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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 612.82
EAN: 9780596007799
Format: Illustrated
ISBN: 0596007795
Label: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 394
Publication Date: November 22, 2004
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Studio: O'Reilly Media, Inc.

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
The brain is a fearsomely complex information-processing environment--one that often eludes our ability to understand it. At any given time, the brain is collecting, filtering, and analyzing information and, in response, performing countless intricate processes, some of which are automatic, some voluntary, some conscious, and some unconscious.

Cognitive neuroscience is one of the ways we have to understand the workings of our minds. It's the study of the brain biology behind our mental functions: a collection of methods--like brain scanning and computational modeling--combined with a way of looking at psychological phenomena and discovering where, why, and how the brain makes them happen.

Want to know more? "Mind Hacks" is a collection of probes into the moment-by-moment works of the brain. Using cognitive neuroscience, these experiments, tricks, and tips related to vision, motor skills, attention, cognition, subliminal perception, and more throw light on how the human brain works. Each hack examines specific operations of the brain. By seeing how the brain responds, we pick up clues about the architecture and design of the brain, learning a little bit more about how the brain is put together.

"Mind Hacks" begins your exploration of the mind with a look inside the brain itself, using hacks such as "Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: Turn On and Off Bits of the Brain" and "Tour the Cortex and the Four Lobes." Also among the 100 hacks in this book, you'll find:

Release Eye Fixations for Faster Reactions

See Movement When All is Still

Feel the Presence and Loss of Attention

Detect Sounds on the Margins of Certainty

Mold Your Body Schema

Test YourHandedness

See a Person in Moving Lights

Make Events Understandable as Cause-and-Effect

Boost Memory by Using Context

Understand Detail and the Limits of Attention

Steven Johnson, author of "Mind Wide Open" writes in his foreword to the book, "These hacks amaze because they reveal the brain's hidden logic; they shed light on the cheats and shortcuts and latent assumptions our brains make about the world." If you want to know more about what's going on in your head, then "Mind Hacks" is the key--let yourself play with the interface between you and the world.




Rating: - Neuroscience in a nutshell
This book isn't about "hacking your brain" at all. What it really is is an overview of neuroscience, presented as 100 different topics which talk about how the brain works. Ever wonder how our brain figures out which direction sound comes from? Or how we pick out patterns in chaos? Or how we construct our vision of the world? Not only does it explain it in a very accessible fashion, but it gives hyperlinks to things online which have mp3s or jpegs which help demonstrate the point so that you can ... Read More

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Rating: - Interesting but disappointed
Learning about the mind is okay, but I didn't learn anything that I hadn't seen in Psych 101, and a few interesting articles later on.

Calling it a "hacks" book is false advertising, at best. Should it make it to another printing, I would hope O'Reilly would rename it.

The information seemed accurate, so I'll give it that.

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Rating: - Mind hacks
This is a really great book. More novelty than improvement, but still great. If you're looking for something that will be useful as well as attention grabbing then look for the second edition; "Mind Performance Hacks"

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Rating: - Not really a "hacks" book
I was sorely disappointed in this book--I checked it out from the local library and hoped that it would actually live up to the subtitle of including tips and tools for using my brain. It didn't; the few "tips" included were those that are found in virtually every other discussion of how to improve memory.

This book is more geared toward folks who are designing user interfaces--it talks about how the brain processes information (and thus describes ways to improve information conveyance).

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Rating: - Mind Hacks: Tips & Tools for Using Your Brain
It's a book very interested about language in mind and speech comprehension. I read a short comment in BBC Focus magazine and I wish to read because it's very easy to learn the misteries of mind in cognitive science applied to language and psichology.

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