How do we think? What makes us beings that are endowed with conscience, capable of memory, of perceiving the surrounding world, of feeling passion? This book presents an ensemble of mechanisms that compose the human spirit and addresses the progress of the neuroscientific revolution: the biology of the brain and the study of its evolution are in the process of surrendering to us the key to conscience itself.

"In this remarkably well-written book, Gerald Edelman explains why and how it will be possible to understand the mind. He reviews the present state of knowledge, and puts his finger on the pitfalls as well as the stakes involved.'Science et Avenir

'Among all the neurobiological theories of consciousness that you may have read, Gerald Edelman's is the most original and the most profound."

La Recherche

Gerald. M. Edleman, winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine, heads the Institute of Neurosciences at La Jolla, California.