'Forget what you thought you knew about yourself and open your mind wide: You are part reptile, part mammal, part primate. You are a dopamine fiend. You are a walking assembly of patterns and waves, clusters of neurons firing in sync with one another.'
In Mind Wide Open Steven Johnson takes us on a journey to the frontiers of brain science and reveals exactly how we're hardwired to think and feel. Experimenting with the latest technology he discovers (among other things) that everything we do from falling in love to forming a sentence is caused by neurons firing and chemicals swirling around our heads; that there are gadgets which can enable us to control our own brainwaves; that everyone's mind, like their fingerprint, is unique; and this can help us understand our own mental foibles and see ourselves in a totally new way.
Author description
Steven Johnson is the author Emergence, which was shortlisted for the Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism. Johnson's writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's and The Guardian, as well as on the op-ed pages of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He also writes for Discover magazine and Wired.com, and was co-founder of the award-winning websites FEED and Plastic.com. He teaches at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, and has degrees in Semiotics and English Literature from Brown and Columbia Universities.
