Despite all this very impressive progress which Eagleman dutifully records, it has to be pointed out that neuroscience has so far achieved only a very limited understanding of how the brain actually works. Neural correlation especially has enabled a very thorough identification of areas responsible for a wide range of human behaviour, psychological as well as bodily. But whereas we now know much of what the brain does and where within itself it does what it does, neuroscience has yet to account for how it does what it does, an explanation for consciousness, the ‘hard problem’ par excellence, remaining totally elusive. Why? Because the holy grail of neurological research – getting to grips with the brain’s internal software, no less – has yet to be achieved. In these circumstances, it’s perhaps little exaggeration to say that its practitioners can be likened in some ways to a band of stone age people who, suddenly finding an abandoned car in the desert with the key still in the ignition, start playing with the dashboard controls, pressing switches, turning knobs and pulling levers, carefully noting as they do so that various lights come on and certain engine noises can be heard, some of which dim or stop when, after popping the bonnet, they yank out the odd cable, unscrew a few caps or drain a fluid reservoir. Do they have a clue about internal combustion, let alone electricity? No way. So strap in for a whistle-stop tour into the inner cosmos. In the infinitely dense tangle of billions of brain cells and their trillions of connections, I hope you’ll be able to squint and make out something that you might not have expected to see in there. You. Considers important philosophical questions. Does the idea of an immaterial soul reconcile with neuroscientific evidence? Find out. So are we the sum total of our memories? But memory gets constantly faded, renewed, replaced and even falsified; so does that mean our self-awareness is also "false"?

David Eagleman's wide-ranging roundup of the current state of knowledge about the brain is concise, accessible and often very surprising. It's a strange new world inside your head." In the course of his investigations, Eagleman guides us through the world of extreme sports, criminal justice, facial expressions, genocide, brain surgery, gut feelings, robotics, and the search for immortality. Strap in for a whistle-stop tour into the inner cosmos. In the infinitely dense tangle of billions of brain cells and their trillions of connections, something emerges that you might not have expected to see in there: you. Eagleman gets the writing here off to a great start, with a well-written intro. He's got an excellent writing style that is both interesting and engaging. The book is very readable.However, people still co-operate irrespective of kinship. That observation leads to the idea of “group selection”. If a group is composed entirely of people who co-operate, everyone in the group will be better off for it. On average, you’ll fare better than other people who aren’t very co-operative with their neighbours. Together, the members of a group can help each other to survive. This area is so highly speculative that there is almost no research that sheds light on it, but I can understand how the producers of the program thought this would be a good hook for people who wonder about the Singularity. Eagleman’s writing style is easy on the “brain”. His goal is to educate the general public and he succeeds. I think of consciousness as the CEO of a large sprawling corporation, with many thousands of subdivisions and departments all collaborating and interacting and competing in different ways. Small companies don’t need a CEO – but when an organization reaches sufficient size and complexity, it needs a CEO to stay above the daily details and to craft the long-view of the company. Brains have traditionally been studied in isolation but that approach overlooks the fact that an enormous amount of brain circuitry has to do with other brains. We are deeply social creatures. From our families, friends, co-workers and business partners, our societies are built on layers of complex social interactions. All around us we see relationships forming and breaking, familial bonds and the compulsive building of alliances.

Our brain does a great job of filtering, editing and adapting the sensory input we obtain, so that we get a picture of reality that is censored, based on what we need to know for survival and what the brain already knows. An interesting look at willpower. “…willpower isn’t something that we just exercise – it’s something we deplete.” So what is reality? It’s like a television show that only you can see, and you can’t turn it off. The good news is that it happens to be broadcasting the most interesting show you could ask for: edited, personalized, and presented just for you. I understand the need to write a book for a lay audience, I really do. The unfortunate part is that much of what Eagleman presents in the book is just simply wrong and not supported by any real science. Early in the "book" he talks about how memories are stored as function connections between neurons. He alludes that the reason our memories are not entirely accurate is that the neurons have a limited number of connections and have to be adaptable. This is pure speculative fiction. Sure, this could be the truth, but there is no actual research that says this. It is unknown how memories are stored in the brain or why they are so labile. To present this interpretation as a FACT is not responsible.When the curtain fell, I took both bears and carried them over to each watching baby. I held them up, indicating to the child to choose one of them to play with. Remarkably, as was found by the Yale researchers, almost all the babies chose the bear that was kind. PDF / EPUB File Name: Brain___The_Story_of_You_9781101870549_-_David_Eagleman.pdf, Brain___The_Story_of_You_9781101870549_-_David_Eagleman.epub Author David Eagleman is an American neuroscientist, writer, and science communicator. He teaches neuroscience at Stanford University and is CEO and co-founder of Neosensory, a company that develops devices for sensory substitution.