The Compassionate Brain: How Empathy Creates Intelligence

Here is the ultimate explanation of the brain for everyone who thinks: a guide to how the brain works, how our brains came to operate the way they do, and, most important, how to use your precious gray matter to its full capacity.

The brain, according to current research, is not some kind of automatic machine that works independently of its user. In fact, the circuitry of the brain actually changes according to how one uses it. Our brains are continuously developing new capacities and refinements—or losing them, depending upon how we use them. Gerald Hüther takes us on a fascinating tour of the brain's development—from one-celled organisms to worms, moles, apes, and on to us humans—showing how we truly are what we think: our behavior directly affects our brain capacity. And the behavior that promotes the fullest development of the brain is behavior that balances emotion and intellect, dependence and autonomy, openness and focus, and ultimately expresses itself in such virtues as truthfulness, considerateness, sincerity, humility, and love.

Hüther's user's-manual approach is humorous and engaging, with a minimum of technical language, yet the book's message is profound: the fundamental nature of our brains and nervous systems naturally leads to our continued growth in intelligence and humanity.

Gerald Hüther, PhD, is the head of the Department of Fundamental Neurobiological Research at the psychiatric clinic of Göttingen, Germany. His research concerns the effects of fear, stress, psychological addiction, and nourishment on the brain. The Compassionate Brain: How Empathy Creates Intelligence was the first of his numerous books to appear in English.