It's all in the mind

How the mind works by Stephen Pinker

I started this book in December 2004 but did not really get into the meat of it. Based on my initial perusal, it should make for some interesting reading...

Pinker, one of the world's leading cognitive scientists, does for the rest of the mind what he did for language in his 1994 book, The Language Instinct. He explains what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and ponder the mysteries of life.

Also check out the neuroscientist, VS Ramachandran's outstanding series of lectures on neuroscience, delivered as the Reith Lectures of 2003, and collected as The Emerging Mind , 2003. (I found these links via Amit Varma's blog.)

V.S. Ramachandran is Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and professor with the Psychology Department and the Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego, and Adjunct Professor of Biology at the Salk Institute. I first came to know about Ramachandran while watching Secrets of the Mind an episode of PBS's great science program Nova.

Other books by him include A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness, 2005; Phantoms in the Brain, 1998 and Encyclopedia of Human Behaviour (editor-in-chief).