The text explores the mind’s basic architecture examining how its family of eleven systems interact flexibly and collaboratively to process information, mostly subconsciously. Key topics include the five systems that build specialized representations from sensory input, consciousness, memory, emotions, comparisons between human and animal cognition, language processing, and concepts of Self, Free Will, and spirituality. The book illuminates how general principles of activation, association, and competition act in combination with the unique principles that govern each of the mind’s specialized systems. One chapter explains two of these systems in more detail to illustrate how expertise from any relevant area of research can be used elaborate the basic model.