Sherrington's Loom

Alan McComas was born in Western Australia and educated in Britain, gaining degrees in physiology, medicine, and surgery at Durham University. Following postdoctoral studies at University College London and the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, he established a muscle and nerve research laboratory at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1971 he was appointed Professor of Medicine and Head of Neurology at McMaster University in Canada, where he has remained ever since. One of the first to record from single units in the human thalamus, Alan McComas has continued an active interest in brain neurophysiology, including the neural basis of migraine. Among other pioneering achievements he is known for having developed electrophysiological methods for estimating the numbers and types of motor nerve cell in the live human spinal cord and brain stem. The author of the 2014 award-winning Galvani's Spark: The Story of the Nerve Impulse (OUP, 2011), Alan McComas has published some 200peer-reviewed scientific papers and other articles.

• PrefaceSherrington VignetteChapter 1: Plan of the BookChapter 2: Definition and the Mind-Body ProblemChapter 3: Concepts, Conferences and ControversiesChapter 4: Who Else Is Conscious?Chapter 5: Groundwork: Cellular EventsChapter 6: Mapping the BrainChapter 7: Awaking the CortexChapter 8: Electricity WorksChapter 9: Single Units and Grandmother CellsChapter 10: Making Sense of the SensesChapter 11: Benjamin Libet's Big ExperimentChapter 12: Putting It All TogetherChapter 13: Continuing the SynthesisChapter 14: Looking to the FutureChapter 15: SummaryChapter 16: Postscript

This book can be seen as an outstanding introduction to the study of consciousness. All-important concepts are clearly exposed and refer to original works towards which students can turn for more in-depth or specific study. The synthesis leads to clever and well-supported conclusions. This combination of a synthetic but complete overview of scientific questions with broad knowledge of the personal history of the actors involved is quite unique. Only very few people have the necessary skills, personal contacts, and experience required for the task."