such as how memories are stored and the comparison between human and machine learning (contrary to what the media tells us, at this point in time we are not in danger of being replaced). Throughout the book there are plenty of explanations while at other times we receive a question to chew on (For example, in the last paragraph a question is posed: “When I see an apple, do I see the same red as you?”). That reminded me of a good friend, whose perceptions of what is green or blue always seems to slightly differ from mine.

This is not an easy read, but Mr. Masland’s style of writing greatly reduces the difficulty. Once a major point has been achieved, there is a recap to help us remember the salient pieces of knowledge. I also found the glossary to be invaluable if I didn’t remember a definition. I learned more about the ability to see than I ever expected, and did receive information about AI and the endeavors to make them see and remember (which was one of the reason I wanted to read this book). A side benefit were the extended explanations on how lab work and experiments in the world of neuroscience are conducted. Extremely interesting. Five stars.

Interesting and accessible book on the science behind your eyes. Having recently been diagnosed with a progressive brain condition that could alter my sight, I'm busy devouring everything I can on how the connection between my eyes and my brain works.

Thank you Netgalley and Perseus Books for this free advance reader copy in exchange for my honest review.

Very interesting view into how our vision plays such a vital role in our brain function. I learned quite a number of interesting things about the brain and how remarkably complex the vision system is. I have to admit, although I am fascinated by neuroscience, this book went a bit over my heads at times, making it difficult to follow. That may just be a lack of understanding on my part. I’m eager to pick up a finished copy soon so I can look at the diagrams that weren’t included in my free review copy.

Thank you to Perseus Books/Basic Books and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a deep dive into neuroscience, and a very good attempt to explain broadly how perception, including vision, works. Even without any particulary scientific background, it is fascinating to realize how our nervous system interacts with the outside world and its stimuli, and how information is conveyed to the brain.

What did not work so well for me were the author's attempts to move beyond this topic, as the explanations quickly got extremely technical and lost me. I also felt that the tagline of the title ("What the neurobiology of vision tells us about how we think") didn't really work, as the author basically bailed on discussing the nature of consciousness.

A fantastic, well-written account of a scientific look at an incredibly important subject. The author’s staggering research comes off as easily readable and this massive undertaking is presented in a thoroughly enjoyable manner. The advance copy is missing some diagrams I’m anxious to see, but the scope and depth of these nearly 300 pages will surely prove to be a leap toward an even greater understanding of what it is for the human eye to “see” something.

Remarkable. This is one of those science books you love to find, no matter your particular interest in any field – a book written by seemingly one of the leaders in the field who has seemingly contributed much to the study of the issue at hand, yet who writes a book that we who barely know what the general subject is can understand the state of the field and the author’s contributions to it. In this particular case, we are hearing about the state of vision and perception research from a cellular biologist who has himself won a couple of awards for research in this very field. Masland writes with enough precision that his peers can likely only quibble, if anything, and yet with enough generality that the rest of us can fairly easily follow the discussion. Even with a lack of the discussed diagrams in this particular ARC, the discussion was easily enough followed and the mild humor – if a bit geeky – was appreciated. Very much recommended.