Read Mind Hacks™: Tips & Tools for Using Your Brain Online
Authors: Tom Stafford,Matt Webb
Tags: #COMPUTERS / Social Aspects / Human-Computer Interaction
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.
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.
You can read this book from cover to cover if you like, but each hack stands on its own,
so feel free to browse and jump to the different sections that interest you most. If there’s
a prerequisite you need to know, a cross-reference will guide you to the right hack.
We’ve tried out all the demonstrations in this book, so we know that for most
people they work just as we say they do; these are real phenomena. Indeed, some are
surprising, and we didn’t believe they’d work until we tried them ourselves. The
explanations are summaries of the current state of knowledge — often snapshots of debates in
progress. Keep an open mind about these. There’s always the chance future research will
cause us to revise our understanding.
Often, because there is so much research on each topic, we have linked to web sites,
books, and academic papers to find out more. Follow these up. They’re fantastic places to
explore the wider story behind each hack, and will take you to interesting places and appear
interesting connections.
With regard to academic papers, these are bedrock of scientific knowledge. They can be
hard to get and hard to understand, but we included references to them because they are the
place to go if you really need to get to the bottom of a story (and to find the cutting
edge). What’s more, for many scientists, evidence doesn’t really exist until it has been
published in a scientific journal. For this to happen, the study has to be reviewed by other
scientists working in the field, in a system called peer review. Although this system has
biases, and mistakes are made, it is this that makes science a collective endeavor and
provides a certain guarantee of quality.
The way journal articles are cited is quite precise, and in this book we’ve followed the
American Psychological Association reference style (
http://www.apastyle.org
). Each looks something like this:
Before the year of publication (which is in parentheses), the authors are listed. After
the year is the title of the paper, followed by the journal in which you’ll find it, in
italics. The volume (in italics) and then the issue number (in parentheses) follow. Page
numbers come last. One convention you’ll often see in the text is “et al.” after the main
author of a paper. This is shorthand for “and others.”
Many, but not all, journals have an electronic edition, and some you can access for
free. Most are subscription-based, although some publishers will let you pay per paper. If
you go to a library, generally a university library, make sure it not only subscribes to the
journal you want, but also has the year in which the paper you’re after was
published.
If you’re lucky, the paper will also be reprinted online. This is often the case with
classic papers and with recent papers, which the authors may have put on their publications
page. A good query to use at Google (
http://www.google.com
) for papers online in PDF format using a query like:
"What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain" filetype:pdf
Alternately, search for a researcher’s name followed by the word “publications” for
papers, demonstrations, and as-yet-unpublished research, a gold mine if you’re learning more
about a particular topic.
If you’re interested in getting a general overview, rather than chasing the details of
a particular story, you might like to start by reading a book on the subject. Here are
some of our favorite books on our own pet topics, all of which make specialist material
accessible for the rest of us:
If you’re looking for something a little deeper, we recommend you try: