D.F. Swaab

We Are Our Brains

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A vivid cross-section of what makes us human.
Based on half a decade of groundbreaking research, We Are Our Brains is a sweeping biography of the human brain, from infancy to adulthood to old age. Renowned neuroscientist D. F. Swaab takes us on a guided tour of the intricate inner workings that determine our potential, our limitations, and our desires, with each chapter serving as an eye-opening window on a different brain stage: the gender differences that develop in the embryonic brain, what goes on in the heads of adolescents, how parenthood permanently changes the brain.
Moving beyond pure biological understanding, Swaab presents a controversial and multilayered 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, because our brains predetermine everything about us, from our moral character to our religious leanings to whom we…
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Quotes

  • fleurotiquehas quotedlast year
    While the adolescent PFC is still immature, parents have to be responsible for a child’s planning, organization, moral framework, and limits. These functions are gradually taken over by the slowly maturing PFC.
  • fleurotiquehas quotedlast year
    There was a time when an obscure mix of arguments bearing on eugenics, punishment, the protection of society, and the repression of homosexuality led to the castration of pedosexuals in the Netherlands. Between 1938 and 1968, at least four hundred sex offenders were “voluntarily” castrated. This practice wasn’t laid down by law. These were offenders detained under a hospital order who were given the choice of life imprisonment or castration. They had to submit a standard letter to the minister of justice, the text of which ran, “May I humbly crave Your Excellency’s permission to be castrated?” Up to 1950, 80 percent of the castrated men were pedosexuals, a situation complicated by the high legal age of sexual consent (sixteen). In Germany, the hypothalami of pedophiles were surgically lesioned in the hope that this would change their sexual orientation. These brain operations were never scientifically documented.
  • fleurotiquehas quotedlast year
    ll the data indicates that gender problems arise in the womb. Tiny variations in genes associated with the effect of hormones on brain development have been found to increase the likelihood of transsexuality. It can also be increased by abnormal fetal hormone levels or by medication taken during pregnancy that inhibits the breakdown of sex hormones. The differentiation of our sex organs takes place in the first months of pregnancy, while the sexual differentiation of the brain occurs in the second half of pregnancy. Since these two processes take place at different times, the theory is that in the case of transsexuality, they have been influenced independently of one another. If this is the case, one would expect to find female structures in the brains of MtF transsexuals and vice versa in the case of FtM transsexuals.

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