DALE PURVES is Professor in the Departments of Neurobiology, Psychology, and Brain Sciences, and Philosophy at Duke University, USA. After earning a B.A. from Yale, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and completing an assistant residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Purves was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School and subsequently in the Department of Biophysics at University College London.

With much new evidence, this book advances on the provocative first edition, concluding that visual perceptions are reflexive manifestations of past behavioral success rather than the result of a logical processing of present stimuli. Individuals with no background in neuroscience can follow the arguments in this clearly written and presented text.