The Brain: A Scientist's Tale. The Winding Path to Understanding How Our Mind Works, Where Memory is Stored, and Thoughts are Formed

The desire of humanity to understand the brain has led to the most important discoveries in science and medicine. In his captivating book, renowned science popularizer Matthew Cobb narrates how thorny this path has been, as the road to a high-tech present was often littered with eccentrics conducting unnecessary or cruel experiments and their victims.

The book is divided into three parts: "Past", "Present", and "Future", in which the author immerses us in the history of studying the most mysterious organ. He tells of the dreadful experiments conducted by pioneering scientists on people in the quest to understand its structure and functions. The first part describes the period from ancient times when the heart (rather than the brain) was considered the source of thoughts and emotions. In the second part, the author explains that today almost all scientific research and developments are controlled by private companies and why this poses a danger. In the concluding part, Matthew Cobb speculates on the directions researchers will take in the near future. Despite incredible scientific breakthroughs, we still have only a vague understanding of how the brain works.