preface

Chapter 1: Seeing and Perceiving: Vision and Cognition
The moment I saw the brain
I tried coloring the nerve cells
Information coming in through the eyes
Different brain functions in different regions
Following the traces of moving things
Connected neurons
Perception, sense through interpretation
The brain that interprets information, and optical illusions

Chapter 2 Feeling and Remembering: Emotions and Memory
An Apology for Homo Economicus
Choose first, justify later
Storytelling, the driving force behind human progress
The brain where past, present, and future coexist
Traces of memory and self
Education in a Critical Period

Chapter 3: Reading the Brain and Writing to the Brain: The Future of Neuroscience
Brain Reading, Reading the Brain
Brainwriting, memory editing
thinking machine
self-learning machines
A machine that exchanges emotions
self-conscious machines
Will artificial intelligence continue to evolve?

Conclusion
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How does neuroscience view our brain?
Understanding perception, cognition, emotion, and memory in one book…

“The world has always been fearful and mysterious to humans who appeared on Earth as hairless monkeys.
And to make some sense of the world, a world of unpredictable events, humans begin to give names to mysterious things.
Thunder, rain, god, soul, death… .
The moment you give them a name, you can ask them for favors and even beg for favors.
As science and civilization advance, the extroverted beings that humans used to fear have disappeared, and perhaps the last true mystery left to humanity is the existence of the "self" that can believe in things that do not exist.
This book seeks to take a close look at that 'me'.
We will discuss how brain science explains seeing, perceiving, feeling, and remembering, and what the future holds for brain science.
“It is a story about brain science about ‘me’, including vision, cognition, emotion, and memory.” _ From the text

Remember the past,
Interpreting the present and the world,
The Secrets of Our Brains That Prepare for the Future
“Understanding the brain means understanding myself.”

The brain is trapped in a dark prison called the skull.
With such a brain, how do we perceive and understand the world? What does it mean to feel emotions? What and how do we remember? What will the future of brain science unfold? This book is a general-purpose neuroscience textbook by Professor Dae-sik Kim of KAIST, a neuroscientist who interprets the world with his own profound insights, straddling the boundaries of science and the humanities.
In this book, the author boldly explores the world of the brain to provide a three-dimensional explanation of the 'brain' and fully displays the aspect of a 'neuroscientist who thinks about thoughts'.
Its special feature is that it compresses ‘brain, me, reality, and future’ into one volume.
The main keywords are vision, cognition, emotion, and memory.

This book is a brain science book for those who want to understand their own 'brain' even a little.
There are more mysteries about the brain that are unknown than those that have been discovered, so there would be no end to talking about everything about the brain.
So in this book, the author narrows the scope to three topics: seeing and perceiving, feeling and remembering, and reading and writing with the brain, and concisely examines the important and core characteristics of the brain.

The first topic of this book is 'Vision and Cognition'.
It provides a fascinating introduction to the enigmatic nature of the brain, which interprets the world based on information received from the eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.
According to this book, we can never see the world as it is.
When an objectively existing external object enters our eyes, the brain interprets the sensation, and we can only see the result of that interpretation.

To properly understand this phenomenon, it is necessary to distinguish between sensation and perception.
According to this book, the sensations we receive through our sense organs can be objectively measured, but the perception and subjective experience (qualia) we have when looking at an object have properties that cannot be scientifically measured.

The difference between sensation and perception? Where can we easily find this? Optical illusions are a prime example of sensation transforming into perception.
For example, some pictures, although they are static, create an optical illusion that they are moving. This is because the brain interprets that 'things that look like this often move', making them appear to move.
Not only this case, but there are many cases that show optical illusions.
Even if we know that the circles are the same size, to our eyes, if the surrounding circle is large, the inner circle appears smaller, and if the surrounding circle is small, the inner circle appears smaller.
Interestingly, modern neuroscience considers not only simple visual illusions, but also most of human thoughts, memories, emotions, and perceptions to be illusions.
In other words, the brain's interpretation is included as a plus to the information conveyed by the five senses.

Next, this book deals with ‘emotions and memories.’
What exactly are the reasons and needs behind our countless emotions and memories? A closer look reveals that countless human choices and decisions are profoundly influenced by emotions and memories.
Humans believe that they make rational decisions and choices, but modern brain science suggests that most choices are made irrationally.
Additionally, it is explained that the brain creates very plausible stories to justify its choices.
We assume there is a causal relationship between our choices, but in reality, there is often no such relationship, and we often choose first and then justify later.

Why on earth is this so? We assume our brains trust our objective senses, but what they actually trust are biases we've known, experienced, and believed in from the beginning.
Because we are caught up in the prejudice that expensive things are better, we often think that even if the taste is actually the same, they are different and we prefer the more expensive thing.
The phenomenon of obsessing over the information initially encountered when making a decision (the 'anchoring effect') frequently occurs, which hinders rational judgment.

So, what does the future hold for artificial intelligence, which is pioneering new paths by mimicking and surpassing the human brain? The latter part of this book, which explores the future of brain science, delves into brain reading (reading) and brain writing (writing).
Recent remarkable advances in brain science have allowed neuroscientists to not only read brain patterns but also develop techniques to implant memories in the brain.
So, will "thinking machines" ever become a reality? The author divides artificial intelligence into "weak AI" and "strong AI." He then urges that if "strong AI"—a being possessing independence, mind, and free will—becomes a reality, we must ask ourselves how we should behave so that it becomes a being worthy of coexistence with humans.
Coexistence between "strong artificial intelligence" and humanity is only possible if we can provide a convincing answer to the question, "Why are humans needed on Earth?"
What if "strong AI" couldn't find a reason not to choose a "world without humans"? The irony of human-created AI forcing humans to find their own reason for existence is both ironic and worth pondering, as it serves as a reminder of the harm humanity has done.

In this way, this book can be said to be a general neuroscience textbook that clearly and concisely explains the characteristics of 'our brain', which are different from what we think, in an easy and interesting way.
Through this book, readers will be able to gain great help in understanding our 'brain', which we use without an instruction manual.