NeuroScience Fiction

From "2001: A Space Odyssey" to "Inception," How Neuroscience Is Transforming Sci-Fi into Reality - While Challenging Our Beliefs About the Mind, Machines, and What Makes us Human

By: Rodrigo Quian Quiroga

Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon

Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

What if science fiction stopped being fiction?

Developments in neuroscience are turning sci-fi scenarios into reality, and causing us to revisit some of the philosophical questions we have been asking ourselves for centuries.

Science fiction often takes its inspiration from the latest science . . . and our oldest questions. After all, the two are inextricably linked. At a time when advances in artificial intelligence are genuinely leading us closer to a computer that thinks like a human, we can’t help but wonder: What makes a person a person?

Countless writers and filmmakers have created futuristic scenarios to explore this issue and others like it. But these scenarios may not be so futuristic after all.

In the movie Inception, a group of conspirators implants false memories; in Until the End of the World, a mad scientist is able to read dreams; in 2001: A Space Odyssey, a supercomputer feels and thinks like a person. And in recent years, the achievements described in leading scientific journals have included some that might sound familiar: implanting memories using optogenetics, reading the mind during sleep thanks to advanced decoding algorithms, and creating a computer that uses deep neural networks to surpass the abilities of human thought.

In NeuroScience Fiction, neuroscientist and author Rodrigo Quiroga reveals the futuristic present we are living in, showing how the far-out premises of 10 seminal science fiction movies are being made possible by discoveries happening right now, on the cutting edge of neuroscience. He also explores the thorny philosophical problems raised as a result, diving into Minority Report and free will, The Matrix and the illusion of reality, Blade Runner and android emotion, and more.

A heady mix of science fiction, neuroscience, and philosophy, NeuroScience Fiction takes us from Vanilla Sky to neural research labs, and from Planet of the Apes to what makes us human. This is a book you’ll be thinking about long after the last page—and once you’ve read it, you’ll never watch a sci-fi blockbuster the same way again.

©2020 Rodrigo Quian Quiroga (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Published by arrangement with BenBella Books.

Critic reviews

“If you like science fiction, this book is for you, but if you like science and fiction, then this is certainly your book. Intelligent and well informed.” (Antonio Damasio, director of the Brain and Creativity Institute, University of Southern California, and author of Descartes’ Error and The Strange Order of Things.)

“Renowned cognitive neuroscientist Rodrigo Quian Quiroga invites us on an exhilarating journey, in which the motley trio of neuroscience, philosophy, and Hollywood together seek after the recipe of the mind. Quian Quiroga, who himself discovered what is sure to be an essential ingredient, the concept cells, shows us how frighteningly close we are getting and how huge the stakes are.” (Doris Y. Tsao, neuroscientist and professor of biology at the California Institute of Technology)

“Rodrigo Quian Quiroga has written a thorough, provocative answer to the deep philosophical question of what makes us human. His truly remarkable book blends art, science, and philosophy as seen through the highly original lens of brain research and movies.” (Gustavo Deco, ICREA professor, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, Theoretical and Computational Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona)