Mind Wide Open: your brain and the neuroscience of everyday life
Steven Johnson (2004)
216 pp.
Rating: 5 of 5
Okay, every chapter of this book was great, but I’m a little pressed for time so I’m not going to blog about each one, which is too bad since each one had it’s own insight and interesting connection to one of my favorite questions: what does it mean to be human/to be conscious?
Again, I did not intentionally read this right after Rattling the Cage, but the two books go really well together. Right off the bat, Johnson starts to tackle the consciousness question. He goes into some detail to explain what it means to be conscious of self (stage 1) and conscious of others (stage 3 I think). From why babies are so adept at recognizing the human face (we need to understand quickly that other consciousnesses exist), to our ability to easily distinguish between the facial expressions connoting 412 distinct emotional states, to the current best thinking about what ‘causes’ autism (failure to recognize other minds and their emotional states), to why people are ticklish (yes, it has to do with recognizing consciousness in others), this is a scientific whirlwind (yet very readable, thank god) of discovery about the brain.
I hate having to overly simplify every complex book I read, but here goes for this one: The idea that we are each one conscious person is apparently out of date. The various parts of our brain, while networked certainly, also remain quite autonomous (for various evolutionary reasons). This is why it’s pretty easy for humans to perceive things that aren’t actually there, or not perceive things that are there. He goes over many common examples of how to quickly and easily show parts of the brain conflicting with each other (example – the Stroop Test. Quick, say out loud the color of the text of the word in quote here: “blue”). In additional, he gives some pretty interesting information on the hormonal chemistry of the brain, and how biology and environment can permanently subtly alter the chemicals that might well determine important aspects of your or my personality.
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