A review by rpmiller
The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self by Thomas Metzinger

4.0

This is a book for the layman, although it is quite deep. The tunnel metaphor is not great, but the sense of it grows on you. A couple of new abnormal psychologies were presented to fill out the underlying evidence to support Metzinger's theorem including "alien hand syndrome" (consider the movie Dr Strangelove). He provides an excellent description of how synchronized oscillatory discharges of neurons might produce a binding of distributed brain processes. He discusses evidence that tool use is supported by integrating the tool into the self model. He mentioned that Brocca's area of the brain is not only associated with language, but also represents the hand. Plenty more along those lines. There is significant discussion of moral and ethical issues in research related to consciousness, including pharmacology, neuroscience and AI. Much of the work advances the self model theory he introduced in Being No One.