The Internal Duet

"This silent conversation--a passing grin, a sudden look of recognition, a lurking question about another's motivation--comes so naturally to us that most of the time we're not even aware that we are locked into such a complex exchange. The internal duet comes naturally because it relies on parts of the brain that specialize in precisely this kind of social interaction. Neuroscientists refer to this phenomenon as 'mindreading'--not in the ESP sense, but rather in the more prosaic, but no less impressive, sense of building an educated guess about what someone else is thinking. Mindreading is literally part of our nature. We do it more effortlessly, and with more nuance, than any other species on the planet. We construct working hypotheses about what's going on in other people's heads almost as readily as we convert oxygen into carbon dioxide."

-- Steven Johnson, Mind Wide Open