We Are Our Brains
Dick Swaab, Amsterdam University

• Monday 16 June 2014, 7.30PM to 8.30pm
• Free admission
  Booking required
• Berrick Saul Building, University of York (map|getting to campus)

Event details

An instant best-seller in the Netherlands and now translated into English this is the definitive book on the brain and its role in nearly every aspect of human existence. Join Swaab on his vivid journey to unearth what truly makes us who we are.

Based on half a decade of ground-breaking research, We Are Our Brains gives a sweeping biography of the brain, from infancy to adulthood to old age. Swaab provides an eye-opening window on each different stage of brain development: the gender differences that develop in the embryonic brain; what goes on in the heads of adolescents; how parenthood permanently changes the brain. Swaab also moves beyond a purely biological understanding to present a controversial and multi-layered ethical argument surrounding the brain. Far from possessing true free will, Swaab argues, we have very little control over our everyday decisions, or who we will become. Our brains predetermine everything about us, from our moral character to our religious leanings to whom we fall in love with, long before we are born.

Speaker biography:

Dick Swaab is an internationally renowned researcher in neuroscience and a professor of neurobiology at University of Amsterdam. He is the founder of the Netherlands Brain Bank, which supplies the international research community with clinical and neuropathological brain tissue, and he currently leads the Neuropsychiatric Disorders research team at the Netherlands Institute of Neuroscience. In 2008, Professor Swaab received the Academy Medal for his significant role in national and international neuroscience. 

Accessibility

Wheelchair accessible

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