Synopses & Reviews
What happens in our brain just before we act or speak? A look at a revolution in science.
The mysteries of human consciousness the most unyielding of the enigmas of the human brain are at last beginning to reveal their secrets. What happens in that split second before we become aware and the brain prompts us to speak or act? In Going Inside, John McCrone takes us inside a single instant of consciousness that moment before a tennis player hits the ball without seeing it. What are the dynamics occurring inside the brain on a subconscious level before each moment of awareness? With great clarity and detail, McCrone tells us about the new ideas and research tools such as brain scanning, which snaps pictures of thoughts or images in a person's head. He explains why the model of the mind as a giant computer is being abandoned. In its place has emerged a view of a dynamic, evolving, chaotic system seeing the brain as an organ that literally "grows" awareness. These new ideas have wrought a revolution in cognitive neuroscience, now enjoying the kind of glory days that particle physics saw in the 1960s and genetics in the 1980s.
Review
"Throw out all the old brain-as-computer metaphors. The emerging reality, which McCrone pieces together from the latest neurological studies, defies the tidy computer analogies, bringing into view a dynamic and unpredictable swirl of processes in the human brain." Booklist