David Eagleman

A quick read that covers almost everything you would need to know for a cursory overview of contemporary neuroscience (and psychology) in 2018.

If you are a reader in the field, or looking for depth, the book may frustrate you because the author does not go into the complexity of the subject matter rather presents an initial design of the area, a key experiment and then moves on.

The most unfortunate side effect of this writing style is, in some cases, it can misinform, or allow people to persist in bad ideas: the simulation hypothesis one example, which is completely unnecessary for a discussion of future of neuroscience and is a scientifically useless philosophy, but prominently ends the book.… (mehr)

It took me rather a long time into reading this before I realised that this was an author with whom I was already acquainted. A few years ago, I read Eagleman’s fictional short story collection: ‘Sum’. So, as I started to thoroughly enjoy ‘Incognito’ the puzzle pieces fell into place and I found myself being led through his equally masterful (yet this time nonfictional) work.

I love learning about the brain, be it neuroscience or psychology and I have been lucky enough to read some great books on both subjects - this, another to add to the list. 'Incognito' is concerned with consciousness and in particular, the misconception people have of how responsible it is in governing the rest of the brain, how we 'are not the ones driving the boat'. Eagleman serves up astounding evidence in the form of patient histories, science experiments and case studies that illuminate how the hidden depths of the brain and our subconscious are responsible for far more than we can imagine. One investigation he recounts, involved playing a sort of reveal and reward card game, complete with an underlying pattern built into it. The test subject is anticipated to decipher the pattern after a certain amount of goes. What was incredible however, was that in monitoring brain activity, the scientists were able to show that the subconscious had spotted the pattern in substantially fewer moves than the consciousness had.

Towards the end of the book, Eagleman’s ideas culminate in an advocation for reform of the criminal justice system, in such that neuroscience should be used as a tool to aid successfully rehabilitating criminals. This isn’t to absolve them of wrongdoing but rather to understand the mind that perpetrates the crime so that effective strategies can be put in place to better support reintegration into society (and conversely the awareness that incarceration has limited success in retraining brains with criminal desires or indifference to common laws, to behave in a more socially acceptable manner). For example, instead of locking people away for drug addiction, there are current technologies which can isolate and visualise your brain’s desires. With this visualisation, you can learn, through trial and error, to affect the desire - to want it less - having instant feedback on the effectiveness of what you were trying. In essence, addicts can teach themselves techniques to curb their desires using neuroscience technology empowering them to stop reoffending.

It's books like this that you hope everyone reads, that you hope are on curriculums around the world and most importantly in the read pile of people who have sway in the world’s affairs. What I got from it is that consciousness is not to be trusted, that looking deeper is always better and taking time to understand the behaviour not react to the behaviour is paramount. As a teacher, I'd find it so helpful to scan the brains of kids we were teaching - in essence, to see the barriers to their learning, look for lack of development, have a better idea of how best to provide and nurture the children. Current technology is far, far, far away from being able to provide anywhere near as close a picture as this so for now, books like this will suffice. 5/5… (mehr)

'Sum Tales From the Afterlife' is a compendium of imagined, posthumous existences, skilfully written and impressively powerful seeing as most barely stretch to three pages in total. The stories are strong from the outset, the opener a clever twist on the organisation of the events of life - an afterlife consisting of all the events of your life relived but in a new order, where all the events that share a quality grouped together.

'You spend two months driving the street in front of your house, seven months having sex. You sleep for thirty years without opening your eyes.'

These stories are poignant comments on facets of life that we perhaps take for granted or see too banally, Eagleman is very astute and inventive and he constantly delivers satisfying twists or sentences that hit you with a pithy revelation or reminder. It is a strong short story collection which encourages reflection on what really could be waiting for us (if anything) in a life after this.… (mehr)