English Summary/英文概要： Using a mix of experiential reportage, personal storytelling, and fresh scientific discovery, Steven Johnson describes how the brain works—its chemicals, structures, and subroutines—and how these systems connect to the day-to-day realities of individual lives. For a hundred years, he says, many of us have assumed that the most powerful route to self-knowledge took the form of lying on a couch, talking about our child-hoods. The possibility entertained in this book is that you can follow another path, in which learning about the brain’s mechanics can widen one’s self-awareness as powerfully as any therapy or meditation or drug.
In Mind Wide Open, Johnson embarks on this path as his own test subject, participating in a battery of attention tests, learning to control video games by altering his brain waves, scanning his own brain with a $2 million fMRI machine, all in search of a modern answer to the oldest of questions: who am I?
Along the way, Johnson explores how we “read” other people, how the brain processes frightening events (and how we might rid ourselves of the scars those memories leave), what the neurochemistry is behind love and sex, what it means that our brains are teeming with powerful chemicals closely related to recreational drugs, why music moves us to tears, and where our breakthrough ideas come from.
Johnson’s clear, engaging explanation of the physical functions of the brain reveals not only the broad strokes of our aptitudes and fears, our skills and weak-nesses and desires, but also the momentary brain phenomena that a whole human life comprises. Why, when hearing a tale of woe, do we sometimes smile inappropriately, even if we don’t want to? Why does depression make us feel stupid?
To read Mid Wide Open is to rethink family histories, individual fates, and the very nature of the self, and to see that brain science is now personally transformative—a valuable tool for better relation-ships and better living.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 作者根据经验性的报告，个人陈述和最新的科学发现，从大脑的化学物质，它的结构，它的子程序，以及各个系统之间的互相联系等方面给我们讲述了人类的大脑是如何工作的。100年来，许多人都认为，人们自我认知的最好方法就是躺在长沙发上，讲述自己的童年时代。本书提供了另一种方法，它能像心理治疗，沉思和药物一样增加人们的自我认知。作者参与了一系列注意力测试，学习用改变脑电波的方法来控制电子游戏，同时用一架机器来扫描自己的大脑。通过这种方法，作者探索了：我们如何“读懂”他人，大脑如何处理惊恐事件，爱和性背后的神经化学过程是什么，为什么音乐会使人感动得掉泪，突破性的思想从何而来，等等。