Description:

The brain is a fearsomely complex information-processing environment--one that often eludes our ability to understand it. At any given time, the brain is collecting, filtering, and analyzing information and, in response, performing countless intricate processes, some of which are automatic, some voluntary, some conscious, and some unconscious.

Cognitive neuroscience is one of the ways we have to understand the workings of our minds. It's the study of the brain biology behind our mental functions: a collection of methods--like brain scanning and computational modeling--combined with a way of looking at psychological phenomena and discovering where, why, and how the brain makes them happen.

Want to know more? Mind Hacks is a collection of probes into the moment-by-moment works of the brain. Using cognitive neuroscience, these experiments, tricks, and tips related to vision, motor skills, attention, cognition, subliminal perception, and more throw light on how the human brain works. Each "hack" examines specific operations of the brain. By seeing how the brain responds, we pick up clues about the architecture and design of the brain, learning a little bit more about how the brain is put together.

Mind Hacks begins your exploration of the mind with a look inside the brain itself, using hacks such as "Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: Turn On and Off Bits of the Brain" and "Tour the Cortex and the Four Lobes." Also among the 100 hacks in this book, you'll find:

• Release Eye Fixations for Faster Reactions
  
• See Movement When All is Still
  
• Feel the Presence and Loss of Attention
  
• Detect Sounds on the Margins of Certainty
  
• Mold Your Body Schema
  
• Test Your Handedness
  
• See a Person in Moving Lights
  
• Make Events Understandable as Cause-and-Effect
  
• Boost Memory by Using Context
  
• Understand Detail and the Limits of Attention

Steven Johnson, author of "Mind Wide Open" writes in his foreword to the book, "These hacks amaze because they reveal the brain's hidden logic; they shed light on the cheats and shortcuts and latent assumptions our brains make about the world." If you want to know more about what's going on in your head, then Mind Hacks is the key--let yourself play with the interface between you and the world.

 

Foreword  
Credits  
Preface  
Chapter 1. Inside the Brain 
       1. Find Out How the Brain Works Without Looking Inside  
       2. Electroencephalogram: Getting the Big Picture with EEGs  
       3. Positron Emission Tomography: Measuring Activity Indirectly with PET  
       4. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging: The State of the Art  
       5. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: Turn On and Off Bits of the Brain  
       6. Neuropsychology, the 10% Myth, and Why You Use All of Your Brain  
       7. Get Acquainted with the Central Nervous System  
       8. Tour the Cortex and the Four Lobes  
       9. The Neuron  
       10. Detect the Effect of Cognitive Function on Cerebral Blood Flow  
       11. Why People Don't Work Like Elevator Buttons  
       12. Build Your Own Sensory Homunculus  
Chapter 2. Seeing 
       13. Understand Visual Processing  
       14. See the Limits of Your Vision  
       15. To See, Act  
       16. Map Your Blind Spot  
       17. Glimpse the Gaps in Your Vision  
       18. When Time Stands Still  
       19. Release Eye Fixations for Faster Reactions  
       20. Fool Yourself into Seeing 3D  
       21. Objects Move, Lighting Shouldn't  
       22. Depth Matters  
       23. See How Brightness Differs from Luminance: The Checker Shadow Illusion  
       24. Create Illusionary Depth with Sunglasses  
       25. See Movement When All Is Still  
       26. Get Adjusted  
       27. Show Motion Without Anything Moving  
       28. Motion Extrapolation: The "Flash-Lag Effect"  
       29. Turn Gliding Blocks into Stepping Feet  
       30. Understand the Rotating Snakes Illusion  
       31. Minimize Imaginary Distances  
       32. Explore Your Defense Hardware  
       33. Neural Noise Isn't a Bug; It's a Feature  
Chapter 3. Attention 
       34. Detail and the Limits of Attention  
       35. Count Faster with Subitizing  
       36. Feel the Presence and Loss of Attention  
       37. Grab Attention  
       38. Don't Look Back!  
       39. Avoid Holes in Attention  
       40. Blind to Change  
       41. Make Things Invisible Simply by Concentrating (on Something Else)  
       42. The Brain Punishes Features that Cry Wolf  
       43. Improve Visual Attention Through Video Games  
Chapter 4. Hearing and Language 
       44. Detect Timing with Your Ears  
       45. Detect Sound Direction  
       46. Discover Pitch  
       47. Keep Your Balance  
       48. Detect Sounds on the Margins of Certainty  
       49. Speech Is Broadband Input to Your Head  
       50. Give Big-Sounding Words to Big Concepts  
       51. Stop Memory-Buffer Overrun While Reading  
       52. Robust Processing Using Parallelism  
Chapter 5. Integrating 
       53. Put Timing Information into Sound and Location Information into Light  
       54. Don't Divide Attention Across Locations  
       55. Confuse Color Identification with Mixed Signals  
       56. Don't Go There  
       57. Combine Modalities to Increase Intensity  
       58. Watch Yourself to Feel More  
       59. Hear with Your Eyes: The McGurk Effect  
       60. Pay Attention to Thrown Voices  
       61. Talk to Yourself  
Chapter 6. Moving 
       62. The Broken Escalator Phenomenon: When Autopilot Takes Over  
       63. Keep Hold of Yourself  
       64. Mold Your Body Schema  
       65. Why Can't You Tickle Yourself?  
       66. Trick Half Your Mind  
       67. Objects Ask to Be Used  
       68. Test Your Handedness  
       69. Use Your Right Brain-and Your Left, Too  
Chapter 7. Reasoning 
       70. Use Numbers Carefully  
       71. Think About Frequencies Rather than Probabilities  
       72. Detect Cheaters  
       73. Fool Others into Feeling Better  
       74. Maintain the Status Quo  
Chapter 8. Togetherness 
       75. Grasp the Gestalt  
       76. To Be Noticed, Synchronize in Time  
       77. See a Person in Moving Lights  
       78. Make Things Come Alive  
       79. Make Events Understandable as Cause and Effect  
       80. Act Without Knowing It  
Chapter 9. Remembering 
       81. Bring Stuff to the Front of Your Mind  
       82. Subliminal Messages Are Weak and Simple  
       83. Fake Familiarity  
       84. Keep Your Sources Straight (if You Can)  
       85. Create False Memories  
       86. Change Context to Build Robust Memories  
       87. Boost Memory Using Context  
       88. Think Yourself Strong  
       89. Navigate Your Way Through Memory  
       90. Have an Out-of-Body Experience  
       91. Enter the Twilight Zone: The Hypnagogic State  
       92. Make the Caffeine Habit Taste Good  
Chapter 10. Other People 
       93. Understand What Makes Faces Special  
       94. Signal Emotion  
       95. Make Yourself Happy  
       96. Reminisce Hot and Cold  
       97. Look Where I'm Looking  
       98. Monkey See, Monkey Do  
       99. Spread a Bad Mood Around  
       100. You Are What You Think  
Index