Mind Hacks

Preface

Think for a moment about all that’s happening while you read this text: how your eyes move to center themselves on the words, how you idly scratch your arm while you’re thinking, the attention-grabbing movements, noises, and other distractions you’re filtering out. How does all this work? As one brain speaking to another, here’s a secret: it isn’t easy.

The brain is a fearsomely complex information-processing environment. Take the processing involved in seeing, for instance. One of the tasks involved in seeing is detecting the motion in every tiny portion of vision, in such and such a direction and at such and such a speed, and representing that in the brain. But another task is seeing a face in the light that falls on the retina, figuring out what emotion it’s showing, and representing that concept in the brain, somehow, too.

To an extent, the brain is modular, so that should give us a way in, but it’s not that clean-cut. The processing subsystems of the brain are layered on top of one another, but their functionality mingles rather than being organized in a distinct progression. Often the same task is performed in many different places, in many different ways. It’s not a clear mechanical system like clockwork or like a computer program; giving the same input won’t always give the same output. Automatic and voluntary actions are highly meshed, often inextricable. Parts of vision that appear fully isolated from conscious experience suddenly report different results if conscious expectations change.

The information transformations in the brain are made yet more complicated by the constraints of history, computation, and architecture. Development over evolutionary time has made it hard for the brain to backtrack; the structure of the brain must reflect its growth and repurposing. Computation has to occur as fast as possible—we’re talking subsecond responses—but there are limits on the speed at which information can travel between physical parts of the brain. These are all constraints to be worked with.

All of which leaves us with one question: how can we possibly start to understand what’s going on?

Cognitive neuroscience is the study of the brain biology behind our mental functions. It is 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. It is neither classic neuroscience—a low-level tour of the biology of the brain—nor is it what many people think of as psychology—a metaphorical exploration of human inner life; rather, it’s a view of the mind that looks at the fundamental elements and rules, acting moment by moment, that makes up conscious experience and action.

By focusing both on the biological substrate and on the high-level phenomenon of consciousness, we can pick apart the knot of the brain. This picking apart is why you don’t need to be a cognitive neuroscientist to reap the fruit of the field.

This book is a collection of probes into the moment-by-moment works of the brain. It’s not a textbook—more of a buffet, really. Each hack is one probe into the operation of the brain, one small demonstration. By seeing how the brain responds, we pick up traces of the structures present and the design decision made, learning a little bit more about how the brain is put together.

Simultaneously we’ve tried to show how there isn’t a separation between the voluntary “me” feeling of the mind and the automatic nature of the brain—the division between voluntary and automatic behavior is more of an ebb and flow, and we wield our cognitive abilities with unconscious flourishes and deliberate movements much as we wield, say, our hands, or a pen, or a lathe.

In a sense, we’re trying to understand the capabilities that underpin the mind. Say we understand to what extent the holes in our vision are continually covered up or what sounds and lights will—without a doubt—grab our attention (and also what won’t): we’ll be able to design better tools, and create better interfaces that work with the grain of our mental architecture and not against it. We’ll be able to understand ourselves a little better; know a little more, in a very real sense, about what makes us tick.

Plus it’s fun. That’s the key. Cognitive neuroscience is a fairly new discipline. The journey into the brain is newly available and an enjoyable ride. The effects we’ll see are real enough, but the explanations of why they occur are still being debated. We’re taking part in the mapping of this new territory just by playing along. Over the course of writing this book, we’ve spent time noticing our own attention systems darting about the room, seen ourselves catching gestures from people we’ve been talking to, and played games with the color of traffic and peripheral vision. That’s the fun bit. But we’ve also been gripped by the arguments in the scientific literature and have had new insights into facets of our everyday lives, such as why some web sites are annoying and certain others are particularly well-made. If, through this book, we’ve managed to make that world a little more accessible too, then we’ve succeeded. And when you’ve had a look around and found new ways to apply these ideas and, yes, new topics we’ve not touched on, please do let us know. We’re here for the ride too.

Why Mind Hacks?

The term “hacking” has a bad reputation in the media. They use it to refer to those who break into systems or wreak havoc with computers as their weapons. Among people who write code, though, the term “hack” refers to a “quick-and-dirty” solution to a problem, or a clever way to get something done. And the term “hacker” is taken very much as a compliment, referring to someone as being “creative,” having the technical chops to get things done. The Hacks series is an attempt to reclaim the word, document the good ways people are hacking, and pass the hacker ethic of creative participation on to the uninitiated. Seeing how others approach systems and problems is often the quickest way to learn about a new technology.

The brain, like all hidden systems, is prime territory for curious hackers. Thanks to relatively recent developments in cognitive neuroscience, we’re able to satisfy a little of that curiosity, making educated explanations for psychological effects rather than just pointing those effects out, throwing light on the internal workings of the brain.

Some of the hacks in this collection document the neat tricks the brain has used to get the job done. Looking at the brain from the outside like this, it’s hard not to be impressed at the way it works. Other hacks point to quirks of our own minds that we can exploit in unexpected ways, and that’s all part of learning our way round the wrinkles in this newly exposed technology.

Mind Hacks is for people who want to know a bit more about what’s going on inside their own heads and for people who are going to assemble the hacks in new ways, playing with the interface between ourselves and the world. It’s wonderfully easy to get involved. We’ve all got brains, after all.