These imaginative thought experiments are the inventions of one of the world's eminent brain researchers. These imaginative thought experiments are the inventions of one of the world's eminent brain researchers. They are "vehicles," a series of hypothetical, self-operating machines that exhibit increasingly intricate if not always successful or civilized "behavior." Each of the vehicles in the series incorporates the essential features of all the earlier models and along the way they come to embody aggression, love, logic, manifestations of foresight, concept formation, creative thinking, personality, and free will. In a section of extensive biological notes, Braitenberg locates many elements of his fantasy in current brain research.

... Beginning with the sixth edition a number of diagrams have been included. These are intended to render the discussions to which the figures relate more intelligible to the reader who is not acquainted with the natural sciences which contribute to psychology"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).