Laurent Cohen is the author of L’Homme thermomètre and Pourquoi les chimpanzés ne parlent pas. He is a professor of neurology at the teaching hospital La Pitié-Salpêtrière–University of Paris-VI.


• Why have we no memories before the age of two?
• How do we know that an elephant can recognise itself in a mirror?
• Why do we wash our hands when we feel ashamed?
• Is a brain that votes on the left and a brain that votes on the right alike?
• Ask yourself all sorts of questions about the brain, your own and others’. Ask yourself serious questions when a loved one suffers from Alzheimer’s; ask yourself important questions regarding your children’s development; and ask more personal questions when you have doubts about someone else’s intentions.
• Then reply to all these questions precisely and clearly, without forgetting your sense of humour and without neglecting the latest scientific findings: that is what Laurent Cohen brilliantly succeeds in doing here.

• Some 40 short, funny, entertaining, bizarre but always instructive stories on the functions and dysfunctions of the human brain.
• A playful entertaining scientific work by a great neurologist.