‘Incognito: The Secret Lives Of The Brain’

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain
Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain
By David Eagleman
Hardover, 304 pages
Pantheon
List price: $26.95

Chapter 1: There’s Someone In My Head, But It’s Not Me

Take a close look at yourself in the mirror. Beneath your dashing good looks churns a hidden universe of networked machinery. The machinery includes a sophisticated scaffolding of interlocking bones, a netting of sinewy muscles, a good deal of specialized fluid, and a collaboration of internal organs chugging away in darkness to keep you alive. A sheet of high-tech self-healing sensory material that we call skin seamlessly covers your machinery in a pleasing package.

And then there’s your brain. Three pounds of the most complex material we’ve discovered in the universe. This is the mission control center that drives the whole operation, gathering dispatches through small portals in the armored bunker of the skull.

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