Author: Sigman, Mariano
Call Number: 612.82 S577S 2017
Book Description from amazon
From an: world-renowned leader in neuroscience, a provocative, enthralling journey into the depths of the human mind.
Where do our thoughts come from? How do we make choices and trust our judgments? What is the role of the unconscious? Can we manipulate our dreams? In this mind-bending international bestseller, award-winning neuroscientist Mariano Sigman explores the complex answers to these and many other age-old questions.
Over the course of his 20-year career investigating the inner workings of the human brain, Dr. Sigman has cultivated a remarkable interdisciplinary vision. He draws on research in physics, linguistics, psychology, education, and beyond to explain why people who speak more than one language are less prone to dementia; how infants can recognize by sight objects they've previously only touched; how babies, even before they utter their first word, have an innate sense of right and wrong; and how we can "read" the thoughts of vegetative patients by decoding patterns in their brain activity.
Building on the author's awe-inspiring TED talk, the cutting-edge research presented in The Secret Life of the Mind revolutionizes how we understand the role that neuroscience plays in our lives, unlocking the mysterious cerebral processes that control the ways in which we learn, reason, feel, think, and dream.
My Read:
I didn't finish this book, yet. But I found the following paragraphs interesting:
Page-140-141
"An American psychologist, Dan Gilbert, gave this idea physical substance with a cell phone app that every once in a while asks users:"What are you doing?';"What are you thinking about?';"How are you feeling?' The answer, gathered from people throughout the world, comprise a sort of chronology and demographics of happiness. In general, the states of greatest happiness correspond to having sex, talking with friends, sports, and playing and listening to music, in that order. Those of least happiness are work, being at home at the computer or on public transportation in the city.
Obviously, these are averages and do not imply that working makes everyone unhappy. And, naturally, these results depend on social and cultural idiosyncrasies. But the most interesting part of this experiment is how happiness changes according to what we are thinking about. During a daydream, almost all of us feel worse than when our brain isn't wandering freely. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't have daydreams but rather just that we should understand that they entail-like so many other trips-a complicated mix of discoveries and emotional ups and downs."
Contrast to the answers listed in that experiment in this book I found thinking about work make me happy. So is being at home at the computer. I don't like to chat after work; I found chatting energy consuming. The gathered answers in the book and mine got me wonder "What's wrong with me?" It's a question I asked myself in the shower stall.
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