The Brain: A User's Guide

In Fall 2008, Barry Jacobs, Professor of Psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute presented the Alumni Studies course "The Brain: A User's Guide." The human brain is the most complex piece of machinery in the known universe. All that we are and all that we will ever be is the product of this three pound lump of gray tissue that resides within our heads. Over the past three decades, we have learned more about the brain than in all of previous recorded history. Yet the mind remains the profoundest of scientific mysteries. In this course Professor Jacobs explores how the 100 billion nerve cells that comprise the human brain give rise to our sensations and movements, our thoughts and memories, our dreams and emotions, and to devastating neuro- and psychopathologies.