UCSB Neuroscientist, Scott Grafton, MD

PHYSICAL INTELLIGENCE: The Science of How the Body and the Mind Guide Each Other Through Life

SCOTT GRAFTON, MD

Chaucer’s Books is honored to host a book launch and signing for UCSB Presidential Chair, Dr. Scott Grafton, in a fascinating evening as he shares his new book–Physical Intelligence: The Science of  How the Body and Mind Guide Each Other through Life.

Elegantly written and deeply grounded in personal experience–works by Oliver Sacks come to mind– Physical Intelligence gives us a clear, illuminating examination of the intricate, mutually responsive relationship between the mind and the body as they engage (or don’t engage) in all manner of physical action.

Ever wonder why you don’t walk into walls or off cliffs? How you decide if you can drive through a snowstorm? How high you are willing to climb up a ladder to change a light bulb? Through the prisms of behavioral neurology and cognitive neuroscience, Scott Grafton brilliantly accounts for the design and workings of the action-oriented brain in synchronicity with the body in the natural world, and he shows how physical intelligence is inherent in all of us–and always in problem-solving mode. Drawing on insights gleaned from discoveries by engineers who have learned to emulate the sophisticated solutions Mother Nature has created for managing complex behavior, Grafton also demonstrates the relevance of physical intelligence with examples that each of us might face–whether the situation is mundane, exceptional, extreme, or compromised.

SCOTT GRAFTON, MD holds the Bedrosian Coyne Presidential Chair in Neuroscience at the University of California Santa Barbara. He is director of the UCSB Brain Imaging Center, and co director at the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, which draws on bio-inspiration and innovative bioengineering solutions for both nonmedical and medical challenges posed by the defense and medical communities. He earned his medical degree at the University of Southern California and his specialty is in neurology and nuclear medicine. In his spare time he is a keen mountain climber and trekker. He lives in Santa Barbara with his wife and children.