Rose explores just how far neuroscience may help us understand the human brain - including consciousness - and to what extent cutting edge technologies should have the power to mend or manipulate the mind. Rose first offers a panoramic look at what we now know about the brain, from its three-billion-year evolution, to its astonishingly rapid development in the embryo, to the miraculous process of infant development (how a brain becomes a human). More importantly, he shows what all this science can - and cannot - tell us about the human condition.