Seeing the Mind

Contemporary neuroscience offers a striking answer to the question of who we are: our dreams, thoughts and feelings are patterns of activity in the brain. Stanislas Dehaene's Seeing the Mind follows this idea further, arguing that the mind corresponds to the brain and is best understood as a complex electrical pattern across our neurons. Drawing on brain imaging, the book traces how people have tried over the centuries to explain how a mass of roughly three pounds of tissue can produce everything we experience.

The book is organized into one hundred short topics. Each opens with a large, full-page color image, and the facing page offers a concise explanation of what the picture shows and why it is significant. Pairing pictures with text is meant to give readers a close look at the workings of their own brains. Dehaene stresses that the biological processes described are happening inside every reader at this very moment.

Dehaene is a French cognitive neuroscientist who holds a chair at the Collège de France. The book is presented as a kind of modern cabinet of curiosities, suited to readers who want an illustrated, accessible tour of the science of thought.