A Second Before: How the Brain Constructs the Future that Becomes the Present

Your brain explains the world or hallucinates?.. While you think you are observing reality, the brain imagines what it could be like, — and feeds you these "facts". Daniel Yohn is an expert in cognitive neuroscience. Based on the latest data in neurobiology, he vividly demonstrates how human consciousness predicts and programs our reality. Our relationship with the brain is quite complicated. This is because the mind seems to lead a double life, being a source of both pride and shame. On the one hand, real miracles happen in the brain: this organ discovered penicillin, invented democracy, literature, and art, conquered the earth, oceans, and sky. On the other hand, the human mind is fragile. The same brain leads many of us into traps of superstitions, prejudices, and biases, enslaves us to marginal movements, mad conspiracy theories, or — which is no less insidious — throws us into a personal prison where our feelings, thoughts, and experiences turn the mind into a threatening or frightening place. But this perspective on the world implies certain risks. When the brain formulates an incorrect theory about the surrounding world or ourselves, we become prone to misperception and misunderstanding. We create an introspective theory of our own mind and who we are, creating an accurate — or inaccurate — picture of ourselves. We will also discuss how processing data from the past helps us generate truly new ideas. And when we need to change these theories.

Who is this book for?

• - For those who want to know how the brain deceives us
• - For those seeking the key to the door of perception
• - For anyone who agrees that the world is not as it seems
• - For those who want to feel more comfortable in the world and fear changes
• - For fans of popular science about brain function, psychological experiments, decision-making, and the philosophy of consciousness
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• From the Author My work as a cognitive neurobiologist is to unveil the secret of nature's strangest trick, to try to understand how in our cold, dark Universe, from matter arranged in the brain in a certain way, consciousness arises. Neurobiology — and experiments conducted in my laboratory, along with the work of many other scientists — shows that something like scientific activity also occurs inside our brains. The idea that your brain is a scientist transforms the thinking of neurobiologists. But it can also transform your thinking.
• Having acquainted yourself with the scientist living inside your skull, you will begin to think like a scientist yourself.