Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

i have read tons of books on neuroscience, but found this one of the most enjoyable overall. David Eagleman also writes fiction and his ability as a writer is what really makes a difference. this book dealt with many subjects i have encountered before but the writing is more engaging and thus more memorable.

I am a psychologist and love reading neuroscience and neuropsychology anyway, but I think anyone interested in human behavior will greatly enjoy this well-written book by one of the most well-respected people in the field.

Dr. Eagleman tells us a lot about our brains, previously not known. For example the fact that our conscious brain consumes only 7% of it's capacity, while our subconscious brain consumes the rest. We have basically no idea what the subconscious is doing or why.

This may have relevance to the recent horrific shooting in Las Vegas. That little voice in killer's subconscious telling him what to do and he has no control - until the end when he realizes what he's done and commits suicide. The same may be said for many of these mass shootings - or driving trucks into people. Stuff that any "normal" person would never do.

The brain is by far our most complicated organ taking over 25% of our energy. Contrary again to what was once believed, the brain is constantly developing according to our lifetime experiences - not staying what it was when we were around 21. New medical science is beginning to know how it works - and therefore how it could be adjusted to avoid the common failures we all have. Some of the writers explanations are hard to understand - but he often gives examples which you may find familiar. Well worth the money - and taking notes.

Excellent, excellent book so far. I'm on chapter 7, and love the "insights" (at lease my brain thinks so) I'm getting from it. The only mistake I've noticed so far is that he states that the sun will burn up the earth in about 200 million years. Scientists actually estimate that to be more in the range of at least one billion years from now. The sun is about 5 billion years old, and is about half way through it's life cycle. Thanks for the wonderful book!

This book blew my mind. Eagleman delivers a profound and fascinating narration about the complexity of brain functions with an intelligent type of humor that is truly rare. Guaranteed to teach you more than you already know and (hopefully) get you a some good laughs as a bonus!

About 40 years ago Michel Gazzaniga presented experimental evidence that human behavior is mostly controlled by unconscious processes. Since then new findings have basically confirmed his claim. In the last few years some books have been published about the subject. Incognito is one more. It is easy to read because it presents many examples from daily life to support the main idea that our behavior is mostly instinctive and automatic. I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in understanding human behavior.

I use this book in my Abnormal and Introductory psychology classes to elucidate the concepts of justification of criminal acts and how we treat the mentally ill when they commit criminal acts as well as the concepts of neuroscience. Great examples and stories. David Eaglemen presents his views about the legal structure for punishing individuals with mental illness or brain abnormalities in a very sensitive manner that made me think without feeling preached at or like I was being bullied into someone else's point of view. I highly recommend Incognito. Oh, and if you ever get a chance to hear him speak, do it. I heard his speak at a tiny little bookstore in Phx where it was standing room only and he had all of us captivated. He was just fantastic!

This shed light on so many biological, chemical and hormonal influences the public can understand. It bought me to a place of great compassion and renewed my efforts to assist with mental health issues (NEEDS!) worldwide.

I love books that challenge my worldview. The legal system implications from understanding that culpability is the wrong question - modifiability of behavior is the right question - we're enlightening.

Tremendous insight into how/why we do things and that our decisions may not be a result of rational thinking. Apparently, there are a lot more instinctive reactions that we think are a result of rational, logical thought.

In the first 150 pages Eagleman reviews some of the literature on automatic processes, nothing of which I didn't already know. But he does a nice job summarizing the research and findings.

In the rest of the book, 74 pages, Eagleman argues that because we have no free will, no one should be held responsible for his actions, not even murders and rapists. He lists some no-brainer examples of neurologically sick people who have done terrible things, such as a brain tumor causes a man to become a pedophile. Then he makes a sophomoric philosophical move, saying that normal mentally competent adults are no different, because all psychological states depend on brain chemistry.

Eagleman actually compares criminals, due to their brain states, being tempted into committing crimes to dieters, because of their brain states, being tempted into cheating on their diets. He says that if you can't be responsible for being tempted by chocolate cake, then criminals can't be responsible for being tempted to committing crimes. Eagleman believes these two conditions to be morally equal.

This is Eagleman's thesis: Because metaphysical free will and immaterial souls don't exist, no one is responsible for his actions. According to Eagleman's reasoning, he can't be responsible for writing a pointless and meaningless book because his actions are caused by his brain chemistry.

No one is accountable or responsible for his actions. What a heartwarming message from Eagleman!

I quite liked the tour of brain's functioning and its implications for who we are and are not. Especially illuminating are the topics of conscious control vs automated programs and nature vs nurture. The chapter on criminal analysis is way too long though.
The last chapter is a good summary and forward looking cues. I see the author's point about the materialism and reductionism not being the only and obvious approaches. (As feyerabend would say, anything goes and hence its best not to fall in love even with occa 's razor)
I got a glimpse of several other books in this one. "Putting consciousness into its place" as well v ramachandran's book on brain come to mind. So do some others on consciousness like "i am a strange loop". Even the book by maturana "the tree of knowledge" is very pertinent to the topic. The authorhas already referred to julian jaynes' "origin of consciousness"
The one are where the author could have done better is taking interdisciplinary inputs especially from social psychology, cognitive neurosciece and linguistics. When dealing with the questions of who we are, these domains often have a surprisingly important things to say. I was routinely reminded of ross and nisbette's book "the person and the situation" and felt that the author could have done well to include some of the inferences from that book hereto further build on the nature vs nurture debate in the light of dispositionist vs situationist ideas.
The discussion on reductionism being insufficient could have benfitted from the ideas in "i am a strange loop" (especiialy the construct of careenium in it)
Overall a good book to read. But geared more as a beginner's entry into this domain. Does not necessarily amaze with a great new insight or way to look at the world.

Great about our brains, how they work, how we think they work, and that they don't always work as we think. A strength of the book is its basis in research and the author's ability to translate that research in a way that is interesting to the non-neuroscientist.

Incognito provides a truly useful and insightful survey of the current state of neuroscience. The only problem, of course, is that five years hence we will need someone to write another update! Hopefully, that will be Eagleman again.

This is an amazingly accessible read. Talk about the secret lives of the brain, Eagleman could have titled it the secret lives of who we are and how we become - and the biological processes that underpin it all. A must-read for every conscious being.

"I think - therefor I am" said Descartes. Each one of us is much more than what we can ever think - shows David Eagleman in this fascinating book - Incognito. Not only that, but it is amazing that we are aware only of a very small part of our brain. All of us strongly believe that we are in control of ourselves (at least most of the time) and so responsible for our actions. However our conscious self is more like the CEO of a large company that coordinates and supposedly directs the various divisions. The CEO may set the goals for the company, but he gets only a summary view of the situation and is seldom aware of the details. Similarly different sections of the brain work more or less independently - some through hard wired circuits that evolved over millions of years and others through culture and habits. We believe we are in charge but we are actually driven by what our brain (or more importantly different parts of our brain) perceives and tells us - surprisingly including what we see!

The ancients always exhorted us to understand ourselves - whether it is the Greek Delphi saying `Know Thyself' or the Indian upanishads with the cryptic `Thathwamasi' which can roughly translated to `That is you'. But they would have never expected the complexity that is in our brains. Fully understanding how the brain works is the holy grail for neuroscientists - however Mr.Eagleman explains how far away we are from this goal.

Our actions are driven by our brain and at the end of the day, the brain is only a set of neurons interacting through electrical and chemical signals. This is easily proven by the effects of various drugs on the brain and how it immediately affects what we think or do. Nature (genetics), Nurture (upbringing and environment) and life experiences creates the individual and Mr.Eagleman explains in a very simple manner how these three combine to create the complexity and beauty of humanity. Based on this understanding it makes it more easy to understand how and why various heinous and criminal acts are committed by humans. More importantly, Mr.Eagleman explains how this knowledge should be used to change our legal systems - do read the book to find out! It might even change the way you think about yourself!!

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It takes a special amount of finesse for a person to convey to someone that the way they think is not necessarily correct. It is a challenge that all expository writers face, especially when dealing with something as personal as the human brain. David Eagleman, neuroscientist and writer at Baylor College of Medicine, uses his extensive research to tell his audience that the brain relies heavily on an unconscious part of the mind that works behind the scenes to carry out functions and thoughts that we are unaware of. The way he presents it is in a way that uses provocative questions and a bit of humor in his explanations. The strategy to why David Eagleman is successful in keeping the reader interested is because of the way he uses everyday language that is not out of the average reader's vocabulary.
In his book Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, David Eagleman tackles many questions that people tend to have concerning the brain. The book is organized into chapters that break down into subchapters, which makes it easy for the reader to follow. His train of thought is evident throughout the book as he explains how he connects two seemingly different subjects. He brings up controversial topics such as religion and questions of identity and offers scientific explanations for them, all the while being relatable to a common audience. Eagleman explains to the reader that discoveries lead us to conclude that biology plays a bigger role in our actions than we previously thought. This catches the reader off guard because it is such an abstract concept. The way he presents information is thought out in a way that would not terribly offend anybody because he addresses both materialistic and mentalistic points of view. I believe that it is important for people to know that things are hardly ever black and white: there is usually a middle ground concerning major issues.
He starts his argument by demonstrating simple illusions that show the reader that what you experience is almost entirely based on perceptions and assumptions made by the brain. He says, "[the brain] computes on a need-to-know basis" (Eagleman 28). Eagleman suggests that the brain runs on assumptions because of how we assume that our peripheral vision is better than it actually is. He gives many examples of visual illusions in order to lead into his idea that the brain does a lot of behind the scenes work. These visual illusions and tricks were, at least for me, baffling because they demonstrate the inner workings of the brain that we may take for granted. Eagleman does a great job by luring the reader into the book with these interesting phenomena. The flow from chapter to chapter was seamless. At the end of each idea was a statement connecting it to the next, which goes with one of his central ideas that the brain has both internal and external connections that are made.
Throughout the book, he emphasizes that our actions are a combination of our environment and our chemical make-up, or nature and nurture. Eagleman tells the reader that the mind is able to be changed, demonstrating a fundamental concept of neuroscience. I think it is crucial that people understand the brain as an ever-changing, adapting part of the human body. He brings up a number of studies that show how the brain can become more efficient to complete tasks faster and easier (73). He is constantly giving the reader lessons that involve the plasticity of the brain. It is important to take what he says about the brain and apply it to how we look at other aspects of life, and not only sciences, but to society and government as well.
Eagleman goes into moral dilemmas that involve crime and punishment. He leads into this controversial topic by explaining Freud's idea of the unconscious mind. Eagleman claims that our minds have their own hardware that is built into it so we have little choice in what we like, how we act, or even who we love. This idea of his is hard to read, especially if the reader has a significant other, but he does not discredit the power of love, he only offers an explanation of it.
One example that he gives is how people with a certain type of gene tend to exhibit more criminal behaviors (Eagleman 158). An idea that I agree with is that he proposes the criminal punishment system should change because many criminals have neurological tendencies to do illegal acts. He says that punishment should be more geared towards a way to rehabilitate the criminals with such predispositions instead of punishing them. This is because the punishment does not do as much good as an active rehabilitation. He is sensitive to those who need psychological help and his ideas of reform in the criminal punishment system are revolutionary. People should read this book to better understand the human condition.
In the end of his book, Eagleman approaches his main idea: that who we are essentially is dependent on our brain. He brings up the phenomenon of Phineas Gage, a railroad worker who had an accident that left him without part of his frontal lobe (201). This is an appropriate story to support his assertion because after Gage's accident, his personality was completely changed. Even though the story was gruesome to think about, I believe that the previous examples slowly built up the reader's tolerance to real-life situations. Therefore, it was appropriate for Eagleman to include this anecdote.
Some readers that are immigrants may find some of his findings disturbing because he suggests that people who feel like they do not fit in are more likely to develop schizophrenia (211). He probably could have been more sensitive about this subject because people with these feelings of being an unwelcome outcast may just be thrown into more doubt and fear. There are other examples that may give other groups of people a sense of fear because of a certain "predisposition" that they have. People tend to be sensitive to their personal shortcomings, and the evidence proposed in this book does not give confidence to those people who are insecure. However, Eagleman is merely giving facts and his goal is not to make people insecure, but to inform and make people think. This is why the book is successful.
In conclusion, David Eagleman demonstrates the mysteries of the brain by using many examples that people can relate to. He challenges popular ways of thought by using a scientific and logical approach that is supported by evidence of countless studies and experiences that he presents. His main goal was to get the common reader to think more critically about the different causes of actions and thoughts that happen inside the brain. Another goal that he accomplished was to get the reader to look at humans as a societal group and realize that society changes. He taught me that things should be questioned and to not rule out an explanation until you can fully explain it yourself. This is a life lesson, not just one of the neuroscience field, and this is why I rate this book five out of five stars.

Great book with awesome examples of how everyday occurrences and events relate to what's happening in the brain. Made me appreciate how even the smallest variation in brain chemistry can have huge consequences in how people act and think. Tried some other similar books that were just too technical and dry to want to finish.

A hugely complex and topical essential subject made understandable and accessible to anybody with a curios mind about our brains and minds. Clear, well laid out arguments that take you step by step on a journey. You will not finish this book with the same understanding you started out with. You may be surprised. I was. The simple answer is we don't yet know and probably never will know ... At least in our living lifetimes.

My view is so stop asking, and just accept this, and be mindful of experts or conventional wisdom who claim to know or have the answers - they cannot. This is strangely very liberating.

You can move on, at peace knowing we are hugely complex beings and due to the sheer complexity and magnitude of us as humans and the complex interplay of ourselves and our respective environments and what we eat and do and experience - make it impossible for us to be deterministic. Our conscious minds are also only a small part and not in control as much as we like to think. To understand the mechanics of the system is not to understand the workings of the whole. That the whole still remains a complex mystery - but we know there is much more.

A really good metaphor that sums this up in the book is to know how a radio works by reverse engineering the components and experimenting with their respective workings on how they function as part of the whole to draw conclusions about the workings of the radio is not enough to explain how words and music get there ... And this is where we are at in our understanding and the approach we are currently taking ... And why we are a long way off a true understanding .. It's a beautiful mystery ..

The mysteries are and remain real ones ... We all know progress is made by asking the right questions ...read this book to follow the arguments with an open inquisitive mind and you too will develop a more enlightened liberating perspective ...that is not at odds with anything ...

This book was reccommended to me by a professor who illustrated how the mind tells the eyes what they see, not vice versa. I'm currently half way through it and am absolutely amazed at what the mind does and how small a pittance our conscious reality really is!!