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.
