A SENSE OF SELF by Veronica O‘Keane

In our discussion about Harari’s „Nexus“ Enrique shared this book tip.

NYT has only great things to say about the book - see here - „O’Keane does not try to dazzle us with interpretations and cures, but dazzle she does with the science, the clarity with which she can conjure something as ordinary, as bafflingly complex and beautiful, as a memory forming in the brain. She leads us through the origin of sight, why looking always involves remembering, the importance of place in memory, what starlings can tell us about sex, about scientists who believe it may be possible to reactivate happy memories through stimulation of the amygdala. Out of that unprepossessing organ — “a gelatinous blob of uncooked-shrimp color” — what wonders.“

I would like to invite you to read and discuss this book and to consider combining it with the event on „These memories do not belong to us“ to join the powers of fiction and non-fiction.