The Brain: The Story of You

by David Eagleman

compulsive

menacingly.

Here’s the surprising part: the pain matrix is crucial to how we connect with others. If you watch somebody else get stabbed, most of your pain matrix becomes activated. Not those areas that tell you you’ve actually been touched, but instead those parts involved in the emotional experience of pain. In other words, watching someone else in pain and being in pain use the same neural machinery.

You run a compelling simulation of what it would be like if you were in that situation. Our capacity for this is why stories – like movies and novels – are so absorbing and so pervasive across human culture. Whether it’s about total strangers or made-up characters, you experience their agony and their ecstasy. You fluidly become them, live their lives, and stand in their vantage points. When you see another person suffer, you can try to tell yourself that it’s their issue, not yours – but neurons deep in your brain can’t tell the difference.

altruism:

Genocide

propaganda:

prejudice

arbitrary.

Education plays a key role in preventing genocide.

atrocity.

inconspicuously

circumventing

repertoire

Braille.

cochlear

How we sense the world is only half the story. The other half is how we interact with it.

trowel

sentient.

trains of thought.

unprecedented