New book on neuroprosthetics

As soon as I heard about this book, I knew I wanted to contact the author for an interview. Shattered Nerves is Victor Chase's latest work on neuroprosthetics (although you can't tell that from the cover). Here's Google's treatment of the book.

Victor is a medical writer whose work has included covering computational science from the perspective of a swing dancer, lasers and food dyes.

I'm especially interested in the topics included in this book: biomimetics, functional electrical stimulation, cochlear implants, auditory brainstem implants, etc. Essentially, it's all about restoring normal nerve function lost by damaged neurons with devices that when implanted in the body will provide a long term solution. This involves making sure that the devices don't evoke a foreign body response that could cause excessive scarring and failure of the implant.

I recently had a telephone chat with Victor where we talked about the history of the cochlear implant, and he related his experiences in interviewing subjects for his book.

I'd like to add more to this post, but being on a tight deadline (oh, the life of a busy freelancer), I just wanted make mention of this book, and then cover these topics more in the future. If you click on the link, you can see among the favorable reviewers, Michael Gazzaniga, whose work I've always admired.