A groundbreaking tour of the human mind that illuminates the
biological nature of our inner worlds and emotions, through gripping,
moving--and, at times, harrowing--clinical stories
"[A] scintillating and moving analysis of the human brain and
emotions."--Nature
"Beautifully connects the inner feelings within all human beings to deep
insights from modern psychiatry and neuroscience."--Robert Lefkowitz,
Nobel Laureate
Karl Deisseroth has spent his life pursuing truths about the human mind,
both as a renowned clinical psychiatrist and as a researcher creating
and developing the revolutionary field of optogenetics, which uses light
to help decipher the brain's workings. In Projections, he combines his
knowledge of the brain's inner circuitry with a deep empathy for his
patients to examine what mental illness reveals about the human mind and
the origin of human feelings--how the broken can illuminate the
unbroken.
Through cutting-edge research and gripping case studies from
Deisseroth's own patients, Projections tells a larger story about the
material origins of human emotion, bridging the gap between the ancient
circuits of our brain and the poignant moments of suffering in our daily
lives. The stories of Deisseroth's patients are rich with humanity and
shine an unprecedented light on the self--and the ways in which it can
break down. A young woman with an eating disorder reveals how the mind
can rebel against the brain's most primitive drives of hunger and
thirst; an older man, smothered into silence by depression and dementia,
shows how humans evolved to feel not only joy but also its absence; and
a lonely Uighur woman far from her homeland teaches both the
importance--and challenges--of deep social bonds.
Illuminating, literary, and essential, Projections is a revelatory,
immensely powerful work. It transforms our understanding not only of the
brain but of ourselves as social beings--giving vivid illustrations
through science and resonant human stories of our yearning for
connection and meaning.
