Jean-Pierre Changeux is an honorary professor at the Collège de France and at the Institut Pasteur, and a member of the French Academy of Sciences. Besides L’Homme neuronal (1983), he is the author of Raison et plaisir (1994) and L’Homme de vérité (2002). His other works include Matière à pensée (with Alain Connes, 1989), La Nature et la Règle. Ce qui nous fait penser (with Paul Ricoeur, 1998) and L’Homme artificiel (2007).

“I wrote this book based on material from my thirty years’ teaching experience at the Collège de France.
“In it, I deal not only with art and culture (music and painting) but also with life in society, with ethics and the meaning of death; not only with languages and writing but also with the neuronal and molecular bases of memory and learning.
“This book is like a mural that brings together a large number of different facts and a variety of discussions and hypotheses. It anchors the material of contemporary science in the history of the disciplines of neurology, ethology, evolutionary biology, development biology, in the study of consciousness and also in experimental psychology and genomics.
“Finally, this book attempts to show that it is up to us to relentlessly incite the human brain to invent a future that will enable humanity to lead lives of greater solidarity and enhanced happiness, for each of us and with all of us.” Jean-Pierre Changeux

• A history of contemporary neuroscience.

• A critical reflection that leads to the most sensitive interfaces of the sciences of the brain, of man and of society.

• “Jean-Pierre Changeux has one of those rare minds that confront and assemble.” L’Express