New Books in Neuroscience: Anil Seth, "Being You: A New Science of Consciousness" (Dutton, 2020)

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Listen here to New Books in Neuroscience, a podcast from New Books Network featuring interviews with neuroscientists about their new books. For more information, visit New Books in Neuroscience.

Originally released: September 2, 2021

Anil Seth's quest to understand the biological basis of conscious experience is one of the most exciting contributions to twenty-first-century science.

An unprecedented tour of consciousness thanks to new experimental evidence, much of which comes from Anil Seth's own lab. His radical argument is that we do not perceive the world as it objectively is, but rather that we are prediction machines, constantly inventing our world and correcting our mistakes by the microsecond, and that we can now observe the biological mechanisms in the brain that accomplish this process of consciousness.

Seth's work has yielded new ways to communicate with patients previously deemed unconscious, as well as promising methods of coping with brain damage and disease. Being You: A New Science of Consciousness (Dutton, 2020) sheds light on the future of AI and virtual/augmented reality, adds empirical evidence to cutting-edge ideas of how the brain works, and ushers in a new age in the study of the mystery of human consciousness. Being You is a life-changing existential insight into being you.

Host Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch.

We believe that the principles expressed or implied in the podcast remain valid, but certain details may be superseded by evolving knowledge since the episode’s original release date.