Incognito
The Brains Behind the Mind
by David Eagleman
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Bonus Content
Incognito
There’s Someone In My Head, But It’s Not Me
Take a close look at yourself in the mirror. Beneath your dashing good looks churns a hidden universe of networked machinery. The machinery includes a sophisticated scaffolding of interlocking bones, a netting of sinewy muscles, a good deal of specialized fluid, and a collaboration of internal organs chugging away in darkness to keep you alive. A sheet of high-tech self-healing sensory material that we call skin seamlessly covers your machinery in a pleasing package.
And then there’s your brain. Three pounds of the most complex material we’ve discovered in the universe. This is the mission control center that drives the whole operation, gathering dispatches through small portals in the armored bunker of the skull.
Your brain is built of cells called neurons and glia—hundreds of billions of them. Each one of these cells is as complicated as a city. And each one contains the entire human genome and traffics billions of molecules in intricate economies. Each cell sends electrical pulses to other cells, up to hundreds of times per second. If you represented each of these trillions and trillions of pulses in your brain by a single photon of light, the combined output would be blinding.
The cells are connected to one another in a network of such staggering complexity that it bankrupts human language and necessitates new strains of mathematics. A typical neuron makes about ten thousand connections to neighboring neurons. Given the billions of neurons, this means there are as many connections in a single cubic centimeter of brain tissue as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
The three-pound organ in your skull—with its pink consistency of Jell-o—is an alien kind of computational material. It is composed of miniaturized, self-configuring parts, and it vastly outstrips anything we’ve dreamt of building. So if you ever feel lazy or dull, take heart: you’re the busiest, brightest thing on the planet.
Excerpted from Incognito by David Eagleman. Copyright © 2011 by David Eagleman. Excerpted by permission of Pantheon, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Incognito
Our beliefs, behavior, and thoughts are inseparably yoked to our brains. Yet Incognito illuminates a disconcerting fact: Almost all of what happens in our mental lives is not under our conscious control. “Your brain buzzes with activity around the clock, and...almost everything transpires locally: small groups [of neurons] are constantly making decisions,” writes David Eagleman. “You have surprisingly little access to what happened behind the scenes.” We gleefully say we’ve just thought of something, when in fact our neural circuitry may have been working on it for hours or days or years, consolidating and combining information.
To flesh out this thesis, Eagleman shares a range of findings from neuroscience indicating the extent to which our conscious selves are not in control of our minds. For example, optical illusions can fool us due to unconscious assumptions about the way objects are illuminated. Chicken sexers, who determine whether hatchlings are male or female, find it easier to learn the skill by watching others, picking it up “unconsciously.” And experiments show that when making a sudden decision, our brains fire fractions of a second before we’re consciously aware what we’ve chosen.
Incognito spotlights the neural machinery that is alien to us and yet somehow is us.
Hardcover : 304 pages
Publisher: Pantheon Books Inc./Random House ( May 31, 2011 )
Item #: 13-350103
ISBN: 9780307377333
Product Dimensions: 6.125 x 9.25 inches
Product Weight: 21.0 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Copyright © Bookspan. Scientific American® is a registered trademark, used under license. Unauthorized use prohibited. All rights reserved.
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