Connectome

Connectome, by Sebastian Seung is ''One of the most eagerly awaited scientific books of the year ... intellectually exhilarating, beautifully written, exquisitely precise yet still managing to be inspirational'' Irish Times

What really makes us who we are? In this groundbreaking book, pioneering neuroscientist Sebastian Seung shows that our identity does not lie in our genes, but in the connections between our brain cells - our own particular wiring, or ''connectomes''.

Everything about us - emotions, thoughts, memories - is encoded in these tangled patterns of neural connections, and now Seung and a dedicated team are mapping them in order to uncover the basis of personality, explain disorders such as autism and depression, and even enable us to ''upload'' our brains. This book reveals the secrets of the brain, showing how our connectome makes each of us uniquely ourselves.

''With the first-person flavour of James Watson''s Double Helix, Connectome gives a sense of the excitement on the cutting edge of neuroscience'' New Scientist

''Witty and exceptionally clear ... beautifully explained ... the best lay book on brain science I''ve ever read'' Wall Street Journal

''Seung is about to revolutionise brain science'' The Times

''The reader is swept along with his enthusiasm'' The New York Times

Sebastian Seung is Professor of Computational Neuroscience at MIT and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He has made important advances in robotics, neuroscience, neuroeconomics, and statistical physics. His research has been published in leading scientific journals, and also featured in The New York Times, Technology Review, and The Economist.