When a potentially relevant pattern is detected, it’s our interoceptive faculty that tips us off: with a shiver or a sigh, a quickening of the breath or a tensing of the muscles. The body is rung like a bell to alert us to this useful and otherwise inaccessible information. Though we typically think of the brain as telling the body what to do, just as much does the body guide the brain with an array of subtle nudges and prods.

Researchers have even captured the body in mid-nudge, as it alerts its inhabitant to the appearance of a pattern that she may not have known she was looking for.

Thinking outside the brain means skillfully engaging entities external to our heads - the feelings and movements of our bodies, the physical spaces in which we learn and work, and the minds of the other people around us - drawing them into our own mental processes

By reaching beyond the bra...