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 feats. A
complete understanding seems within our grasp. But to make that final breakthrough we may
need a radical new approach. At every step of our quest Cobb shows that it was new ideas that
brought illumination. Where he asks might the next one come from? What will it be?
