Making up the mind

When we percieve something via our senses the process seems fairly straightforward. In Making up the mind: how the brain creates our mental world , however, Chris Frith shows that there's a lot more going on behind the scenes than you might think.

The book starts by looking at studies of people with damage to part of their brain and what this can tell us about how the brain works. For instance there's the phenomenon of blindsight where someone can't consciously see things, but unconsciously knows that they are there. Also some stroke patients may be paralysed in part of their body, but have a condition known as anosognosia where they are convinced that they are perfectly OK. But even the normal brain can have tricks played upon it, for instance the Ames room, where we see people as being impossibly different sizes rather than interpreting it as a distorted room (which it is). Later in the book Frith looks at the way our brains form a model of what our bodies are doing, and why it is impossible to tickle yourself. He then discusses bayesian statistics and how our brains are often much better at using it that we ourselves. He also considers how we form a model of the minds of other people, and why working out the intentions of others is so important. This leads on to a consideration of how society is made up of shared mental models.

I'd recommend this book to all readers, in fact I'm rather surprised that it didn't make it to the shortlist of the 2008 Royal Society Prizes. It's easy to read, fairly short, but packs in plenty of information. When I'd finished it I found that there were plenty of things I wanted to find out more about - always the sign of a good book.