Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday LifeBRILLIANTLY EXPLORING TODAY'S CUTTING-EDGE BRAIN RESEARCH, MIND WIDE OPEN IS AN UNPRECEDENTED JOURNEY INTO THE ESSENCE OF HUMAN PERSONALITY, ALLOWING READERS TO UNDERSTAND THEMSELVES AND THE PEOPLE IN THEIR LIVES AS NEVER BEFORE. Using a mix of experiential reportage, personal storytelling, and fresh scientific discovery, Steven Johnson describes how the brain works -- its chemicals, structures, and subroutines -- and how these systems connect to the day-to-day realities of individual lives. For a hundred years, he says, many of us have assumed that the most powerful route to self-knowledge took the form of lying on a couch, talking about our childhoods. The possibility entertained in this book is that you can follow another path, in which learning about the brain's mechanics can widen one's self-awareness as powerfully as any therapy or meditation or drug. In Mind Wide Open, Johnson embarks on this path as his own test subject, participating in a battery of attention tests, learning to control video games by altering his brain waves, scanning his own brain with a $2 million fMRI machine, all in search of a modern answer to the oldest of questions: who am I? Along the way, Johnson explores how we "read" other people, how the brain processes frightening events (and how we might rid ourselves of the scars those memories leave), what the neurochemistry is behind love and sex, what it means that our brains are teeming with powerful chemicals closely related to recreational drugs, why music moves us to tears, and where our breakthrough ideas come from. Johnson's clear, engaging explanation of the physical functions of the brain reveals not only the broad strokes of our aptitudes and fears, our skills and weaknesses and desires, but also the momentary brain phenomena that a whole human life comprises. Why, when hearing a tale of woe, do we sometimes smile inappropriately, even if we don't want to? Why are some of us so bad at remembering phone numbers but brilliant at recognizing faces? Why does depression make us feel stupid? To read Mind Wide Open is to rethink family histories, individual fates, and the very nature of the self, and to see that brain science is now personally transformative -- a valuable tool for better relationships and better living. |
Contents
1 | |
19 | |
2 The Sum of My Fears | 47 |
3 Your Attention Please | 71 |
4 Survival of the Ticklish | 106 |
5 The Hormones Talking | 135 |
6 Scan Thyself | 158 |
Mind Wide Open | 183 |
Notes | 217 |
257 | |
Acknowledgments | 263 |
265 | |
About the Author | 275 |
Other editions - View all
Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life Steven Johnson Limited preview - 2004 |
Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life Steven Johnson Limited preview - 2004 |
Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life Steven Johnson No preview available - 2005 |
Common terms and phrases
activity actually amygdala appear areas associated attention become behavior body brain called changes chemicals connection conscious cortex course create described develop don’t dopamine drives drugs effects emotional encoding experience explain expression eyes face fact fear feel Freud functions happens head hormones human idea images important instincts interesting it’s jokes kind language laugh laughter less levels listening lives look memory mental mind mindreading modules move nature neurofeedback neurons original oxytocin past pattern person play pleasure question regions release remember response result reward says scans seemed sense skills smile social sometimes sound specific start started story stress studies suggests talking tell theory there’s thing thought tion triggered trying turn understand usually visual you’re
Popular passages
Page 23 - He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his finger-tips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.
Page 30 - How many million times she had seen her face, and always with the same imperceptible contraction! She pursed her lips when she looked in the glass. It was to give her face point.
Page 30 - She pursed her lips when she looked in the glass. It was to give her face point. That was her self — pointed: dart-like; definite. That was her self when some effort, some call on her to be her self, drew the parts together, she alone knew how different, how incompatible and composed so for the world only into one centre, one diamond, one woman who sat in her drawing-room...
References to this book
A Left Hand Turn Around the World: Chasing the Mystery and Meaning of All ... David Wolman No preview available - 2006 |
A Left Hand Turn Around the World: Chasing the Mystery and Meaning of All ... David Wolman No preview available - 2006 |