Books to get inside your head: Tim Parks picks the smartest books about the brain

Is consciousness internal, readable, even uploadable? Does it exist in the external world? Here are some mind-bending reads that have the answers

Humankind has been reflecting on consciousness from the moment thought became possible. What is this business of experiencing colour, touch, taste, sound, smell? How does it happen, and where? Is the world as we experience it? There's hardly a philosopher hasn't made a contribution, or, more recently, a neuroscientist.

To get your bearings in the literature, then, it's not a bad idea to divide the field into those who think consciousness is all internal to the body, those who claim it involves our bodies and objects we engage with, and those who say our experience is external - one with the things experienced.