there's someone in my head but it's not meTake a close look at yourself in the mirror. Beneath your ¹__________ ²______ looks churns a hidden universe of networked machinery. The machinery includes a ³___________ scaffolding of ⁴___________ bones, a netting of ⁵________ muscles, a good deal of ⁶______________ fluid, and a collaboration of ⁷_________ organs chugging away in darkness to keep you alive. A sheet of high-tech self-healing ⁸________ material that we call skin seamlessly covers your machinery in a ⁹_________ package.

And then there's your brain. Three pounds of the most ¹⁰________ materal we've discovered in the universe. This is the mission control center that drives the whole operation, gathering dispatches through ¹¹______ portals in the ¹²_________ bunker of the skull.

Your brain is built of cells called neurons and glia ---- hundreds of billions of them. Each one of these cells is a ¹³__________ city. And each one contains the entire human genome and traffics billions of molecules in ¹⁴_______ economies. Each cell sends ¹⁵___________ pulses to other cells, up to hundreds of times per second. If you represented each of these trillions and trillions of pulses in your brain by a single photon on light, the combined output would be ¹⁶__________.

The cells are connected to one another in a network of such ¹⁷__________ ¹⁸______________ that it bankrupts human language and necessitates ¹⁹_______ of mathematics. A ²⁰_________ neuron makes about ten thousand connections to neighboring neurons. Given the billions of neurons, this means there are many connections in a single cubic centimeter of brain tissue as there are stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.

The ²¹____________ organ in your skull ---- with its ²²consistency of Jell-o---is an alien kind of ²²____________ material. It is composed of ²³___________, ²⁴__________________ parts, and it ²⁵_________ outstrips anything we've dreamt of building. So if you ever feel lazy or dull, take heart: your the ²⁶______, ²⁷_________ thing on the planet

Ours in an ²⁸_________ story. As far as anyone can tell, we're the only system on the planet so ²⁹_______ that we've thrown ourselves headlong into the game of deciphering our own programming language. Imagine that your desktop computer began to control its own ³⁰___________ devices, removed its own cover, and pointed its webcam at its own circuitry. That's us.

And what we've discovereed by peering into the skull ranks among the most ³¹__________ ³²___________ developments of our species: the recognition that the ³³__________ facets of our behavior, thoughts, and experience are ³⁴__________ yoked to a ³⁵_____, ³⁶____, ³⁷______________ network called the nervous system. The machinery is utterly ³⁸________ to us, and yet, somehow, it is us.

the tremendous magicIn 1949, Arthur Alberts traveled from his home in Yonkers, New York, to villages between the Gold Coast and Timbuktu in West Africa. he brought his wife, a camera, a jeep, and -- because of his love of music -- a jeep-powered tape recorder. Wanting to open the ears of the western world, he recorded some of the most ³⁹__________ music ever to come out of Africa. But Alberts ran into social troubles while using the tape recorder. One West African native heard his voice played back and accused Alberts of "stealing his tongue." Alberts only ⁴⁰_______ averted being ⁴¹_________ by taking out a mirror and convincing the man that his tongue was still intact.

It's not difficult to see why the natives found the taoe recorder so ⁴²____________. A vocalization seems ⁴³__________ and ⁴⁴________; it is like opening a bag of feathers which scatter on the breeze and can never be retrieved. Voices are ⁴⁵__________ and ⁴⁶_________, something you cannot hold in your hand.

So it comes as a surprise that a voice is ⁴⁷_______. If you build a ⁴⁸______ machine ⁴⁹________ enough to detect ⁵⁰_____ ⁵¹____________ of the molecules in the air, you can capture these density changes and reproduce them later. We call these machines microphones, and every one of the ⁵²________ of radios on the planet is proudly serving up bags of feathers once thought irretrievable. When Alberts played the music back from the tape recorder, one West African tribesman depcited the feat as ⁵³"____________ magic."

And so it goes with thoughts. What exactly is a thought? It doesn't seem to weigh anything. It feels ⁵⁴_____________ and ⁵⁵_________. You wouldn't think that a thought has a ⁵⁶______ or ⁵⁷_______ or any sort of ⁵⁸______ instantation. Thoughts seem to be a kind of ⁵⁹__________ magic.

But just like voices, thoughts are ⁶⁰__________ by physical stuff. We know this because alterations to the brain chnage the kinds of thoughts we can think. In a state of ⁶¹_______ sleep, there are no thoughts. When the brain transitions into ⁶²_____ sleep, there are ⁶³_______, ⁶⁴_________ thoughts. During the day we enjoy our ⁶⁵________, ⁶⁶___________ thoughts, which people ⁶⁷____________ modulate by spiking the ⁶⁸_______ cocktails of the brain with alcohol, narcotics, cigarettes, coffeee, or physical exercise. The state of the ⁶⁹________ material determines the state of our thoughts.

Your consciousness is like a ⁷⁰_____ stowaway on a ⁷¹__________ steamship, taking credit for the journey without acknowledging the ⁷²_______ engineering underfoot. This book is about that ⁷³_________ fact: how we know it, what it means, and what it explains about people, markets, secrets, strippers, retirement accounts, criminals, artists, Ulysses, drunkards, stroke victims, gamblers, athletes, blood-hounds. racists, lovers, and every decision you've ever taken to be yours.

Brains are in the business of gathering information and steering behavior appropriately. It doesn't matter whether consciousness is involved in the decision making. And most of the time, it's not. Whether we're talking about ⁷⁴_________ eyes, ⁷⁵__________, ⁷⁶___________, the love of ⁷⁷________ foods, or the great idea you had last week, consciousness is the ⁷⁸_______ player in the operations of the brain. Our brains run mostly on autopilot, and the ⁷⁹___________ mind has little access to the ⁸⁰________ and ⁸¹_____________ factory that runs ⁸²______ it.

The brain is a ⁸³_______ system, but that doesn't mean it's ⁸⁴____________. Our neural circuits were carved by natural selection to solve problems that our ancestors faced during our species' ⁸⁵___________ history. Your brain has been ⁸⁶________ by evolutionary pressures just as your spleen and eyes have been. And so has your consciousness. Consciousness developed because it was ⁸⁷____________, but advantageous only in limited amounts.

Your consciois mind is that newspaper. Your brain buzzes with activity around the clock, and, just like the nation, almost everything transpires locally: ⁸⁸_______ groups are constantly making decisions and sending out messages to other groups. Out of these ⁸⁹________ interactions emerge ⁹⁰________ coalitions. By the time you read a ⁹¹________ headline, the important action has alrady transpired, the deals are done. You have surprisingly ⁹²________ access to what happened ⁹³_______ the scenes. Entire ⁹⁴_________ movements gain ground-up support and become ⁹⁵___________ before you ever catch wind of them as a feeling or an intuition or a thought that strikes you. You're the ⁹⁶________ one to hear the information.

However, you're an ⁹⁷_____ kind of newspaper reader, reading the headline and taking credit for the idea as though you thought of it first. You ⁹⁸_________ say, "I just thought of something!", when in fact your brain performed an ⁹⁹_________ amount of work before your moemnt of ¹⁰⁰________ struck. When an idea is served up from behind the scenes, your ¹⁰¹__________ circuitry has been working on it for hours or days or years, consolidating information and trying out new combinations. But you take credit without further wonderment at the ¹⁰²______, ¹⁰³__________ machinery behind the scenes.

As Carl Jung put it, "In each of us there is another whom we do not know." As Pink Floyd put it, "There's someone in my head, but it's not me."