Having read Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by the author (a quirky look at possible after-death scenarios - nothing to do with science!), I knew Eagleman was a gifted writer. It seems that he is a neuroscientist as well. And when two such talents combine in one person, a book like this is what we get.

Genocide is only possible when dehumanisation happens on a massive scale. The perfect tool for this is propaganda. It keys right into the neural networks that understand other people, and dials down the degree to which we empathise with them. We’ve seen how our brains can be manipulated by political agendas to dehumanise other people, but is it possible to programme our brains to prevent this? To empathize with another person is to literally feel their pain. You run a compelling simulation of what it would be like if you were in that situation. Our capacity for this is why stories – like movies and novels – are so absorbing and so pervasive across human culture. Whether it’s about total strangers or made-up characters, you experience their agony and their ecstasy. You fluidly become them, live their lives, and stand in their vantage points. When you see another person suffer, you can try to tell yourself that it’s their issue, not yours – but neurons deep in your brain can’t tell the difference. An intellectual thrill-ride. Plus, Eagleman isn’t merely a brilliant guide, he can turn a phrase, too.” – NewsdayAfter the Holocaust, Europe got into the habit of vowing “never again”. But between 1992 and 1995, during the Yugoslav war, more than 100,000 Muslims were slaughtered by Serbians. One of the worst events of the war was in Srebrenica in July 1995 when, over the course of 10 days, 8,000 Bosnian Muslims — known as Bosniaks — were shot and killed. They had taken refuge inside a United Nations compound after the town was surrounded by siege forces. But on July 11, the UN commanders expelled the refugees from the compound, delivering them into the hands of their enemies. Women were raped, men were executed, and children were killed. Despite all this very impressive progress which Eagleman dutifully records, it has to be pointed out that neuroscience has so far achieved only a very limited understanding of how the brain actually works. Neural correlation especially has enabled a very thorough identification of areas responsible for a wide range of human behaviour, psychological as well as bodily. But whereas we now know much of what the brain does and where within itself it does what it does, neuroscience has yet to account for how it does what it does, an explanation for consciousness, the ‘hard problem’ par excellence, remaining particularly elusive. Why? Because the holy grail of neurological research – getting to grips with the brain’s internal software, no less – has yet to be realized. In these circumstances, it’s perhaps little exaggeration to say that its practitioners can be likened in some ways to a band of stone age people who, suddenly finding an abandoned car in the desert with the key still in the ignition, start playing with the dashboard controls, pressing switches, turning knobs and pulling levers, carefully noting as they do so that various lights come on and certain engine noises can be heard, some of which dim or stop when, after popping the hood, they yank out the odd cable, unscrew a few caps or drain a fluid reservoir. Do they have a clue about internal combustion, let alone electricity? No way. Describes consciousness. “…the conscious you is only the smallest part of the activity of your brain. Your actions, your beliefs and your biases are all driven by networks in your brain to which you have no conscious access.” “I think of consciousness as the CEO of a large sprawling corporation, with many thousands of subdivisions and departments all collaborating and interacting and competing in different ways.” So what is reality? It’s like a television show that only you can see, and you can’t turn it off. The good news is that it happens to be broadcasting the most interesting show you could ask for: edited, personalized, and presented just for you.

When the curtain fell, I took both bears and carried them over to each watching baby. I held them up, indicating to the child to choose one of them to play with. Remarkably, as was found by the Yale researchers, almost all the babies chose the bear that was kind. Goes over some of the keys components of the brain. “The scientists were particularly interested in a small area of the brain called the hippocampus – vital for memory, and, in particular, spatial memory.”So strap in for a whistle-stop tour into the inner cosmos. In the infinitely dense tangle of billions of brain cells and their trillions of connections, I hope you’ll be able to squint and make out something that you might not have expected to see in there. You.

Neuroscientist David Eagleman argues that the brain is like a field of battle: subject to conflicting drives and impulses that we are only just beginning to understand. He talks to Sally Davies, FT Weekend’s digital editor, about the nature of consciousness, why human beings are hardwired for xenophobia, and how technology can extend our cognitive powers. Eagleman’s infectious optimism and enthusiasm do much to make up for the reservations I’ve just expressed. They also let him get away with a certain amount of bold exaggeration. Early on in the book for instance, he tells us that instead of experiencing the outside world directly ourselves, we only experience a fabricated model of reality, one seamlessly and instantly assembled by the brain for our sensory benefit. The real world, he says, is ‘colorless, odorless, tasteless and silent’ and the brain must work overtime to compensate for this barren environment by interpreting the various photons, air compression waves, molecular concentrations, pressure, texture and temperature signals it receives into a meaningful representation of external reality. So far, so good, but Eagleman gives insufficient credit to the brain for the superb job it does. All the incoming signals just mentioned are also an integral part of reality and, far from being somewhat of an illusion or a mere ‘show’, the impression of reality the brain puts together is a remarkably, accurate, dependable and consistent one – indeed, it cannot be otherwise because were this the case we would have utterly failed to successfully manage our environment and evolve as a species. It’s certainly no accident that six expert water colorists, for instance, painting exactly the same scene simultaneously from the same position, will record almost exactly the same visual impression – so much for the notion they individually make much of it up in their heads! Why do we mirror? Does it serve a purpose? To find out, I invited a second group of people to the lab — all of whom had been exposed to the most lethal toxin on the planet. This is the Botulinum toxin, derived from a bacterium, and it’s commonly marketed under the brand name Botox. When injected into facial muscles, it paralyses them and thereby reduces wrinkling.

The author leaves the troublesome question of free will unresolved - apparently the jury is still out on that one.) Consider how different the following items are: bunnies, trains, monsters, airplanes and children’s toys. As different as they are, these can all be the main characters in popular animated films and we have no difficulty in assigning intentions to them. A viewer’s brain needs very few hints to take on the assumption that these characters are like us. Eagleman gets the writing here off to a great start, with a well-written intro. He's got an excellent writing style that is both interesting and engaging. The book is very readable. No one is having an experience of the objective reality that really exists; each creature perceives only what it has evolved to perceive.