This is a popular version of Graziano's decades of work on peripersonal space--first researched with macaques, later with humans. This complex activity of the motor cortex allows us to maintain a complicated (by status, danger, desirability of object) constantly mentally calculated distance from other people and things, a feature we take for granted until, as Graziano discovered in his autistic child, it isn't there and has to be taught. Interestingly, Graziano has a sideline in ventriloquism, magic and music composition, all of which take advantage of a keen understanding of the mind's subtleties.