About Conexiones: Una historia de las emociones / Connections: A Story of Human Feeling

Un relato elegante y empático que rastrea los orígenes de nuestras emociones a partir de fascinantes historias clínicas.

Karl Deisseroth ha dedicado su vida a la comprensión de la mente y es uno de los pocos neurólogos que además son psiquiatras con consulta en activo. Esa combinación da lugar a un enfoque extremadamente original que busca la base biológica de las enfermedades mentales.

A partir de una investigación puntera y de la experiencia con sus propios pacientes, narra, con una profunda empatía, la gran historia de los orígenes de las emociones humanas. Así, el caso de una joven con un trastorno de alimentación explica cómo la mente puede rebelarse contra impulsos tan primitivos como el hambre y la sed; el de un hombre mayor, ahogado por la depresión y la demencia, muestra cómo los seres humanos evolucionaron para sentir no solo la alegría, sino también su ausencia; y el de una solitaria mujer uigur, alejada de su tierra natal, revela la importancia y los desafíos de los vínculos sociales.

Una obra que transforma lo que sabemos sobre nosotros mismos e ilustra de forma vívida, a través de las historias humanas, siempre imprescindibles, nuestra búsqueda de conexión y sentido.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

A groundbreaking tour of the human mind that illuminates the biological nature of our inner worlds and emotions, through gripping, moving—and, at times, harrowing—clinical stories

“[A] scintillating and moving analysis of the human brain and emotions.”—Nature

“Beautifully connects the inner feelings within all human beings to deep insights from modern psychiatry and neuroscience.”—Robert Lefkowitz, Nobel Laureate

Karl Deisseroth has spent his life pursuing truths about the human mind, both as a renowned clinical psychiatrist and as a researcher creating and developing the revolutionary field of optogenetics, which uses light to help decipher the brain’s workings. In Projections, he combines his knowledge of the brain’s inner circuitry with a deep empathy for his patients to examine what mental illness reveals about the human mind and the origin of human feelings—how the broken can illuminate the unbroken.

Through cutting-edge research and gripping case studies from Deisseroth’s own patients, Projections tells a larger story about the material origins of human emotion, bridging the gap between the ancient circuits of our brain and the poignant moments of suffering in our daily lives. The stories of Deisseroth’s patients are rich with humanity and shine an unprecedented light on the self—and the ways in which it can break down. A young woman with an eating disorder reveals how the mind can rebel against the brain’s most primitive drives of hunger and thirst; an older man, smothered into silence by depression and dementia, shows how humans evolved to feel not only joy but also its absence; and a lonely Uighur woman far from her homeland teaches both the importance—and challenges—of deep social bonds.

Illuminating, literary, and essential, Projections is a revelatory, immensely powerful work. It transforms our understanding not only of the brain but of ourselves as social beings—giving vivid illustrations through science and resonant human stories of our yearning for connection and meaning.