意識とは何か。これは現代科学における最大の謎とされており、脳科学における発見に加え、哲学、心理学、神経科学、生物学などにも広げられて研究が進められています。脳は私たちが経験することとどう係わっているのか。自由意思は本当にあるのか。意識自体が錯覚ということはないのか。変性意識状態の生理や、脳内における自我の創出といった重要な領域に関する成果も踏まえ解説します。
   

• A lively and authoritative introduction to the hot topic of consciousness
• A much-needed launch pad for the further exploration of this complicated, controversial, and unresolved issue
• Challenges readers to reconsider key concepts such as personality, free will, and the soul
• Combines the perspectives of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience on the subject of consciousness
• Considers new research in key areas such as the physiology of altered states of consciousness, and the construction of self in the brain

    
Consciousness, 'the last great mystery for science', remains a hot topic. How can a physical brain create our experience of the world? What creates our identity? Do we really have free will? Could consciousness itself be an illusion? 
  
Exciting new developments in brain science are continuing the debates on these issues, and the field has now expanded to include biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers. This controversial book clarifies the potentially confusing arguments, and the major theories, whilst also outlining the amazing pace of discoveries in neuroscience. Covering areas such as the construction of self in the brain, mechanisms of attention, the neural correlates of consciousness, and the physiology of altered states of consciousness, Susan Blackmore highlights our latest findings.