The Polymaths Guide to Neuroscience

THE POLYMATHS GUIDE TO NEUROSCIENCE Everything you need to talk to an expert about the most complex object in the known universe. Inside your skull is a three-pound organ of some eighty-six billion neurons. It runs on about as much power as a dim light bulb, and it is the only thing in existence that has ever tried to understand itself. This book shows you how it works. The Polymaths Guide to Neuroscience takes you from the cell to consciousness in eighteen chapters. You will learn how a neuron turns chemistry into electricity, and how the brain builds itself and slowly ages. You will see how sound, light, touch, and scent become a world, and how memory, emotion, sleep, attention, language, and the social mind arise from living tissue. Along the way you will meet the patients and scientists who built the field: H.M., Phineas Gage, Ramón y Cajal, and many more. You will also learn why so many popular claims about the brain deserve suspicion. Each chapter ends by gathering the vocabulary, the live debates, and the common myths an expert would expect you to know. You will finish being able to follow a neuroscientist, ask a sharp question, and understand the answer. No scientific background is required, only curiosity.