The Brain

This book picks up brilliantly from where Zero to Birth leaves off. It’s the story of how the brain encodes the reality of the world outside the womb, how our experiences change the brain, and how we acquire knowledge, skills, and sociability.

I found this book to be extremely readable. It’s full of fascinating and illustrative examples of how the human brain continues to change to function effectively in the real world. 

If you’re looking for an easy-to-understand and entertaining introduction to the basics of how your brain works, The Brain is a great choice.

The author, David Eagleman, is an accomplished neuroscientist who has both a deep understanding of brain function and a talent for explaining those functions in a clear and engaging style.

The book also explores how neuroscience might influence some profound philosophical questions about free will, consciousness, and more—so you’ll get a dose of deep thinking along with some fundamental neuroscience knowledge.

Eagleman is a great story teller, and if there is any story we all need to understand better, it is the story of our brain. 

That story is currently getting a new coat of paint based on the amazing recent advances in deep neural networking, reinforcement learning, and the like. In other words, just as the organic showed the way to new ways of modeling inorganic systems, now we are seeing progress coming from the opposite direction.

David Eagleman is a Professor of Neuroscience at Stanford University. He writes in an accessible way and speculates about questions within neuroscience. The book is a best-seller and deservedly so, because you feel what it is like to be a scientist studying the most complicated thing in the world, our own brain.