The Brain: The Story of You

We’re used to thinking that the world at large is organized rationally and can be calculated, so we make predictions, assess the risk of earthquakes, epidemics, and financial shocks, and try to compute the outcomes of stock-market trades and sporting events. In this endless stream of information, it is especially important to learn how to distinguish true signal from empty information noise.

David Eagleman—an acclaimed American neuroscientist, author of international bestsellers, creator and host of the TV series “Brain”—invites the reader on an exciting journey to the origins of their own identity, into the depths of a mysterious organ that science has only recently begun to approach in understanding. Who are we? How does motion work? How do we select and decide? Why do we so vitally need other people? And most importantly—what lies ahead for us? What discoveries and new horizons does the incredibly powerful brain, gifted to us by evolution, open up for humankind? Perhaps, within the next few decades, its plasticity—millions of years of help in adapting us to a changing world—will allow us to step beyond biology and make the largest leap in history: a move into the era of transhumanism.