Socially Wired - by Matthew Schelke

About the Book

In Socially Wired, Matthew W. Schelke uses the stories of patients with neurological illness to show how social and cultural environments transform the brain.

Book Synopsis

From birth, our brains are shaped by other people--in our families, schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, countries, and cultures. These social worlds make us who we are, but how this process works remains mysterious on a neural level.

In Socially Wired, Matthew W. Schelke uses the stories of patients with neurological illness to show how social and cultural environments transform the brain. In the neurology clinic, the experiences of patients with the same illness can vary tremendously depending on their backgrounds, providing a window onto the complex interactions between brain and culture. Through cases ranging from an amateur chef who suddenly stopped cooking to an art lover who was removed from a gallery for touching the art, Schelke explores what neurological injury can reveal about social and cultural behavior. He demonstrates how specific practices--shared emotion, apprenticeship learning, imagination, language, art, and collective memory--shape neural networks, the experiences of patients, and ultimately our encultured minds.

Going beyond neuroscience, Socially Wired integrates insights from anthropology to philosophy to ecological psychology. Highlighting patient stories, this book illuminates how the brain wires us to participate in culture and how, in turn, culture rewires the brain.

Review Quotes

Socially Wired reimagines neurological processes as a deeply cultural experience, blending science and imagination to reveal how our understanding of the brain is shaped by the societies we live in--and how culture itself can transform the way we think about our minds.--Daniel Yon, Birkbeck, University of London

About the Author

Matthew W. Schelke is a general neurologist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and the Neurological Institute of New York, where he sees patients with a wide range of neurological illnesses. He has published articles on the connections between neurology, neuroscience, and social and cultural life.