Neuroscientists now claim to be able to explain the roots of human personality. In this overview of the grey matter, Rose explores the evolutionary route by which brains progressed, up to today’s complex societies, and ponders the brain’s future.

In A Universe of Consciousness, Gerald Edelman builds on the radical ideas he introduced in his monumental trilogy-Neural Darwinism, Topobiology, and The Remembered Present-to present for the first time an empirically supported full-scale theory of consciousness. He and the neurobiolgist Giulio Tononi show how they use ingenious technology to detect the most minute brain currents and to identify the specific brain waves that correlate with particular conscious experiences. The results of this pioneering work challenge the conventional wisdom about consciousness.