Review of the book “Lessons from the Lobster. Eve Marder’s Work in Neuroscience”

I recently finished reading “Lessons from the Lobster”, a book recommended by a student after my lecture on reinforcement learning and intelligence.

The book provides a detailed description of Eve Marder’s work in neuroscience, from her childhood to her current role as a professor at Brandeis University. As a roboticist with almost no background in neuroscience, I found the book a bit difficult to follow when complex biology details were presented, so I skipped those parts and focused on the general ideas and lessons that I could apply to my work.

Marder’s research focuses on the neural circuits in the stomatogastric ganglion (STG) of lobsters, a small but remarkably flexible neural network consisting of just 30 neurons. This simplicity makes the STG a great model for studying neural circuits. What’s interesting from the book is that even if there are only a few neurons, by doing neuromodulation, the STG can fire very differently. So such a small circuit is very flexible and can generate a wide range of behaviors.

I would recommend the book to anyone interested in neuroscience, biology, or even robotics, as it provides a great example of how to study a complex system by focusing on a small part of it. Maybe one day I’ll learn more about biology and neuroscience and I’ll be able to understand the book in more detail.

Off-topic, I am actually allergic to lobsters. 🦞