The Idea of the Brain: A History: SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2020

A monumental, sweeping journey from the ancient roots of neurology to the most astonishing recent research, which Henry Marsh (Admissions) called an 'intellectual tour de force' Shortlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize A New Statesman Book of the Year This is the story of our quest to understand the most mysterious object in the universe: the human brain. Today we tend to picture it as a computer. Earlier scientists thought about it in their own technological terms: as a telephone switchboard, or a clock, or all manner of fantastic mechanical or hydraulic devices. Could the right metaphor unlock the its deepest secrets once and for all? Galloping through centuries of wild speculation and ingenious, sometimes macabre anatomical investigations, scientist and historian Matthew Cobb reveals how we came to our present state of knowledge. Our latest theories allow us to create artificial memories in the brain of a mouse, and to build AI programmes capable of extraordinary cognitive fea