What is consciousness? What are its preconditions, and its consequences? What is the relationship between information and consciousness? How many of our decisions do we really consciously make? Are our thoughts free? How easily can we be manipulated? Do our genes influence our unconscious? Is there an anatomy of consciousness? Where are our memories stored? And what is the role of sea snails in all of this? How do mind and brain interact? And what does quantum physics have to do with it all? What does hyperventilation have to do with Hollywood? Or Bicycle Day with depression? Ecstasy with burnout?
  What We Should Know About Consciousness provides a concise but comprehensive look at the current state of knowledge on the subject, while highlighting its complexity. Science has no clear definition of consciousness to offer. There is no single discipline that can account for the intricacies of the phenomenon, and yet the consensus is that consciousness is one of the most important tools of evolution.
  This book addresses fundamental issues like the mind-body problem, elucidates the connections between consciousness and neurological activity, delves into mental processes, discusses a variety of altered states of consciousness and the methods for attaining them, and addresses the role of information in consciousness.
  It pursues the development of ego-consciousness and discusses questions of creativity, intelligence and psychic fragility, collective consciousness and the subconscious. The influence of emotions, memories and intuition is illuminated, as is research about brain-machine interfaces, cellular memory and cultural remembrance. For it is only when these many aspects of the subject are brought together that even a vague picture of the whole can begin to form.