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Overview

Neuroscientist David Eagleman’s book Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain (2011) is a review of scientific studies about how the brain works and what consciousness really is.

The human brain is the most complex thing in the known universe. It’s made up of billions of cells that communicate with each other and are constantly changing. By understanding how it works, we can better understand consciousness and what makes people think and feel certain things.

The foundation of neuroscience is that the unconscious brain controls most of our behavior and thoughts. Our minds are not in control, but rather we’re just along for the ride. Just like how much of what exists in the universe evades human perception, most things going on inside our brains happen outside of our conscious awareness. If consciousness were more involved with interpreting reality, it would make brain function slower and less efficient. People depend on intuition and reflexes to perform daily functions because they have evolved over time into instinctual behaviors that humans share collectively as a species.

The brain uses a variety of methods to interpret the world and make sense of it. This is similar to how legislatures in democracies come together to reach consensus on issues. People exhibit contradictory behaviors because their brains use multiple processes for interpreting information.

The brain is the basis of consciousness, and even small changes to it can have major effects on a person’s behavior. A tumor grew in one man’s brain, causing him to develop pedophilia. After removing the tumor, he stopped having urges towards children. This proves that damage to the brain can cause someone to behave unethically, which poses a dilemma for society because people must consider whether or not they should hold a damaged person responsible for his actions

It will take time for the average person to understand that consciousness is not in charge of our brains. When people learned that the earth was not at the center of the universe, they were shocked, but it led to a greater understanding of how nature works. Similarly, when we learn that consciousness is only one small part of our brains, new discoveries about how our minds work can be made.

Key Point 1: Consciousness is only a small result of the brain’s activity.

Although people believe they control most of their brain functions, consciousness is actually a passenger aboard the ship that controls them.

In addition to the unconscious behaviors people perform even in their sleep, such as breathing, unconscious biases also shape harmful decisions. Shankar Vedantam states that these biases affect people’s decision-making skills and are difficult for them to control.

In an experiment by Michelle Hebl, subjects were asked to consider a job candidate. The first group saw the candidate sitting alone in the waiting room, while the second and third groups saw him sitting next to someone who was overweight. Both of those groups rated him as less professional than did the first group. It seems that simply seeing a person seated next to an overweight person is enough for some people to infer that he’s not qualified for his job.

Key Point 2: The brain’s interpretation of inputs from the five human senses does not reveal a faithful representation of what the world is actually like.

Many people think that the eyes are like a camera, and thus show us what’s really out there. However, this is not true because it’s the brain that processes the information from our eyes. This means that we can be manipulated to see things which aren’t actually there (for example hallucinations).