Tracing evolution over millions of years, Michael Graziano shows how neurons first allowed animals to develop simple forms of attention: taking in messages from the environment, prioritising them and responding as necessary. Then covert attention evolved-a roving, mental focus separate from where the senses are pointed. To monitor and control covert attention, Graziano posits in his attention schema theory, the brain evolved a simplified model of it-a cartoonish self-description depicting an internal essence with a capacity for knowledge and experience. In other words, consciousness. That self model gives us our intuitions about consciousness and makes us empathetic social beings as we attribute it to others. The theory implies that uploading the data structure of consciousness into machines will be possible and he discusses what artificial consciousness will mean for our evolutionary future.

Tracing evolution over millions of years, Michael Graziano shows how neurons first allowed animals to develop simple forms of attention: taking in messages from the environment, prioritising them and responding as necessary. Then covert attention evolved-a roving, mental focus separate from where the senses are pointed. To monitor and control covert attention, Graziano posits in his attention schema theory, the brain evolved a simplified model of it-a cartoonish self-description depicting an internal essence with a capacity for knowledge and experience. In other words, consciousness. That self model gives us our intuitions about consciousness and makes us empathetic social beings as we attribute it to others. The theory implies that uploading the data structure of consciousness into machines will be possible and he discusses what artificial consciousness will mean for our evolutionary future.

"A Dante/Beckett reduction of human struggle to its lowest common denominator."--Michael Mirolla, author of "The Formal Logic of Emotion" and "Berlin"

"One of the most original and thought-provoking stories I have ever read...true literary art...Not a word is wasted in this masterpiece. Yes, I call it that. I have read many classics, and I can tell you that The Divine Farce should be counted among them; the finest in American literature."--"Geekscribe"

Three strangers are condemned to live together in darkness, crushed together in a concrete stall so small that they can never sit down. Liquid food drips down from above. Waste drains through a grid on the floor. So begins one of the strangest, most surreal comments on the human experience, on love and hatred and the human ability to find good in any situation, no matter how difficult. Michael S. A. Graziano delights in the macabre and surreal, yet it is his optimism that lifts this little novel. Like "The Love Song of Monkey," this book is deeply thought provoking, horrifying, and funny.

Praise for "The Love Song of Monkey"

"Imaginative, intelligent narrative. Twin ideas of forgiveness and mercy twist through this strange, moving, patiently wrought novel."--"Publishers Weekly"

"Fabulously imagined, seriously considered, and very funny. A kind of fairytale antithesis on the meaning of existence. . . . Fantastic."--"Spirituality and Health Books"

"Strange but wonderful . . . like nothing I've read before. A very short book, but the scope is epic in detail. . . . I enjoyed the heck out of this book."--Geekscribe

"Should be required reading in the writing grad schools. . . . There's nary a word wasted. What's left is comedy, retrospection, betrayal, tenderness, meditations on loneliness, a love story that survives all attempts to suppress it . . . not bad within 149 pages."--"Barnstable Patriot"

Michael S. A. Graziano, Princeton University neuroscientist, is the author of the novella "Hiding Places" (New England Review, 1997), the novel "The Love Song of Monkey" (Leapfrog Press, 2008), and "The Intelligent Movement Machine" (Oxford University Press, 2008).

..".An adventure-filled journey... In spite of its references to hard academic science, Cretaceous Dawn is a first-class adventure story, an effortless read as engaging as vintage Jules Verne. The descriptive prose is both evocative and illuminating, and the plot has enough twists and cliffhangers to keep readers traveling on to the inevitable conclusion."--Natural History "The Grazianos, sibling scientists, combine speculation and science in a compulsively page-turning time-travel adventure. A physics experiment gone awry sends four people and a dog 65 million years into the past. Day-to-day survival among creatures like giant croc Deinosuchus and T. rex becomes a priority, even as the group of stranded scientists realizes that getting home involves a 1,000 mile trek across the amazing landscape of Hell Creek. Details about plants, animals and insects in the distant past set the stage for a tight, scientifically plausible plot with a wholly unexpected twist that will keep readers guessing."--Publishers Weekly A long-extinct beetle appears in a physics lab. Four-and-a-half people and a dog are hurled 65 million years through time, to the Age of the Dinosaurs, and paleontologist Julian Whitney and his companions have only one chance for rescue. Meanwhile in the lab, police chief Sharon Earles must solve the mystery of why half a body remains where five people had just been. Physicists try to determine what went wrong but can they fix the vault in time to retrieve the missing people--and do they want to? "A rip-snorting good yarn. . . . Cretaceous Dawn's strength is its ability to transport the reader back in time to truly experience the Cretaceous."--Dinosaur News "Rendered with a clarity and vividness that gives the novel its richness, Cretaceous Dawn is plain fun, and educational at that. Short of time travel, this is as close as you'll ever get to the grim, predatory world of the Cretaceous."--Falmouth Enterprise "From the Inland Sea to the infant Rocky Mountains, we see the entirety of a long-gone ecosystem. The authors' scientific knowledge gives the story, and the giant creatures it is centered around, a realism that is immensely entertaining."--Prehistoric Times "[The era is] described so vividly the reader forgets that no human overlapped with a dinosaur in the sands of time."--The Cape Cod Chronicle Lisa M. Graziano, PhD, is a freelance editor and writer living on Cape Cod, Mass. She spent ten years as a professor of oceanography in Woods Hole, Mass. before turning to a full-time writing career. Michael S. A. Graziano, PhD, is a neuroscientist at Princeton University. He is the author of both fiction and nonfiction.