A vivid cross-section of what makes us human.
 
Based on half a decade of groundbreaking research, We Are Our Brains is a sweeping biography of the human brain, from infancy to adulthood to old age. Renowned neuroscientist D. F. Swaab takes us on a guided tour of the intricate inner workings that determine our potential, our limitations, and our desires, with each chapter serving as an eye-opening window on a different brain stage: the gender differences that develop in the embryonic brain, what goes on in the heads of adolescents, how parenthood permanently changes the brain.
 
Moving beyond pure biological understanding, Swaab presents a controversial and multilayered ethical argument surrounding the brain. Far from possessing true free will, Swaab argues, we have very little control over our everyday decisions, or who we will become, because our brains predetermine everything about us, from our moral character to our religious leanings to whom we fall in love with, long before we are born. And he challenges many of our prevailing assumptions about what makes us human, decoding the intricate “moral networks” that allow us to experience emotion, revealing maternal instinct to be the result of hormonal changes in the pregnant brain, and exploring the way that religious “imprinting” shapes the brain during childhood. Rife with memorable case studies, We Are Our Brains is already an international phenomenon, having spent 113 weeks on the Dutch bestseller list. It aims to demystify the chemical and genetic workings of our most mysterious organ, in the process helping us to see who we are through an entirely new lens.
 
Did you know?
 
• The father’s brain is affected in pregnancy as well as the mother’s.
• We experience withdrawal symptoms at the end of a love affair that mirror chemical addiction.
• Growing up bilingual reduces the likelihood of Alzheimer’s.
• Parental religion is imprinted on our brains during early development, in a similar way to our native language.
• In professional violinists, the part of the cerebral cortex that directs the fingers of the left hand is five times as large as in people who don’t play an instrument.