Book excerpt: Have you ever wondered why are you doing what you are doing? What makes you think the way you think? Can you think differently? Can you do better? This book explores those issues from a unique point of view. It treats the brain as a biological information-handling system. By combining biological facts, psychological observations, and principles of information sciences, the book builds a coherent picture of the relationships between the brain and the mind. In a lively, down-to-earth, yet scientifically sound presentation, the book introduces a few elementary information-handling mechanisms, and shows how the brain builds with them a variety of mental activities including learning, thinking, understanding, perceiving, sexual-drives, and more. Knowing the brain’s basic mechanisms could help us improve ourselves by better understanding our own mind; how it does what it does, what we should accept, and how to change what could be changed.