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.”—NatureBeautifully connects
the inner feelings within all human beings to deep insights from modern psychiatry and
neuroscience.”—Robert Lefkowitz Nobel LaureateKarl 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.
