"The Tell-Tale Brain" by V. S. Ramachandran (2011)

Evolution has favoured the skills that transcend simple reflexes. These skills (or culture) are acquired through imitation. Thus enter the social, neotenous human, with the gift for empathy for the like. (Upstage right, fish eat fish. Upstage left, civilization flourishes through calculated empathy.)

Knowledge is created by imagining alternative narratives. The innate taste for narratives and puzzles urges an artist to discover his own narrative, and draws audiences to consume his discoveries. Both art and science prize the economy of expression. Art bypasses consciousness, or at least approaches it through the backdoor. Science is concerned exclusively with consciousness.

Ramachandran's detective work, based on case studies and experiments, uncovers how one's emotional responses change with age or injury, how they can be rewired by persistent thought patterns, and how they constitute a compromise among multiple selves and senses, which present themselves (alone or in company, with or without introduction) to vote (in a secret ballot) on a dominant hallucination, which is then hastily stitched into a narrative. The self is the narrative.