Your Brain on Diving - New insights into the function of the human brain underwater

Biologist and technical diver Dr. Klaus M. Stiefel explains some exciting new insights into the workings of the human brain for the interested layperson. Topics include novel results on the mechanism causing the dreaded which can distort a diver's senses and the brain-mechanisms of controlling breathing and breath hold during freediving (apnea diving). The book also discusses new scientific results about the genetic adaptation of Southeast Asia's 'sea gypsies' (the Bajao tribe) to extended breath hold diving.

Klaus M. Stiefel was born in 1972 in Klagenfurt, Austria, and grew up in the vicinity of Vienna. In 1998 he graduated in microbiology at the University of Vienna. In 2002, the doctorate in zoology (neurobiology) followed at the University of Vienna and at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt am Main. This was followed by research stays in San Diego, Japan and Sydney. The focus of his research is neurobiology and recently evolutionary biology and fish ecology. Since 2014, Klaus has been living in the Philippines as an author, dive instructor, nature photographer and independent scientist. Klaus dives the reefs of the Philippines with both rebreather and mixed gas at depths up to 100 meters. When he dives so deep that deep intoxication would take him completely out of reality, he responsibly packs non-narcotic helium in his tanks. Klaus Stiefel writes articles for 'Scientific American Mind' and its German edition 'Spektrum der Wissenschaft - Geist & Gehirn' and contributes regularly with texts and photos to various blogs and books ('Taucherwelt Wracktauchen Philippinen' by Stefan Baehr, Felicitas Hübner Verlag 2017). He has also published 'Sex, Drugs and Scuba Diving', a marine biology-popular science book; The 'Camera and the Brain', a book about brain research and photography.