Chapter 1 There's Someone In My Head, But It's Not Me Summary and Analysis

In the opening chapter, Eagleman describes the almost unfathomable complexity of the human brain, which contains hundreds of billions of neurons each of which forms thousands of connections with other neurons. Scientists are continually studying how the brain works, but much of what happens inside the brain is still a mystery, he explains.

This mystery is deepened by the fact that we are limited by our conscious minds from fully understanding what goes on in the unconscious, Eagleman argues. He presents the example of an experiment where men were shown photographs of the faces of several women and asked to rate their attractiveness. Photographs where the women's eyes had been dilated were consistently ranked as more attractive. When asked why they had chosen...