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I'm Rufus Friskimo, and this is the next big idea.

Today, number 12 in our countdown of last year's most popular bookbites, the most important,

potentially life-changing books of the year. Number 12 is The Hidden Spring by Mark Psalms.

I'm fascinated by consciousness. What is it? Where does it come from? Can we locate it in the

brain? I love getting to talk about some of those questions with the brilliance Antonio DiMazio,

on this podcast a few months ago, one of my favorites. A couple days from now, I'll be sitting

down with philosopher David Chalmers, who famously dubbed our quest to understand consciousness,

the quote, hard problem. What a treat I can't wait. And my thinking about consciousness has also

been shaped by this wonderful book The Hidden Spring, a journey to the source of consciousness.

Mark, who's the director of neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town, draws on both cutting

edge neuroscience and his interactions with hundreds of neurological patients to present a new

theory of consciousness that might just help you better understand the inner workings of your own mind.

Hi, I'm Professor Mark Psalms. I'm the director of neuropsychology at the Neuroscience

Institute of the University of Cape Town. My book's entitled The Hidden Spring, and it contains

these five big ideas. First, I argue that the cerebral cortex is not the seat of consciousness.

Evidence for this idea involves both clinical and normal phenomena. Let's start with the

clinical ones. The most dramatic example is the observation that children who suffer from

high-dran encephaly, that kids born without a cerebral cortex, are conscious. By this, I mean

...