The Wandering Mind: What the Brain Does When You're Not Looking

The Wandering Mind: What the Brain Does When You're Not Looking

by Michael C. Corballis
The Wandering Mind: What the Brain Does When You're Not Looking

The Wandering Mind: What the Brain Does When You're Not Looking

by Michael C. Corballis

Paperback(Reprint)

$16.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
    Choose Expedited Shipping at checkout for delivery by Thursday, April 4
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

If we’ve done our job well—and, let’s be honest, if we're lucky—you’ll read to the end of this description. Most likely, however, you won’t. Somewhere in the middle of the next paragraph, your mind will wander off. Minds wander. That’s just how it is.
 
That may be bad news for me, but is it bad news for people in general? Does the fact that as much as fifty percent of our waking hours find us failing to focus on the task at hand represent a problem? Michael Corballis doesn’t think so, and with The Wandering Mind, he shows us why, rehabilitating woolgathering and revealing its incredibly useful effects. Drawing on the latest research from cognitive science and evolutionary biology, Corballis shows us how mind-wandering not only frees us from moment-to-moment drudgery, but also from the limitations of our immediate selves. Mind-wandering strengthens our imagination, fueling the flights of invention, storytelling, and empathy that underlie our shared humanity; furthermore, he explains, our tendency to wander back and forth through the timeline of our lives is fundamental to our very sense of ourselves as coherent, continuing personalities.
 
Full of unusual examples and surprising discoveries, The Wandering Mind mounts a vigorous defense of inattention­—even as it never fails to hold the reader’s.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780226418919
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publication date: 10/28/2016
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 184
Product dimensions: 8.90(w) x 5.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Michael Corballis is professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and the author of many books, including A Very Short Tour of the Mind: 21 Short Walks around the Human Brain.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

1 Meandering Brain, Wandering Mind 1

2 Memory 13

3 On Time 35

4 The Hippo in the Brain 51

5 Wandering into other Minds 65

6 Stories 85

7 Tigers in the Night 109

8 Hallucinations 127

9 The Creativity of the Wandering Mind 145

References 163

Index 171

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews