So, Incognito asks where exactly – when our heads are so full of unconscious thoughts and hard-wired behaviours – free will is supposed to reside and, if it is missing, what does this mean for our legal system? It's a book about the things it is impossible to think about, and others that it is no longer possible not to.If the conscious mind-the part you consider you-is just the tip of the iceberg in the brain, what is all the rest doing? In Incognito, neuroscientist David Eagleman plumbs the depths of the subconscious brain to illuminate surprising questions: Why can your foot jump halfway to the brake pedal before you are consciously aware of danger ahead? Why do strippers make more money at certain times of the month, although no one is consciously aware of their fertility level? Is there a true Mel Gibson? What do Odysseus and the subprime mortgage meltdown have in common? How is your brain like a conflicted democracy engaged in civil war? Why are people whose name begins with J more likely to marry other people whose name begins with J? Why is it so difficult to keep a secret? Why did Supreme Court Justice William Douglas deny that he was paralyzed? This subsurface exploration includes diversions into brain damage, drugs, infidelity, synesthesia, criminal law, the future of artificial intelligence, and visual illusions-all highlighting how our perception of the world is a hidden and awe-inspiring construction of the brain. Neuroscience is at a stage, he argues, where it can weigh in on age-old philosophical debates. Eagleman is not only a neuroscientist, but an extremely clear and engaging writer.

Nor does Eagleman feel bound by his field. The book, Incognito: Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman, is an engaging account of those processes packed with practical and interesting examples and insight. Which isn't to say that it is reductionist ('By itself, the biology only gives partial insight'), nor that there's no space for poetic phrasing (information is carried by 'flotilla of drifting molecules'). Incognito is a different kind of book, intended to explain his day job to a general reader – and as such, it is a shining example of lucid and easy-to-grasp science writing.

Es Guggenheim Fellow y miembro del consejo del Foro Económico Mundial. If Eagleman's name is already familiar it will be for his bestselling 2009 book Sum, a wildly imaginative collection of short stories which purported to be about the afterlife but were actually profoundly sensitive to what it means to be human in the here and now. David Eagleman (Nuevo México, 1971) es neurocientífico y profesor en la Universidad de Stanford.

Incognito by david eagleman