Description:
Combining the talents of 11 of the world's top psychologists and neurobiologists, Secrets of the Mind is an authoritative and subtly interactive CD-ROM that aims to give the lowdown on perhaps the greatest of scientific mysteries: our very own brains. 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
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