Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain

Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist

Christof Koch · 181 pages

"What links conscious experience of pain, joy, color, and smell to bioelectrical activity in the brain? How can anything physical give rise to nonphysical, subjective, conscious states? Christof Koch has devoted much of his career to bridging the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the physics of the brain and phenomenal experience. This engaging book--part scientific overview, part memoir, part fu

Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain

Patricia S. Churchland · 304 pages

What happens when we accept that everything we feel and think stems not from an immaterial spirit but from electrical and chemical activity in our brains? Churchland grounds the philosophy of mind in the essential ingredients of biology. She reflects with humor on how she came to harmonize science and philosophy, the mind and the brain, abstract ideals and daily life.

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

David Eagleman · 290 pages

"This book will shine light on some of the hard-to-reach places in the brain, showing the ways in which we are not the ones driving the boat. Why does the conscious mind know so little? What do visual illusions unmask about the machinery running under the hood? How much of our lives are determined by choices and behaviors that are hard-wired, unconscious, and beyond our control? Do we have any man

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

Oliver Sacks · 243 pages

In his most extraordinary book, “one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century” (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who

I Am a Strange Loop

Douglas R. Hofstadter · 424 pages

Hofstadter's long-awaited return to the themes of Gödel, Escher, Bach--an original and controversial view of the nature of consciousness and identity. What do we mean when we say "I"? Can a self, a soul, a consciousness, an "I" arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? This book argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is a special kind of abstract

A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness

Michael Pollan · 320 pages

Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain

Michael S. Gazzaniga · 260 pages

"The "father of cognitive neuroscience" makes a powerful and provocative argument against today's common wisdom that our lives are wholly determined by physical processes we cannot control"--

Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction

Susan Blackmore · 554 pages

The Emperor's New Mind Concerning Computers, Minds and the Laws of Physics

Roger Penrose, Martin Gardner · 480 pages

How the Mind Works

Steven Pinker · 661 pages

"Presented with extraordinary lucidity, cogency and panache...Powerful and gripping...To have read [the book] is to have consulted a first draft of the structural plan of the human psyche...a glittering tour de force" - Spectator "Why do memories fade? Why do we lose our tempers? Why do fools fall in love? Pinker's objective in this erudite account is to explore the nature and history of the human

The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

Iain McGilchrist · 608 pages

"Why is the brain divided? The difference between right and left hemispheres has been puzzled over for centuries. In this book, Iain McGilchrist draws on a vast body of recent brain research, illustrated with case histories, to reveal that the difference is profound - not just this or that function, but two whole, coherent, but incompatible ways of experiencing the world. The left hemisphere is de

The Society of Mind

Marvin Minsky · 339 pages

An authority on artificial intelligence introduces a theory that explores the workings of the human mind and the mysteries of thought.

Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts

Stanislas Dehaene · 352 pages

"A breathtaking look at the new science that can track consciousness deep in the brain How does our brain generate a conscious thought? And why does so much of our knowledge remain unconscious? Thanks to clever psychological and brain-imaging experiments, scientists are closer to cracking this mystery than ever before. In this lively book, Stanislas Dehaene describes the pioneering work his lab an

From Bacteria to Bach and Back - The Evolution of Minds

Daniel C. Dennett · 496 pages

xviii, 476 pages, 2 unnumbered pages of plates : 25 cm

The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty

Simon Baron-Cohen · 256 pages

How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like

Paul Bloom · 280 pages

In this fascinating and witty account, Yale psychologist Paul Bloom draws on insights from child development, philosophy, neuroscience, and behavioral economics to examine the science behind our curious desires, attractions, and tastes, covering everything from the animal instincts for sex and food to the uniquely human taste for art, music, and stories.

Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

Peter Godfrey-Smith · 272 pages

"Peter Godfrey-Smith is a leading philosopher of science. He is also a scuba diver whose underwater videos of warring octopuses have attracted wide notice. In this book, he brings his parallel careers together to tell a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself. Mammals and birds are widely seen as the smartest creatures on earth. But one other branch of the tree of life has also sproute

Free Will

Sam Harris · 83 pages

[Free Will][1] is a 2012 book by the American author and neuroscientist Sam Harris. Harris argues that the truth about the human mind (that free will is an illusion) does not undermine morality or diminish the importance of political and social freedom, and can as well as should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr

On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not

Robert A. Burton

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School

John Medina · 304 pages

Most of us have no idea what's really going on inside our heads. Yet brain scientists have uncovered details every business leader, parent, and teacher should know—such as the brain's need for physical activity to work at its best.How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget—and so important to repeat new knowledge? Is

Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

Carl Sagan · 398 pages

Explorers various aspects of several fields of science and examines the role of the intellect in scientific achievement.

The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science

Norman Doidge · 448 pages

An astonishing new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Norman Doidge, M.D., traveled the country to meet both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they've transformed—people whose mental limitations or brain damage were seen as unalterable. We see a woma

Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind

V.S. Ramachandran, Sandra Blakeslee · 352 pages

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery

Sam Kean · 432 pages