Author Description

'Galvani's Spark,' the first book in what is now a trilogy, was intended as homage to a remarkable group of individuals who, through the last two centuries particularly, had devoted themselves to exploring the nature of nerve impulses--the brief electrical signals that enable information to be transmitted from one part of the nervous system to another and that are ultimately responsible for movements, sensations, thoughts and dreams. The adjective 'remarkable' is fitting. They were persons, mostly men, who had had original ideas and who had set about testing them, usually with apparatus they had built themselves. The expenses had often come out of their own pockets for there were no research grants as there are now, nor had they been part of any international consortium of neuroscientists, as is the custom today. As pioneers, they had been obliged to find their own ways of exploring the nervous system. In the context of the history of neuroscience, theirs was the 'heroic age.'-- provided by publisher.