Summary Of Mind: The Gap Of Incognito By David Eagleman

The brain has the ability to complete skills and actions effortlessly without conscious thought. In the chapter named “Mind: The Gap” of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, author and neuroscientist David Eagleman explores the concept of how the human brain is capable of producing thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, attractions that we all have when there is no awareness or access to any of the activity that makes those brain mechanisms possible. While there is no awareness of unconscious thought, humans may be developing certain biases that can influence their daily lives. Being able to perform motor acts without paying attention roots from memory, specifically procedural memory, which is a part of implicit memory. Even though I was already
An example of this is the illusion-of-truth effect, meaning that humans “are more likely to believe that a statement is true if you have heard it before” (Eagleman 65). Exploring more into the concept of priming and unconscious thought, I learned that priming is experienced as a part of perception instead of memory. A study in the article “Conscious and Unconscious Memory Systems” performed priming experiments on memory-impaired subjects, where it was found that priming effects remained functional. Additionally, I learned that priming does not provide any advantages to conscious memory choices, as it “provides only a weak and unreliable cue for conscious judgments of familiarity” (Squire, 2015). Even though it is clear that priming and implicit bias occurs from unconscious perception and not memory, I was left questioning if it is possible to completely prevent implicit bias from occurring. I realize that before implicit bias can be prevented, it has to be unlearned. While it may be difficult, unlearning unconscious bias should be possible within an