ABSTRACT

For the next minute or so, close your eyes and think about something else, anything you’d like. You may have been thinking about lying on a beach with a light breeze passing over you. You may have been thinking about someone you love. You might have felt apprehension about something yet to come. Perhaps you have the responsibility to break diffi cult news to someone and you are thinking about how to put it, or picturing that person’s reaction. You might have been thinking about something more philosophical, for example, about the fact that there is a three-pound, densely folded mass of tissue in your skull that thinks and feels. You may have thought about something that doesn’t exist, like a fantasy about space travel or the fountain of youth.