A leading neuroscientist offers the latest research and many new ideas on the connections between brain circuitry and conscious experience. "Discovering how the mysterious three-pound organ in our heads creates the rich array of human mental experience, including the sense of self and consciousness, is one of the great challenges of twenty-first-century science. In Mental Biology, veteran neuroscientist W.R. Klemm presents the latest research findings on this elusive brain-mind connection in an accessible and engaging narrative. The author focuses on how mind emerges from nerve-impulse patterns in the densely packed neural circuits that make up most of the brain, suggesting that the conscious mind can be viewed as a sort of neural-activity-based avatar. As an entity in its own right, mind on the conscious level can act autonomously, shaping the brain that sustains it through its values, interests, goals, plans, and interactions with the world. Thus, in a very literal sense, we become what we think. Against researchers who argue that the conscious mind is merely a passive observer and that free will is an illusion, the author presents evidence showing that mental creativity, freedom to act, and personal responsibility are very real. He also delves into the role of dream sleep in both animals and humans, and explains the brain-based differences between the nonconscious, unconscious, and conscious minds."--Publisher's description.

1. In the beginning -- From "big bang" to big ideas -- Victim of biology and circumstance? -- 2. How brains work -- Neural networks : the architecture of complex systems -- Topographical mapping -- The brain's currency -- The nature of thought -- The binding problem -- Oscillation -- The brain's three minds -- On being awake -- Consciousness is in the brain -- The context of self -- Origin of the sense of self -- Who and what am I? -- Neuroplasticity : changing mind by changing brain -- 3. The nature of consciousness -- Conscious sense of self -- Mass action, brain size, and consciousness -- Causes of consciousness -- Brainstem trigger of wakefulness -- Learning how to be conscious -- CIP basis of consciousness -- Synchronization -- The "hard problem" -- Conscious thought -- How we think when conscious -- Working memory biology -- Consolidation of working memory -- "Thoughtless" habits and compulsions -- Different states of consciousness -- Distorted conscious states -- Where mind goes when we sleep -- Memorizing in our sleep -- Activated sleep -- 4. Does consciousness do anything? -- Why are we conscious? -- The value of consciousness -- Agency -- The brain's avatar -- Avatar supporting evidence -- Why have avatars? -- Unleashing the avatar -- How the avatar knows it knows -- The avatar's artifacts -- Avatars learn and teach -- Are we free or are we robots? -- How choices/decisions are made -- The biological robot argument -- Roboticist research and its critique -- Examples of apparently conscious-driven action -- The purpose-filled life of consciously driven action -- The role of learning and memory in conscious choice -- Robotocism in religion and politics -- What consciousness does -- Directing attention -- Learning -- Explicitness promotes memory -- Introspection -- Language -- Reasoning -- Consciousness promotes better decisions -- Creativity -- Reprogramming conscious-self dysfunction -- Personal growth -- Personal responsibility -- Belief -- The avatar's "new" genetics -- 5. To beyond? -- "Spooky" science : hidden realities -- Near-death experiences -- Living the life we were meant to live -- Perspectives on science and the mind's odyssey.