Neuroscience over the next 50 years is going to introduce things that are mind-blowing.

We're trapped on this very thin slice of perception ... But even at that slice of reality that we call home, we're not seeing most of what's going on.

You are part of a complex social network that changes your biology with every interaction, and which your actions can change.

All life is no more than a match struck in the dark and blown out again.

Love was not specified in the design of your brain; it is merely an endearing algorithm that freeloads on the leftover processing cycles.

After all, across the population there are slight differences in brain function, and sometimes these translate directly into different ways of experiencing the world. And each individual believes his way is reality.

We are made up of an entire parliament of pieces and parts and subsystems. Beyond a collection of local expert systems, we are collections of overlapping, ceaselessly reinvented mechanism, a group of competing factions. The conscious mind fabricates stories to explain the sometimes inexplicable dynamics of the subsystem inside brain. It can be disquieting to consider the extent to which all of our actions are driven by hardwired systems doing what they do best while we overlay stories about choices.