Recently, the NY Times reviewed Steven Johnson's Mind Wide Open, which sounds like it has the potential to be a fascinating book.
Until recently, introspective people could lie on a couch and free-associate, or sit at a desk and write ''The Metamorphosis.'' People couldn't look into themselves directly to explore what Gerard Manley Hopkins called, wistfully, our ''inscapes.'' But now we can. With M.R.I.'s, PET scans and many other high-tech mirrors that neuroscientists are holding up in front of us, we can see right through our own foreheads and begin to watch our mental apparatus in action.RelatedIn ''Mind Wide Open,'' Johnson makes himself his own test subject to see what the neuroscientists can show us about our attention spans, talents, moods, thoughts and drives -- our selves. He got the idea for this voyage of self-discovery a few years ago while he was hooked up to a biofeedback machine. Lying on a couch with sensors attached to his palms, fingertips and forehead made him feel nervous, and he started cracking jokes with the biofeedback guy. The machine was designed to monitor adrenaline levels, like a lie detector. With each joke he made, the monitor displayed a huge spike of adrenaline: ''I found myself wondering how many of these little chemical subroutines are running in my brain on any given day? At any given moment? And what would it tell me about myself if I could see them, the way I could see those adrenaline spikes on the printout?'