Secrets Of The Mind

Unlike the challenging subject matter, the format is simple and neat. Click on any of umpteen pictures on the central "mind map," with such titles as "Emotional Intelligence," "Consciousness & Perception," or "The Learning Brain," and one of those 11 experts will then appear midscreen to give an illuminating lecture on his favored field of neuroscience. And when the talking gets a bit wearisome, as it sometimes does, you can then shut the teacher up with pleasing ease and access one of the funky interactive psychiatric games, check out one of the diverting audio-visual displays on particular cerebral functions, or even listen in as other boffins (or scientists) have a heated on-disk debate on, say, dreaming or memory.

If there is a fault with this setup, it's that the teaching can be a little dry, even overearnest. But given that most of the educational CD-ROMs out there err on the side of childishness and garishness, that's almost a welcome flaw. A good buy for serious students. --Sean Thomas

Amazon.com Product Description
Eleven psychologists and neuroscientists, including Nobel Prize winners Herbert Simon and Eric Kandel, explain the secrets of the mind and brain. Topics covered include consciousness, memory, learning, the mind's eye, vision, brain evolution, attention, intelligence, the unconscious, problem-solving, emotional intelligence, neural networks, and free will. Their multimedia talks are illustrated by interactive first-person psychological experiments, virtual round-table discussions, and original artwork.

My name is Bruno Levy and I co-authored this cd-rom with life long friend Emile Servan-Schreiber.(I apologize for self rating this cd with 5 stars but it looks like the amazon software force me to give a rating.)

Our idea in designing and producing this cd-rom was to give an introductory (and interactive) overview about what is currently known on the brain and the mind. One of the big revolution of the 90s is that the knowledge of how the mind works(the goal of cognitive psychology) starts to be in close correspondance with the knowledge of how the brain work s(the goal of neuroscience).

That's why we interviewed some of the best specialists in both domain and asked them to explain in the simplest language what they have discovered and understood about the brain and the mind in their research.

In addition, we have included a serie of first person interactive experiments. All these experiments have been designed and discovered by cognitive psychologists in the last 25 years. A lot of them are extremely entertaining but not very well known by the general public. When we designed our cd-rom, we thought it would be interesting to have people discover **on themselves** the mechanism of their own mind at work. Its a great way to understand that cognitive psychology is really a science able to made predictions (A word of caution: these experiments are NOT IQ test.)

Our cd-rom was published two years ago in France and Italy and has been a great success: we sold 25000 units in France and 25000 more in Italy. We received several prestigious award in France for both its content and interactivity.

I honestly believe that the cd-rom is still actual in terms of content. I also want to say that all the cd is illustrated by French Artist Philippe Andrieu who has really provided a welcomed and appropriate poetic touch to this whole subject.

Here is a list of the people whose interviews are reproduced in the cd-rom:

- Herbert Simon (Nobel prize of economics and one of the founder of AI & cognitive psychology). - Eric Kandel (He just received the Nobel Prize in medecine this year).In the cd he explained a part of the work he has received his Nobel for. - Daniel Schacter from Harvard. He will speak about how memory are formed. - Stephen Kosslyn from Harvard, he will speak about vision and imagination. - John Anderson from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), he will speak about the rule of thoughts. - Rodney Brooks from MIT, he will describe his attenpt to build a humanoid robot (COG). - James McClelland from CMU, he will explain how neurones work and communicate together to produce mental thoughts (neural nets). _ Michale Posner form Oregon U, he will describe the mechanisms of attention. - Jean Pierre Changeux from Pasteur Institut, he will describe how the brain grows. - David Servan Schreiber from U of Pittsburgh, he will speak about the emotional brain - Rodolfo Llinas from NYU who will introduce us to some of the brain mechanisms underlying consciousness.

I hope this description helps.

Bruno Levy


A Breakthrough   June 25, 2000
mahesh kanniah (India)
2 out of 9 found this review helpful

Very informative and Educational and a nice way of presentation. The navigation could have been improved a bit.