New Books in Neuroscience · New Books Network

Alan J. McComas, "Consciousness: The Road to Reductionism" (American Scientist, 2025)

February 27, 2026·1 hr 3 min·3 clips
Your brain fired before you felt like moving—that experiment shattered free will.

As heard by us

A measured conversation about what neural recordings can, and cannot, reveal about consciousness.

Consciousness turns into a question of method here, as Alan McComas moves from a patient's hand, where nerve impulses were recorded during reading and simple arithmetic, to the larger problem of what brain measurements can really show.

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Why you'd press play

Press play when a piano's mechanics and its beauty become a serious clue about how to live with consciousness.

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