THE 1980s WERE DESIGNATED as “the decade of the brain.” At that time fields like cognitive science, neuroscience, and other areas of brain-related study were flourishing, and it was believed that the period between 1980 and 1990 would reveal the inner workings of the human mind. Well that decade has come and gone and advances in understanding the brain have not ceased. Looking back on those years, it seems like the more that scientists learned, the more they realized that they did not understand. Science has not even begun to understand the brain. That makes writing this book all the easier because, in reality, each chapter could simply state, “No one really understands how the brain does this,” and this would be the most accurate book on brain-functioning written.
Nonetheless, science has made some exciting progress in understanding how the brain may work. Unfortunately much of this progress can be lost on those who do not have extensive backgrounds in biology, anatomy, neuroscience, and psychology. While it is necessary to have a very basic understanding of these fields in order to understand the brain, it certainly is not necessary to be an expert in any one of them. This book attempts to allow someone without expertise in neuroscience to understand how her brain works and how the brain organizes sensation, perception, thinking, and feeling.
The human brain is the most complicated entity (for lack of a better word) in the entire universe. The human brain has the capacity to perform functions that, as far as science knows, cannot be performed by any other animal or by any machine. This book attempts to explain the basic functions of the brain without using complicated computer analogies and endless neuroanatomical drawings and pictures. Computer models can be useful in understanding how neural networks signal and code information, but this book does not attempt to provide a reductionistic viewpoint of behavior. Instead, this book looks at the top-down processes of brain functioning. References allowing for more in-depth examinations of topics are provided at the end of the book, and there is a glossary at the end of the book with links to websites that enhance the book material. The motivated reader will hopefully investigate these.