It took me rather a long time into reading this before I realised that this was an author with whom I was already acquainted. A few years ago, I read Eagleman’s fictional short story collection: ‘Sum’. So, as I started to thoroughly enjoy ‘Incognito’ the puzzle pieces fell into place and I found myself being led through his equally masterful (yet this time nonfictional) work.

I love learning about the brain, be it neuroscience or psychology and I have been lucky enough to read some great books on both subjects - this, another to add to the list. 'Incognito' is concerned with consciousness and in particular, the misconception people have of how responsible it is in governing the rest of the brain, how we 'are not the ones driving the boat'. Eagleman serves up astounding evidence in the form of patient histories, science experiments and case studies that illuminate how the hidden depths of the brain and our subconscious are responsible for far more than we can imagine. One investigation he recounts, involved playing a sort of reveal and reward card game, complete with an underlying pattern built into it. The test subject is anticipated to decipher the pattern after a certain amount of goes. What was incredible however, was that in monitoring brain activity, the scientists were able to show that the subconscious had spotted the pattern in substantially fewer moves than the consciousness had.

Towards the end of the book, Eagleman’s ideas culminate in an advocation for reform of the criminal justice system, in such that neuroscience should be used as a tool to aid successfully rehabilitating criminals. This isn’t to absolve them of wrongdoing but rather to understand the mind that perpetrates the crime so that effective strategies can be put in place to better support reintegration into society (and conversely the awareness that incarceration has limited success in retraining brains with criminal desires or indifference to common laws, to behave in a more socially acceptable manner). For example, instead of locking people away for drug addiction, there are current technologies which can isolate and visualise your brain’s desires. With this visualisation, you can learn, through trial and error, to affect the desire - to want it less - having instant feedback on the effectiveness of what you were trying. In essence, addicts can teach themselves techniques to curb their desires using neuroscience technology empowering them to stop reoffending.

It's books like this that you hope everyone reads, that you hope are on curriculums around the world and most importantly in the read pile of people who have sway in the world’s affairs. What I got from it is that consciousness is not to be trusted, that looking deeper is always better and taking time to understand the behaviour not react to the behaviour is paramount. As a teacher, I'd find it so helpful to scan the brains of kids we were teaching - in essence, to see the barriers to their learning, look for lack of development, have a better idea of how best to provide and nurture the children. Current technology is far, far, far away from being able to provide anywhere near as close a picture as this so for now, books like this will suffice. 5/5 ( )

Really interesting. He took a few liberties of glossing over points that could have been addressed or defined, but overall it was very interesting. ( )

This book felt like visiting the science center when I was in 6th grade: the vase/face image, zigzag illusions, and discussion of the blind spot in everyone's field of vision. ( )

Good review of this stuff. One of those books with optical illusions that explains why you are little better than a monkey with pants on, and have no free will. The author's interviews on the BBC's Start the Week were quite good, also - available as a podcast. ( )

OK so when I said I liked Incognito better than Livewire, it ended up being not by that much. It certainly held my attention for more of the book and I spent less of my time being irritated by it, but there was a tiresome amount of ableist language (the R-word, for one, and talking about people being “confined” to wheelchairs, and inspiration-porn-style phrases like “he didn’t let being blind stop him from climbing Mount Everest”) and author spent a lot of time near the end advancing a position, then saying saying “I’m not saying that Blah”. On the one hand such careful summarizing demonstrates scrupulousness about ensuring that his position is crystal clear, but on the other it shows that the position is at risk of being misinterpreted. Also, this book was published in 2011, and I’m sure there is much more recent information about the brain that’s even more exciting. I’ll test this theory by reading The Emotional Brain, by Dean Burnett (published 2023). ( )